068: Kit Holder on the art of performance

Supporting Champions

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

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