Podiums & Stages
Pilates & Body Work for Actors, Presenters & Performers
Would you like to be able to polish your presentation? Be confident that you were understood in intention and content?
If you have ever needed to speak in front of a crowd as a presenter, teacher or actor, you know that you need to practice your presentation and have a very clear idea on how to express your ideas, thoughts or stories. As an actor, you may have directors and rehearsals to fill this job for you. Most of us are not so lucky and the challenge of an effective performance, whether it is your Ted talk or the children’s book club or your next audition, is to know how to use voice, gestures, pauses and inflections to bring your story to your audience.
A presentation is more than words. Practicing vocal qualities, timing, gestures and physical presence are not only important for emphasis and understanding, but will also give you the confidence to know you are an effective communicator and thus make you more clear.
A class for the presenter includes a full body warm up, vocal warm up, pitch and nuance practice and your text will be used to analyze for gesture, timing and emphatic vocal pattern change. Feeling prepared and relaxed will decrease potential stage fright. Breathing will be natural and integrated into your language. Your body postures and gestures will invite the audience to engage immediately and participate fully.
Most presenters will need to schedule one-on-one sessions with me. Tess offers Physical Actor classes online for group practice.
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I was in awe of Tess’s ability to command a room and work together with different fitness levels at the same time. In other words, she can make each class as if you were the only one she was focusing on, no matter how many people are in the class. Her voice is so compelling that even without music, you could follow her detailed direction and her beautiful tonal quality had its own rhythm to keep you going. Tess always brought new fresh ideas to class. She would listen intently to each participant and would always come the next week armed with something new and challenging. She was able to push me to do more and each class which built upon the next. For example, the stretches and poses I could barely do the first year, come naturally to me now. I always told her my favorite-shirt should say “Body by Tess!”