2D-INQUIRY

For me my daily practice on a ship doesn’t just include the role playing a dancer, it includes playing an approachable, sociable and outgoing crew member towards our guests. This is a big role of my job something I didn’t maybe expect to be so important and so this makes me very enthusiastic to find out more about my non performer role. You could almost say my second job aboard the Silver cloud.

As I am around the guests, a lot of the time it is especially important to me that they are happy and are having a fantastic time on holiday, this is because it makes my job easier and a lot more enjoyable to spend a lot of my free time around cheerful guests. Therefore it makes me sad when I see guests unhappy as it makes them unapproachable for me when I come to socialising and means I have to deal with passengers asking me questions about the service or problems and issues that they are not happy with.

Throughout the day we have to duties, our company manager organises them so we all get a fair share of duties. I get annoyed when certain cast mates of mine sometimes don’t perhaps turn up for duties as it makes us dancers look bad as a whole team and again can upset guests causing bad reports and ratings cards which guests fill out, marking there views on there holiday experience. Rating cards are marked on the service and general well being of staff, if the entertainer’s marks aren’t above a certain percentage then we are all taken to one side and told we are to do better. That is why if one person slacks then the whole team is knocked down.

I do admire our cruise director Judy, She was once a performer herself and appreciates how hard we have all trained for our job, a lot of the crew members aboard generally dislike entertainers and dancers as they think we just do the shows at night, slack and do a few duties in the day, this makes me angry as they have no idea about everything that happens behind the curtains.  A good example of this is the three years training in college I have recently graduated from, a factor of life that every working dancer has had to complete, and more importantly the most stressful 4 week rehearsal process I have ever undertaken in Miami Florida, here we leant 4 shows in 4 weeks before straight away flying to board the ship. Judy has a little reference to all this and when we lost our male and female singer she literally saved us and flew into our shows to perform a few song numbers in our missing gaps. She found a way to work around these problems and helped in the sadness to pick us all up when our cast mates left the ship.

Once learning and naturally feeling the steps it is a pleasure to perform the shows at night and call it my job. Going back to my second job of being more so around the guests I feel there is nothing better than meeting people and then knowing someone in the audience the following night. Just as you feel a connection in the audience if your parents were watching you gets the same sort of feeling with there being someone you know watching you. Our ball room couple are both an extremely sociable pair someone who I also admire. They seem to know a lot of guests from the ships as they keep coming back to silver seas on there holidays. They often bump into guests they have already met before and I feel that they also love performing to guests in the audience that they know or are close to as they will often go for drinks after the shows with them or will be invited to have dinner with them on non show nights.

When our male and female singer got fired the main question I had was why? Even when I found that the songs weren’t suited to there voices and there dancing wasn’t quite up to standard I still asked why. Why did they not see this in the beginning and choose to sack them nearly 3 months into a contract, after a show. Why did they send them home and then decide to revert back to the original choreography and teach us all new steps. Why has this contract been ridiculously stressful, is it me? Are all contracts like this I wasn’t sure. However by talking to my cast I Soon discovered the answer was no, this contract was a little special however they all taught me to see it in a different light. Usually I would panic and stress but they taught me to laugh, this contact will make me stronger, if I can handle this I can handle anything and the next contract….. Well it should be a piece of cake. I admire my cats for helping me and for acting professional and getting through the problems; they helped lead me through the storm and noticed that I was the youngest, less experienced and probably a little anxious. The whole upside down contract experience has prompted many questions. However to answer them I feel that experience is the key. Being fresh out of college I haven’t known how to deal with the problems but by following, copying and being guided by other professionals who are more experienced than me has given me more ideas on how to tackle the situation and in conclusion make me a better professional.