068: Kit Holder on the art of performance

This week’s guest is Kit Holder, first soloist at the Birmingham Royal Ballet. Kit has spent his whole career dancing, he came from a family of dancers, he went to the Royal Ballet School and has performed at the highest level on stage and now is a choreographer for the Birmingham company. There’s a number of interesting angles that I took from this interview, one that he is working to the direction of a new boss the world renowned Carlos Acosta – finding out how the style, manner and expectation change with the new direction. Kit also shares an interesting hurdle he had to overcome where a particular routine and section caused a real performance blocker for him and how he overcame this limiting inhibition. Fascinating still how this experience has propelled him to study more about the psychology of performance. Kit also shares his insights into choreography, nurturing others, directing, inspiring and co-creating works with other dancers.   We’ve always been super keen to learn from diverse fields. Sport is not the reference point for all things performance – that’s something I’ve learnt since we set Supporting Champions up and begun applying performance thinking to business, education and the performing arts. To that end we've featured, west end stars, military commanders, television presenters in our interviews and there is always something ratifying about the convergence of ideas from parallel fields. This episode does the same.   Show notes Prior to lockdown Kit was performing with the Birmingham Royal Ballet in Swan Lake How COVID-19 affected the rehearsals, performances, classes and training. Kit observes his motivation during the first few weeks of lockdown Balancing road cycling and ballet The specifics of training for ballerinas and maintaining performance The film, ‘Alone Together’ Challenging audiences with performance   Dancing for a digital audience Kit’s experience of dancing as a child and following in his brothers’ footsteps From the Royal Ballet School to the Royal Ballet Company Kit set his sights on specifically wanting to work at The Royal Ballet School The inherent desire to dance Ballet dancers aesthetic  Physical performance and psychological skills Choreography Choreography of a jazz improvisation and the realisation of the bigger components that allow a ballet company to function Kit’s learnings about choreography The ability to admit you were wrong What’s next for kit?   Links https://twitter.com/KitHolder   Supporting Champions on Twitter www.twitter.com/support_champs Steve Ingham on Twitter www.twitter.com/ingham_steve Supporting Champions on Linkedin, www.linkedin.com/company/supporting-champions Instagram https://www.instagram.com/supportingchampions/ A reminder if you’re keen to pre-register for the next wave of Graduate Membership enrolments then you can do so at https://supportingchampions.co.uk/membership/ If you’re looking for some coaching support or some virtual team development help to support you to get to the next level in work, life or sport then take a look at https://supportingchampions.co.uk/coaching-mentoring/ or drop us a note at [email protected] then you can sign up for a free consultation to explore which package is right for you.