Stage Make-Up Tricks

Dance recitals are always an exciting way to end the dance season. All of the hard work put in throughout the entire year accumulates in a final recital that showcases all of the improvement that you as a dancer have worked so hard throughout the year to achieve. Friends, family, and your teachers all enjoy watching your smiling performance. However, there is a certain part of all dance recitals that all dancers deal with, and yet few have actually practiced to perfect. This part, the dancer's stage make-up, is actually a very important factor for a fully successful performance. Here are some tips that I learned throughout my years of dancing on how to be confident in your stage makeup skills so that you have a truly glowing performance.

First of all, for your eyes, it is usually thought that dramatic is the best way to go. Usually this is true. However, some dancers certainly do overdo this look by putting on far too much eyeliner and end up looking like dancing raccoons as a result. To avoid this, avoid drawing on your bottom eyeliner lines too far beneath your actual eyes. While it should extend straight out from your bottom eyelid (closing it like you would for a normal make-up day will make your eyes look too small from the audience), it should still be drawn on relatively near your bottom eyelid. Since stage make-up eyes always tend to look odd to the dancer who actually has them, have a friend see you on stage from the audience during a dress rehearsal to let you know how your eyes actually appear to the audience, and then adjust your eyeliner accordingly.

If you are a ballet dancer, then there's a pretty good chance that your hair will need to be pulled back into a bun for your performance. For those dancers with darker hair, this is no problem. However, for those dancers who have lighter blond hair and pale skin, the bright lights of the stage combined with the slicked back hair can make them look bald. To avoid this problem, brush a slightly darker foundation around your forehead so that there is a difference between your facial skin and hair. Blush (in small amounts) can also be used for this same purpose.

Finally, the little finishing touches to your stage make-up are really the things that will carry you through the entire performance. Before performances where we were supposed to smile the entire time, my own dance teachers would encourage us to rub a little bit of Vaseline/petroleum jelly over our teeth so that we would be reminded to smile and that our lips wouldn't be uncomfortably stuck at the end of the performance. Another tip to help your stage make-up last throughout the entire show is to lightly hair spray your face, remembering to keep your eyes tightly shut while doing this. While uncomfortably sticky and probably terrible for your skin, the hairspray does help to keep your "look" in place.