Musical Theatre Master Classes

Prior to this year, I had never had the opportunity to attend a musical theatre master class. On the other hand, I am extremely accustomed to dancer master classes and I found it interesting to compare and contrast the way classes are held. Each Friday the dancer department takes a master class with a different professional dancer. Besides the specific dance genre, the classes possess numerous similarities to each other. This was not the case for the two musical theatre master classes I attended this year. I found it intriguing that each teacher chose a different structure the their class. Upon attending John Bucchino’s master class, I was introduced to an immense amount of new facts. I found it interesting that each performer was to perform one of his pieces. It was nice to see everyone’s different perspective of the pieces and it was even nicer to hear his feedback on how his own pieces were performed. Throughout both master classes I attended this year, I am always very impressed by the students ability to adapt and adjust to what the teachers are suggesting. I felt that this was extremely evident during Bucchino’s class. It was nice to see the students appreciate and
Bucchino spoke with Julianne a lot about the importance of body posture. Not only did he mention how much conviction body posture possesses over the mood of the song, he also mentioned how your body posture can either support or constrict your vocals. I have a tendency of bringing my head out of alignment when I sing by ‘lifting’ too much. Julianne seemed to have to opposite problem; Bucchino corrected her multiple times for slouching or finding too much relaxation within the body. He also corrected her hands, which I found extremely interesting since I viewed them as having miniscule importance. I never noticed that body posture includes your entire body, even the