Nicki Kennedy Voicecast: Conversations around voice, stories, sound and identity

How A Jersey Ballet Became A Community’s Voice

• Nicki Kennedy • Season 1 • Episode 6

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What if a dance company could speak for its community without saying a word? We sit down with Carolyn Rose Ramsey—international dancer turned artistic director—to explore how movement becomes language, why curiosity beats certainty, and how a small island built a world-class stage from a potato shed and a big idea.

Carolyn opens the studio doors on her process: curating choreographers, shaping programmes around living themes, and letting Jersey’s landscape and stories seep into the work. We talk about the tightrope between accessibility and ambition, and why confusion and challenge do not have to mean alienation. You’ll hear candid reflections on privilege and responsibility in the arts, how excellence is sustained, and what it took to grow Ballet D Jèrriais from some very challenging beginnings to the Opera House while keeping its edge.

We also dig into performance psychology: perfectionism’s upside and pitfalls, pre-show rituals, and the craft of giving feedback that is honest, specific, and kind. From injury stigma to holistic training, we look at how dancers stay healthy through cross-training, smarter systems, and leadership that pairs high standards with psychological safety. Carolyn’s childhood memory of Swan Lake reminds us why nonverbal storytelling can be the most direct route to truth—felt first, understood later.

Looking ahead, we ask how ballet can hold a mirror to the here and now—raising questions about today’s issues without preaching. If you care about dance, voice, community, or the work of turning creativity into belonging, this conversation offers clarity, warmth, and a few brave invitations to go deeper.

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SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to VoiceCast. Today's episode marks a shift in our series. Up to now we've been deep in the worlds of advocacy and psychology and the many ways in which voice can be silenced or or reclaimed, in which people can be heard. But this conversation now is moving us more towards the arts and culture, how they shape us and how they sustain a small community, and how they give form to things we can't so easily articulate. I'm joined by Carolyn Rose Ramsey Carolyn is a dancer whose international career included working with Norwegian National Ballet and the Cuban National Ballet, among others. And as well as this top-level dance career, she is a creative leader and is the founder of an incredible professional dance company, the Ballet de Jerry. Her work sits at the intersection of discipline, artistry, and also island identity. In a place the size of Jersey, culture is really part of our social fabric. It connects people and it builds confidence and it offers us a kind of shared language that transcends background and experience. For anybody who's listening from outside Jersey and who may not know about the story of this amazing ballet company, the Ballet Jerry, we have this international standard, beautiful ballet company, which began at a time when our local Jerse Opera House was undergoing renovations, and so they started with no real home of their own. And they were inventive and they were clever, and some of those early productions that they put on took place in the most extraordinary locations, from potato sheds to ancient Neolithic sites, through schools and art centres and other venues, but they have been incredibly inventive, and it is rather wonderful now to see them at their new home in the Jersey Opera House. Today I'm keen to explore with Carolyn what dance might mean as a voice, how the body communicates when words fall short, and how movement can express nuance and agency and emotion, how a dance company can actually speak for and to its community, and it's a really ultimately it's a conversation about creativity, it's about belonging, and it's about the power of embodied expression. It's also a conversation about inclusion. Ballet and opera are both creative disciplines that get accused of elitism, but perhaps there's an invitation here to shift that narrative too. And I hope that we'll have a chance to look at art not just as an escape from reality, but as one of the ways that a community understands and expresses itself, as a voice in other words. This is VoiceCast with Nikki Kennedy, exploring voice in every sense, the sound you make, the story you tell, and the presence you bring. I'm Nikki Kennedy, your host, a classical singer, vocal health and rehabilitation specialist, and an executive coach. And my work is about helping people transform, find new directions, get unstuck, and express themselves in ways that feel authentic and true. Together we'll look at how your voice and your presence can shape change in work, in life, and in yourself. Hi, Mickey. I'm really curious to know how you think of the body as your voice as a dancer.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, that's a fantastic question, and actually um it's interesting being defined as a dancer at my age. Just because, of course, uh there are multiple ways of saying that. A lot of people will say that once a dancer, always a dancer, and to a certain degree I still identify as such, but at the same time, I have moved on uh from my professional career, and and um of course the identity has to ebb and flow with that changing role in in the industry. So that is quite an interesting uh thing to touch on as well. But I suppose uh leaning more into my my past self and my my past identity as as a dancer, it definitely was one of the things that initially attracted me to the art form was that feeling of being able to say something that I didn't feel able to say or to receive a message that I didn't understand from others as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's a really interesting take. So the giving of a message, but also the receiving. Absolutely. And actually that really fascinates me because, as you say, you are not dancing now, but you are a dancer. You will always be a dancer in some way. So, how does that play out now that you are creating the pieces?

SPEAKER_02:

Um I think of myself very much as a curator because I am the artistic director, and one of the great privileges of my job is that I get to choose the choreographers that the dancers work with. I get to choose the dancers themselves. Uh, so I think there is an element of creativity in that. Every program is different. There are some programs that almost seem to have come together on their own that I feel like I've had very little input on, that it's just that people have come to me with concepts and they fit with other people's concepts, and it it all sort of has this beautiful synergy to it that I have to do very little on the creative side, and it just sort of comes together. And there are other programs where it very much is a concept that we have decided that we want to approach, and then we find creatives who are interested in taking that on with us, and and so that the journey is very much more I again I use the word curated.

SPEAKER_00:

So in those situations you've got a c a strong theme or narrative that you want to explore, and then you pick your your choreographer to fit that rather than the other way around. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Like, for example, we did a program about the history of the witch trials in Jersey, and that concept led the programming of three different choreographers who also had an interest in the subject, but but they came on board after the concept was already formed.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm just reflecting on some of the pieces that I've seen. I think I've seen many of the pieces that you've done. Um, a lot of those pieces do have quite a specific narrative running through them or of or a strong theme that is quite local to us here in Jersey. We've got quite a few stories that are really we've got the the one about the fishing community and knitting. That was an amazing piece of work. So tell me something about how you see the dance company as a voice for this particular community.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, but that is actually an interesting one just because I've never actually asked someone to make a piece about Jersey. Those have all sort of come to me through through choreographers visiting the island. In we often bring choreographers for an initial workshop period before we before we sign a contract, before we decide on a commission. Just because I mean I I do think it's important that art has a bit of the the soul of where it was born. So there is a certain element of wanting choreographers to to see the island, wanting them to work with our dancers just for a little bit before they before they propose an idea or before I propose my idea to them. Just to s to see how good a fit it is for our group and and for our community, for our audience, all of that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Um and then from there, all of those really local ideas have actually come from them, which is I think really interesting and really lovely.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, especially because most of those choreographers have it's probably often for them a first experience of Jersey, is it usually?

SPEAKER_02:

Yes, absolutely. And I think that's a really interesting concept as well. I mean, neither you and I, neither of us were born in Jersey. So um I think that we we are able, after living here for so many years, to speak to that to a certain degree. We know what it's like to arrive in the island for the first time. But then we also, at least if I I think that you're probably the same as me. We've talked about this before. Also with our sea swimming and you know, all of these things that you um you arrive on the island for the first time and it's also glorious, and you're just like, oh yeah, I'm always gonna be going on cliffwalks and I'm always gonna be sea swimming. And then a few years go by and you start to just get so numb to it, and you you stop seeing the beauty around you. And sometimes it takes that person coming in and seeing it for the first time to give you those fresh eyes to see it and just be be like blown away by it again.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, in a way, isn't that what art is? It's a way of uh I mean it's sort of happening on two levels there. You've got the the way that an artist in whatever field they are, they're going to reflect back something to the audience of what life is and what what what life, love, death, any of these great themes of our existence are. They reflect them back to us so that we can see them with fresh eyes ourselves. And so you've got that happening on a sort of uh meta-level with art anyway. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

But you've also got it in terms of our own community having a chance to see itself through some somebody else's eyes, which is a really lovely thought.

SPEAKER_02:

I like to think of it that way. Yeah. No, but you're absolutely right. Like art is always gonna be a mirror of its it's a mirror of its own society, right? Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely right. There is something uh it's layered in this scenario. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_00:

I have to say, I mean, incredibly impressed w with the whole business of creating something with such high standards in Jersey, like a professional dance company in an island which has got the most fantastic enthusiasm for dance. I mean, that children and uh there's so many dance schools, so many community dance projects. And it's quite a thing to have then added that amazing icing on the cake so that those children, for example, who are learning dance can now see really top quality professional dancers dancing material that has been created with them by amazing choreographers. That's so ambitious. How are you feeling? Three years in, you must be exhausted.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm too exhausted to know how I feel, actually. No, but I also feel extremely privileged. I think that that's something like the beauty around us. We have to just keep reminding ourselves of how fortunate we are to be professional artists. Yes. Because I think that's something that we sometimes forget as well is that we have the privilege of being able to work on our craft all day, every day. We don't have nine to five jobs that we have to do first and then come at this in the evening when we're already exhausted. So I think that there is a privilege uh kind of wrapped up in that that we need to remember as well, that that we have a privilege and a responsibility to do what we do at a really high level, because if this is our whole job, then I hope we're good at it. I hope we're delivering, I hope we're inspiring. Do you see what I mean? Yeah, absolutely. That it we can't take it lightly in a way. Aaron Ross Powell Exactly. And I think that the it's it's a double-sided sword, isn't it? That of course we need to fight for our, you know, our rights as artists, our living wages, our our our respect of our industry that is sometimes lost in a culture that only has value for the monetary and a certain uh finite number of sectors.

SPEAKER_00:

It it is feeling as though some of our artistic pursuits are somewhat more under threat than than they have been in the past. Absolutely. And so it's really something to kind of cling on to the privilege, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. And the two go hand in hand. I don't think they're as separate as we think they are, and they're definitely not um working against each other. And we have to keep that in mind, that the privilege and the responsibility go together. Yeah. That the more we take on that responsibility, the more we stay accountable to ourselves and each other, the better placed we are to defend our rights and our our sectors as as being valid and being Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so if our responsibilities are weighty, as you say, how does that play into the choice of the material that we present? And I mean that in the sense of the accessibility of what we present, because we want to challenge audiences, we want to grow audiences, we want to develop audiences, but at the same time we want them to feel that they understand what we're doing and that that they gravitate towards it. So, how do you approach that in your work with the company?

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know, Nikki. I think that's the real answer. No, I mean I'm I'm partially being facetious, but genuinely I think there's so much learning involved in that. And there has to be a constant question, right? Like the the question that you're asking is a really, really valid one. And I think in a way the answer is that question, because we have to stay in that place of being so humble and so questioning and so again, just accountable to ourselves and accountable to our audiences. If we go too far in either way, we're uh we're sort of damned if we do, and we're damned if we don't.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And actually, I was I will say that I came to see um your uh recent performance at the opera house, and it was wonderful to see what could be seen as quite challenging uh work, which doesn't have an obvious you know, it it's not a story that's just being sort of played out in front of you. It's really exciting and rhythmic and um amazing movement. But what was so lovely was seeing a a house full of people who were getting it and weren't intimidated by it and were laughing and were enjoying and were responding. I sat behind a young young girl who I've taught as a singer, and uh she absolutely loved every second of it, was blown away by there was no sense of her being confused or alienated by what I think is potentially quite challenging. So I think you're you're really winning. I mean, that's very kind of you to say.

SPEAKER_02:

I don't know if that's actually true. Um but I think that one thing that I've become very aware of in the past three years is that so you used an interesting selection of words there that you said confused, you said challenged, and you said alienated. And the three don't have to go hand in hand, right? And I think that's what I I I never thought about it that way either. But it's also enabling people and and um empowering people to feel confused and to feel challenged without feeling alienated, to give them that sense of empowerment to say, that was confusing, or I didn't like that, or that was really challenging for me. Could we have, you know, an hour and a half of discussing with Silver Brunch so that we can really unpack how it made me feel and why when people feel that they're not allowed to be confused by something, when the people feel that they're weak or wrong for feeling challenged by something, I think that's where we have a problem. That's when we that's when we are starting to alienate people and push them out of the inner circle.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's that empowerment and that growing a little bit of confidence for people around feeling challenged by something, around feeling perhaps uncomfortable sometimes in the face of art and and culture. I've got a question for you about your wonderful dances and how your company has managed to stay connected to international standards and influences. I know that you have brought in these amazing choreographers from all over the place. Uh, but you've also travelled to other locations, haven't you? You've been, I think, to I mean, this is uh by my recollection, it's Malta, Paris, London, Guernsey. Is that those are all places that you've been, aren't they? You are traveling and taking this work to other audiences. And I wonder how that voice that's been grown in Jersey has been resonating in other territories.

SPEAKER_02:

Um well, it's always difficult to know um how genuinely how people feel about you outside, of course, because people will always say lovely things to your face. And I think there is a slight lack. I don't know if you feel the same way in the opera world, but I think in the dance world there's a slight lack of responsible journalism happening, I think. That um reviews seem to generally just be positive all the time. And I I so I don't know how critical the reviews um have been. And that that also might be my uh dancerly perfectionism coming in. That's like, oh, it couldn't possibly have been have been received that well. Um but no, I think we've been really fortunate with our audiences outside of Jersey as well as here in Jersey, that people have been really, really kind.

SPEAKER_00:

And it must be wonderful for Yeah, and it must be wonderful for the dancers to be able to travel and show it. Baila to dance in a new place. I haven't talked about the most striking thing about your company, which is that this year, in the last few months, represents the first time your dancers have actually danced on a theatre stage because you began in Jersey. Well in Jersey. Uh you began in a potato shed. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

No, I mean we uh we have worked a couple times with the art center, so that's uh that's been a really lovely home home experience as well. Um and the team at the Art Center are really just fantastic and have always made us feel at home. But the opera house has always sort of been our um we had always intended for the company to be based there. And there is something a little bit different about just being able to trot downstairs and do a show. Yeah. I was very fortunate in my career to to be part of uh, you know, companies that had that luxury that, you know, you're based at the at the opera house all the time. And it's it's a very special feeling to feel like it's to feel like you're dancing at home, on stage at home.

SPEAKER_00:

But the story of how you began this company and that a bitter first winter rehearsing in in literally in a potato shed. Literally. I mean, it was literally a potato shed. It's just it's such a great story. And then the venues as a result that you have have performed in. I mean, you've performed on the stages of some of the schools, and uh uh uh you've you had your own portable floor, you have that floor which you can take with you. But some really haunting and beautiful performances in not just in the potato shed, but also in places like Hoogby, one of the oldest, uh really oldest sites that we have in Europe. It's an incredible uh Neolithic site. And that piece about the witch trials being performed. In a venue like that, possibly if you'd started off in the opera house, would do you think you would have ended up performing in Potato Sheds and places like Talk.

SPEAKER_02:

Surely not. I don't think we would have I I I really think that Necessity is the uh the mother of invention or whatever it is that they say. Um and I also think uh I am one of those annoying people who thinks that everything happens for a reason. So I think that it really was uh an important part of our development as a company. Um it's uh I I also don't want to be flippant about the things that our dancers went through in order to make this happen. I mean they really, really fought for this and they went through uh I mean, really, really terrible conditions that dancers really shouldn't have to deal with.

SPEAKER_00:

No. Would you say that that has brought them extra resilience or or has it just been terribly hard?

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, I hope I certainly hope that it's brought them resilience. I think that it's given us a grounding as a team, for sure, that I'm not sure we would have had otherwise. It it has I think given us a sense of the weightiness of the responsibility that we have, along with I hope that the dancers who have, you know, who have been on that that whole journey, that they also have a sense that they've earned their place here. Yeah. Because I do think they deserve that. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I I suppose that leads me to the question of how going forward, now that you are uh in the opera house and you've got that um the the conditions that maybe should have been a a professional dancer might expect, but now might feel to you guys, might feel a bit almost cushy. How are you going to keep that absolute edge? How are you going to keep that that um that creativity that you were forced into almost by the constraints of your situation? It's a it's a question that I have as well.

SPEAKER_02:

And I suppose to a certain degree that's my responsibility as as the artistic director to keep that objectivity and to help them maintain their objectivity as well. Because you kind of want to allow artists a little bit of suspension of disbelief. You want to allow them a bit of disconnect, you want to allow them a bit of narcissism, even sometimes, because they need that in order to create what they create and do what they do and push themselves and and sort of go into that incubator where they can mess around and do their thing and come out with something fabulous. But you do need someone on the outside, on the periphery of that, who's able to keep their eyes fresh enough to then go in and say, okay, guys, but could we do better? How is this translating? How comparable is this to, you know, what's going on outside of Jersey? Not that we want to be the same as anyone else in the world, but we definitely want to push ourselves to the same standards as the rest of the world because our audience in Jersey deserves that.

SPEAKER_00:

We're going to take a short break now, and when we come back, we'll be talking about what it is that is uniquely expressive about the body and movement, that non-verbal communication that can get to the heart of things when sometimes words simply aren't enough to really express those feelings. We're going to talk also about performance psychology and about positive psychology in training in some of the ways that we might be wanting to encourage our young artists and young performing artists, whether that be our singers or our dancers. So stay tuned. So, one of the questions that I have around dance, and maybe this is one also for your dancers, but what is there that is uh uniquely expressible in movement and in the body that that we perhaps can't say in other ways?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, everyone's gonna have a different answer to this, maybe. Um, and I am curious, um curious and a little bit terrified for you to speak to the dancers to see get those young voices, get those young perspectives. I can't wait to hear I think that it it will be so interesting to hear their answers to this. For for me, I mean it's such an easily quotable statistic, isn't it, that it's like, oh well, I've heard that 70% of our communication is nonverbal, isn't it? Um so I'm but I mean it it's a cliche, but it's a cliche because it's true, right?

SPEAKER_00:

It's it's a bit like quotes by Mark Twain. I'm sure he didn't say half the things that he said. But if you say something clever and say Mark Twain said it, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Give a percentage of this anyway. Um but no, I think that so much of our communication is nonverbal. And as someone who has always struggled with verbal communication, both to feel that I've adequately communicated how I feel and to also understand what people are saying in a very literal way. For me, it has always been so comforting to have that method of communication that relies more on the truth of feeling than the truth of fact. Because it's not something that you're able to, if you're telling a story through dance, you're not able to say, well, in 1665 on the 11th of November at 322 p.m. You can't say all of that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But what you can say is how it felt to be on in that day, in that moment.

SPEAKER_00:

It's almost like the compromise, the constraint that comes when words are taken away, opens up a huge possibility of just getting directly to the heart of the feeling of the matad. I think because we try to to we try to be truthful, right?

SPEAKER_02:

Or most of some of us do. I don't know. Yeah. You you kind of assume that most people are trying to be truthful most of the time. We're trying to communicate accurately, we're trying to tell each other this is what really happened. But sometimes in that there is something lost in the nuance. The nuance gets lost, the feeling gets lost. Again, the the colors, the tone gets lost, in fact. So I think in a way, being stripped of the ability to give that level of detail, you almost put yourself into a place where there's an authenticity. That words are sometimes not only just unable to communicate, but that they actually sometimes mask.

SPEAKER_00:

So they mask that authenticity. I wonder also whether words uh can be very limiting because they kind of trap things into little boxes sometimes. I mean, a poet perhaps can can work around that.

SPEAKER_02:

Absolutely. There are there are masters of the craft.

SPEAKER_00:

There are masters of the craft. But for most of us, our prosaic words kind of trap concepts into smaller spaces than they want to exist in. And maybe dance, what you're saying is that dance, perhaps this is how well, I mean, it's certainly how I feel about music and singing, that it can transcend some of those barriers that that that poorly crafted words might impose.

SPEAKER_02:

Although I suppose it's also an interesting parallel to draw because there are masters of the craft of in in words in literature and et cetera. But we all will all we all use words, right? And I guess it's the same with movement, just because there are masters of the craft, there are people who have studied, there are people who have an aptitude for communicating through movement, but everyone moves.

SPEAKER_00:

I love how you talk, Carolyn, about not just giving the messages, but also how you receive from others. I think that's really interesting. Say more, say more about that. Say more words. Say more words.

SPEAKER_02:

You could not listeners. You won't come across in a podcast, really. You're really not getting the best of me here, folks. No, I think um, yeah, I so it it takes my mind back to being a small child, like before I actually learned how to dance, I suppose. And my my memories of dance at that time were watching dance, not of well, I I suppose I have some memories of dancing myself. But the more powerful memories are of being taken to Swan Lake as a four-year-old. And you know, that sort of life-changing experience. I had dressed myself as a little four-year-old. I had I had dressed myself for the ballet because my mom told me we were going to the ballet, but I'd put on my tutu because that's what I thought I should wear to the ballet. And my mom came into my room and she was like, No, you have to take that off. That's ridiculous. We're not wearing that to the theater. But I remember the sensation of the tool, of the rough feeling of the skirt when, you know, when I had it in my hands and I was I had to take it off, and I felt so betrayed by my mother that she didn't think I was gonna dance on stage with these people this evening.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh gosh, yes. Wow. What a wonderful way to look at it with the eyes of a child. Extraordinary. And and and was that a seminal moment then? I mean, you remember that day. So what did you absolutely was that when you knew in your heart that that was something you were really interested in doing? I don't mean, I mean, as a four-year-old, you don't have a kind of professional ambition, but Oh, I mean, yeah, you do.

SPEAKER_02:

I was I was quite a serious child. I I actually think I probably knew before that day. I was I was very serious about my uh my baby ballet classes uh from all accounts. Uh but no, I s I do remember um that performance still stands out in my mind of of just feeling like I had seen I'd I had heard a a fairy tale really, really clearly for the first time. You know what I mean? You hear you hear the story of Cinderella, you you watch a movie of Snow White, but it was the first time I really felt like the story of a fairy tale came through to me.

SPEAKER_00:

So that's 100%. Absolutely you're the the medium that gets right through to your heart and your mind in all in a one.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. When it's well done.

SPEAKER_00:

When it's well done.

SPEAKER_02:

And that's where the standards come in.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, of course. And how thrilling it is. I mean, this is one of the things, you know, if there were naysayers who felt that why would we spend the money that we spend on having great opera and great ballet, that that would be my answer to those people is that if if if the children who you want to offer the opportunity never really see what it looks like when it's excellent, then they don't quite know what they're aspiring to. Next up, a bit of conversation around performance psychology and positive psychology and how to train with discipline but with compassion. The last conversation we had on this podcast was with Dr. Dave Hunkos, and we were discussing the psychology of performance and how to be present as a performer and to be able to give your full attention to what you're doing in the moment rather than to be worrying about how well you're doing it or to be anxious in the moment or to be suffering and in distress. Have you got any insights from your dancing career and from working with dancers about how that works for you? What are the sort of rituals? What are the sort of ways that people prepare to dance? It's so it's such a high wire, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think everyone has their own process as well. And interestingly, I would be really curious to see if there are parallels between certain singers and certain dancers and certain musicians that are closer than between all dancers and all singers, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00:

That does make sense. One of the things we talked about yesterday was the prevalence amongst people who suffer from performance anxiety of the perfectionists. There is definitely a correlation between people being very perfectionistic in their approach, which you need in order to aspire to get those really high standards, but when that just tips over from being what we might call adaptive perfectionism into maladaptive perfectionism, which is when somebody starts to get held back by their own identification with themselves as the dance, as it were, as the song. And so I think there probably are a lot of correlations between different personality types across sectors.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, and I think it's funny just thinking back, I was at different moments in my career. I I was sometimes working in quite large companies. So, you know, you have 60 colleagues who are all going on stage together, but everyone has their own process. So that can create some really interesting dynamics. I had quite a method approach that I would want to be alone for six hours before a show, just being like, ooh, bamboo. Yeah. I want to embody this character. I want to clear my mind of any thought that is not my character's thought. And then if you have a colleague who needs to have a bit of a laugh, who needs to be a bit silly in order to abate their own nerves, that can create some really interesting dynamics in the wings or in the dressing room. Yeah, because everybody's needs are different, aren't they? Exactly. Exactly. But no, I think that generally um I was that type that really needed to focus. And I I mostly worked with colleagues who are very mostly I say, mostly worked with colleagues who are very respectful of that and partners who were supportive of that. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And how do you support your dancers now in their work?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, like I said before, I'm still learning as well. Uh, and there's a lot that I don't know. There's a lot of mistakes that I've made. I think that giving them space to make their own way is really important, as much as you always kind of want to be helicoptering and hovering over them saying, Oh no, I know where that road ends. Like, don't do that. Yeah. And sort of you you wish you could download your experience into them, right? And you can't do that. You you do have to let them make their own pathways. I don't want to say make their own mistakes because I don't think that they are mistakes, really.

SPEAKER_00:

No, they're they're building blocks. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I'm very interested in this because I think as a as a coach myself and as a vocal coach and working in actually in particular in vocal health, we're looking a lot at the kind of language that we use. We're learning a lot from the sports world about the psychology of performance and how to get the best out of people. And I think that both opera and ballet, well, classical music in particular, and perhaps ballet, there is a resonance in our minds of that very strict teacher who might have been sort of almost bullying people into shape, the piano teacher who slaps them back of the fingers of the piano. You know, these all the stereotypes. No, I'm kidding.

SPEAKER_02:

Sorry, Mum, I love you.

SPEAKER_00:

But but there are there are these stereotypical and and I actually feel that, you know, feel quite strongly as a as a teacher in the classical music world. I've been experimenting quite a lot over the last few years with positive psychology, positive language, creativity as a playful, uh approaching things with curiosity. I mean, there is discipline, there has to be discipline, but there has to be there has to be discipline. There has to be discipline, but there has to be forgiveness. Because most people who are working at the level of your dancers or the singers that I work with, they're already gonna punish themselves if they get something wrong or they don't match up to their own expectations. So I'm curious as to how that works in a dance company where you have to mix that discipline with that encouragement and that freedom to fly, that positive work.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, I think we're we're living in a really interesting moment in time where this work is happening. And it's almost like a family trauma, it's generational trauma, isn't it, that's passed down in the opera world and in the ballet world. Certainly, at least we can I think we can both say that we we understand and to a certain degree have probably experienced a little bit of this. And breaking cycles is not that easy because you're as much in danger of boomeranging against whatever you experienced and going too far the other way as you are of passing on exactly what was passed down to you, right? So we have to we have to be really careful and we have to watch ourselves. And again, I I think that I I have more questions than I have answers at this point. But even the fact of being aware of it is really important and staying in that humble place of questioning yourself, staying in that humble place of asking yourself whether what you're doing is coming from your ego and your need to control the people around you, or if it's genuinely coming from a place of wanting to guide them into the necessary discipline or the or to lift them up and encourage them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so there's something again, we're coming back to that empowerment of young artists, aren't we? Empowering them, but also recognition that there has got to be the discipline, that there has got to be the work the that has to be done. Aaron Powell Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Because I think that if if you are coming from a place of insecurity, your own insecurity or your own ego, there's a certain amount of of resistance to creating conflict as well, right? So you might look at a dancer and think, I have some things to say, that could be better, but I don't want to create a conflict, so I'm not gonna say them. I'm not gonna tell them what's wrong. And that doesn't help them either.

SPEAKER_00:

No.

SPEAKER_02:

Um first of all, because then they they just won't know what they're doing wrong. You can't put all the responsibility on them to self-correct, even if they are perfectionists. That's a huge amount of pressure to be putting on them to purely self-correct. That's not fair to them. And then also because most of them who have gotten to this level, they're too intelligent to actually believe that what they're doing is perfect. Even if you say, good, you're amazing, you're beautiful all the time, it will actually create more insecurity in them if they know that that's not true, if they know that they're underperforming. Yeah. Saying that it's good when it's not will create a larger sense of insecurity than just being direct and saying, like, hey, there's a couple things that we can do better. Here's what I'm seeing. And if you let your own desire to avoid conflict, to avoid confrontation, to just keep everything nice and peaceful and sort of chugging along, if you let that get in the way of their progress and their product and their success, it's as damaging as going too far the other way and and leaning into this controlled power dynamic.

SPEAKER_00:

It's absolutely around appropriate levels of challenge and appropriate levels of of raising questions and of instruction whilst at the same time not falling into the trap of that some of those rather old fashioned stereotypes that we might see that really are not healthier. I think this is a really rich vein. It's a a little bit like the conversation around parenting. About education more generally, it's the conversation around leadership in business as well. How one manages to bring a team along with you and grow people and empower people whilst at the same time having high expectations.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And I think it's so hard to get it right. In fact, I think 99% of the time I feel like I'm getting it wrong.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's probably healthy too. It would be it would be strange if you felt that you had absolutely nailed it. I think you know that that that that's where the learning comes from, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02:

Well, maybe that's where the danger lies as well. It's those those moments when you feel like, oh, I've got this under control. I know exactly what I'm doing. Maybe that's where the danger lies. Yeah, I think it probably does.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm curious. There's a question I want to ask, uh, which I think will resonate a lot with my uh voice tribe, who who I hope will be listening to this podcast. We are talking a lot in um both the psychology but also in the physiology of voice use uh as for professional voice users around stigma, around injury or difficulties. And I think in the sports world, it's been okay for a long time to uh pull a muscle, have a tendon problem, to be out, to be injured for a period of time and to need to have some rehabilitation. It's even now it's uh being talked about much more the mental health of our sports people and how they're coping with pressure. Uh and I wondered what that's like in the dance world for you, because I think in the singing world we still are battling quite hard to kind of remove some of that stigma. Singers won't talk about vocal injury very easily. They won't they they there's a lot of shame around it. Did I cause this myself by my own poor technique? Or, you know, there's yeah, it's really it's it's really hard for singers. And I think also around performance anxiety, people just feeling this shame around it and that they can't talk about it, that it's going to affect their career if they are honest about it. How does that play out in the dance world? Um It's interesting actually.

SPEAKER_02:

I I feel like the the angle of shame might be slightly less felt, although now you've uh really made me ask myself that question. I think it depends on the type of injury as well. Because you can't dance if you've pulled a I mean you can't. Well, I guess. Oh yeah. There's two sides of it, isn't it? That because you mentioned the the idea of feeling guilty that you caused an injury yourself through poor technique or poor training or or poor choices. And I suppose that, correct me if I'm wrong, that would come a little bit more with stress injuries that you might have with your voice. With dancers, it's sort of a 50-50 thing between stress injuries and impact injuries. And in sports it tends to be more impact in injuries. So it's also a different um, it's a different type of problem you're dealing with psychologically, I suppose.

SPEAKER_00:

I'm curious about that. I I'm just going to apologise for the amount of traffic noise. I think we're now on the school run outside. Um but but yeah, so I one of the things that actually I'm really curious about around this topic is that in my work with vocal rehabilitation, what I've come to understand is that the muscles around the voice, when they start to get really stressed, when they start to, when when things start to go wrong, it's nearly always a much, much bigger picture. We hear the result of the injury, but when we start to unpack it, when you create the space for your uh client to really talk about all of the different areas that might be playing into that injury, we suddenly get a much, much more rich and complex picture. So there may be hormones, there may be stress events, and of course, stress affects the way that your body moves, the way that you breathe, the way that you hold yourself. So there is a medication that you might be taking. There may be allergies, there may be so many things. It's very rarely simply because you have a heavy vocal load. You may be used to having a heavy vocal load, but then when you have a bereavement and then a hormonal event and something else, it all suddenly has an effect, and you're left wondering, well, why now? What this is normally fine for me. Why is it not fine now? So I think there's that question as well, whether that's something that you encounter in the dance world. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02:

And I think nowadays we are trying to incorporate more holistic training techniques. Strict classical ballet training is quite behind the times, I suppose. In a lot of ways, it's it's not really been reassessed in about 200 years. Um there are there are pros and cons about about ballet training, of course. And it is hard on the body and being augmented by other kinds of exercise like Pilates, gyrotonics, yoga. You know, there's a lot of things that you can do to just set yourself up in a much healthier place. And I think more and more dance companies and even quite old school ballet companies are looking at these sort of alternative methods to make sure that their dancers are stronger and that they live longer and that they have just generally better careers and that's fantastic.

SPEAKER_00:

I mean, we do we talk a lot in the singing world about cross-training. It's good for you to sing a little bit of the other stuff, you know. You don't absolutely live in in one gesture. Yeah. So as we finish this conversation, is there one thing that really stands out for you as being something you're you would really like to achieve over the next uh period of time in terms of audiences, how they receive the company in Jersey?

SPEAKER_02:

Is there one thing that I'd want to achieve? Well, I'm one of those people who always wants to achieve a thousand different things at the same time, so narrowing it down is gonna take a minute. Um We've told stories that have meaning to Jersey or have connection to Jersey in historical senses. We've made pieces that were created here for the dancers here with the audience here in mind. You know, we've we've kind of touched on these things in a slightly more abstract way. What I feel like maybe we haven't done is to touch on something that it's a bit more relevant in today's society. I don't know if we've really attacked anything that might be a little bit more controversial or made not even made a statement because it that I have I have no real desire to make a statement about anything. I I feel like I'm I'm too unsure of myself to really make a statement about most things. But I would be interested in posing a question to our audiences about something that is of relevant current issue.

SPEAKER_00:

Something in the here and now.

SPEAKER_02:

Something in the here and now.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. That's great. So that coming back to the theme of voice, which is what this podcast is all about, that you might perhaps be a voice that reaches your audience to ask questions about the here and now and about how we're living as a society, something around that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02:

Again, it's it's that um that responsibility and privilege of being a mayor to your own society. So I think I'm I'm curious to to lean into that to a uh another degree that we haven't quite reached yet, to lean into that privilege and responsibility of being societal something.

SPEAKER_00:

Did I even say political? Maybe not. Who knows?

SPEAKER_02:

Who knows? But I think that it would be quite interesting to just say um audience, we've been on a little journey together. Let's take one step further. Let's take one layer deeper. And I'm gonna hold up a mirror and it might be a little bit scary, but I want you to look and look yourself in the eye, and you can do this.

SPEAKER_00:

That's fantastic. Well, I'm very excited to see how things develop. Carolyn, thank you so much for coming and talking. It's uh it's been really, really lovely. Always pleasure. Always a pleasure. And I look forward to my next visit to one of your brilliant shows. Thank you. You've been listening to VoiceCast with Nikki Kennedy. For me, voice has always been more than just sound. It's presence, connection, music, transformation. I hope this episode has offered something to carry with you into your own conversations and your own story. So drop us a line, be in touch, and until we meet again, I hope that your voice finds the space it needs to be really heard.