Performing Arts (Dance, Music, Theatre) Are More Challenging Than Visual Art or Film Production.

The 3 performing arts: dance, music & theatre, are more challenging than the other 2 arts: Visual arts and Film Production. Performing arts put you on the spot, whereas the other 2 art forms do not. Dancers, musicians & actors have live audiences a majority of the time, putting an extreme amount of pressure on them to do their performance perfectly. If they make a mistake, there's no going back to fix it and it is what it is. That also adds to the amount of skills needed to be a master of your art form when a performing artist compared to a visual artist or film producer; performing artists need to have the skill of improvisation. If a mistake is made, that skill needs to be there to back them up. Visual artists can go back and fix a mistake if it happens to be made, and film producers can do "takes", where if mistakes are made they easily have another chance to re-do it. The performing arts are more physically demanding & exhausting compared to the other 2 art forms. The performance anxiety & stress that comes along with performing is exhausting. Performing artists have more of a chance of having to deal with an injury while performing (eg. Musicians: Carpal Tunnel, Dancers: just about anything, Actors: Vocal Chords), adding even more stress to their performance. Performing artists seem to put more hours of demanding work in per week than the other 2 art forms do. I'm not stating that the 3 performing arts put more hours in per week as a general total, but the amount of hours that performing artists put in per week, a high percentage of that is hard, demanding work, whereas visual artist's and film producer's work week isn't as demanding. 1. Dancers Dancers have to pull off extreme physical strength & stamina, as well as emotional strength, as they are both athletes and artists. Schuyver ("Why Beginners Quit Dancing") states that "out of 1,000 folks who think they might enroll in a dance class, perhaps 50 will actually do it. Of these brave 50, only 30 or so will finish the beginner series. Of the 30 only 20 will return for intermediate classes. After 1 year, maybe 10 will still be dancing." Enrolling in dance brings along large amounts of anxiety, the fear of rejection, hard to prepare & manage it, failure to practice and not a continuous motivation to keep-at-it. Becoming a very skilled dancer cannot simply be done only based on talent; it takes a tremendous amount of work & dedication to be one of the best. 2.Musicians One of the coolest things about music is that reading music is like reading a completely different language. Picking up music theory is a very strenuous task, and the musician must be skilled in this to be able to perform to their very best ability. To be able to play the instrument profoundly, musicians must have a good sense of coordination, timing & be very aware of their surroundings. Hitting one wrong note, pressing a key at the incorrect time or if playing in a group the musician starts to play their part at the incorrect time...all of these factors can contribute to a bad performance. Those are only a few of the factors that musicians must endure while performing. Their performances are stressful; they must be able to read the sheet music they have in front of them while putting on a performance. And if sheet music is not available for that specific performance, then they must have it implanted in their brains and then perform it on top of that as well. 3. Actors/Actresses One of the things that really comes to me when I think about the difficulty of acting is having to completely come out of your "safety bubble" and give absolutely no cares as to what other people are thinking about you. Actors must be intelligent, versatile, have great memories, amazing imaginations, be able to think fast on their feet, adapt & learn quickly, and have lots of patience. Acting is as if the actor is switching out of their own personality and turning into someone else for the time period of the performance. As I spoke earlier about improvisation, actors must be able to improve based upon how their character would respond to the certain situation, not themselves. Actors must be so absorbed into their assigned character that they become them. The people who hire actors are also very specific as to what they're looking for. One person may think that you're extremely talented and definitely going places, where someone else may tell you that you're awful and never going to make it in the big leagues. Actors must keep the self-motivation levels very high at all times. Any art requires skill & talent, and to some it comes naturally and others not so much. But I do believe that the performing arts require more difficult tasks to be accomplished while on the job and while out of the job (eg. practicing, staying in the right mind set...).