Emerging professional artists come from all over the world, from a variety of educational experiences. Some have never had an acting class. Some have never had any form of somatic training, only direction on where to go and what to do on stage. The voice has been highly trained, but the mind-body link is missing.

Because stage movement, acting, and expression seem so rudimentary, most of the time there is an assumption that the singer has already had this training. There is an expectation because they are in a young artist or artist development program – or even accepted into a performance degree program – that they have already developed those skills.

Even at A & B level opera houses, Ann observed that professional singers often found themselves seemingly caught between satisfying the stage director or the conductor, each with simultaneous requests. As an assistant conductor and coach, she witnessed excellent singers struggling to accomplish this. In their minds, it seemed as though they were being asked to do disparate tasks, and they did not possess the skillset to merge both directions into a single character. The more they tried, the stiffer their bodies and voices became, and the more tension would build in the room.