The Psychology of Stage Positions (2024)

“Use your stage space!”

Most of us hear that over and over again in our dance education.

And most of us interpret that as “don’t forget to travel”.

Traveling is important, but it’s not the only way to use your stage.

Dancing in place can be very powerful – if you work with the unique qualities of each position.

Where you stand matters.

Using a variety of stage positions creates variety in your dance. That’s obvious, right?

But stage positions are about more than just visual variety.

Each position has a different psychological effect on your audience.

Your position on the stage does two important things:

1. It directs the audience’s focus.
2. It creates a particular feeling or energy dynamic.

We can use those two facts to manipulate the audience’s response.
(Don’t be afraid of the M-word. As entertainers, our job is to manipulate the audience for their own enjoyment!)

So why does your position affect how they feel?

To answer that, we need to realize that your position has two components:

1) How close you are to the audience

When you’re close to the audience, you fill up their field of vision.
This draws their focus on your face or parts of your body. Being close also makes personal connection easier. This can create a friendly feeling, or make them feel on the spot.

Work downstage when you want to draw attention to a small movement, or when you want to schmooze or reconnect with the audience.

When you’re far from the audience, you only take up part of their field of vision.
So they’re more likely to focus on the “big picture” of your entire silhouette. It’s harder to establish a personal connection when you’re far away, so you create a more detached feeling.

Work upstage when you want to emphasize your body line, or have the audience pay more attention to what you’re doing than to your relationship to them.

2) Whether you’re centered, or off to the side

When you’re on the center line of the stage, you create a feeling of balance.
You are equally visible to both sides of the audience, so nobody feels singled out or ignored. And the stage space is balanced around you, so there’s no tension to resolve.

Work on the center line when you want to give a strong, confident, or neutral impression.

When you’re off-center, you create imbalance.
When you’re off-center, you’re privileging one half of the audience, and ignoring the other.
This is a good thing: it creates some dramatic tension that you can resolve by visiting the other side later. (This is very satisfying for the audience.)

Work off-center when you want to play with that dramatic tension.

So how does that apply to different stage positions?

(Note: if you’re not familiar with stage terminology, you may want to refer to this stage positions diagram before you read on.)

Center stage

Sometimes called “dead center”, this is what Boston dancer Phaedra calls “the power spot”. It is the strongest, and most versatile position on the stage.

This position creates a feeling of confidence and balance. It is neither close to nor far from the audience, so they can focus on the big picture or the details, depending on how you direct their attention.

Unless you have a reason not to, use this position more than the others, and do your final pose here.

(A tip I learned from Phaedra: sometimes the power spot may shift upstage a little bit. If you have audience on three sides, you’ll need to move back a little, so more of them can see you.)

Downstage center

This is a strong position, but it puts the audience on the spot. You’re up close and personal. Depending on your demeanor, it can be friendly, or it can be aggressive, like you’re advancing on the audience. If you spend most of your time in this position, though, you can seem needy.
(“Pay attention to meeeeeeeee…..!”)

This is an excellent place to schmooze with the audience, or to show off smaller, more subtle moves like belly flutters.

Upstage center

This is a versatile position, but it’s not as strong as dead center. It can give the impression that you’ve retreated from the audience out of fear, or that you’ve broken off your personal contact out of indifference, or to enforce your boundaries. (These are not bad things. They are effects you can play with.)

Since this position draws the eye to the shape, not the person, it’s an excellent place to show off beautiful poses and veilwork. It can also give the audience an emotional break after up-close-and-personal moments.

The sides (stage left or stage right)

Stage left and stage right are fairly confident, emotionally-neutral places. You’re not close to the audience, but you’re not far away.

But these positions are visually imbalanced. When you work on one side, you create dramatic tension that can only be resolved by visiting the other side. This can create a nice texture.

Use this position to create imbalance so you can resolve it later. Or use it to create some simple variety when you’ve been dead center for too long.

Front Corners (downstage left or downstage right)

I think of the front corner as visiting one half of the audience. This is the closest you can get to that half of the audience, so it creates a stronger personal connection than stage right or stage left. Depending on your demeanor, this can be friendly and welcoming, or it can be aggressive, like you’re advancing on the audience.

This position is also unbalanced – while you’re paying strong attention to one half of the audience, you’re virtually turning your back on the other half. This creates a dramatic tension that is yummy for a while, but only if you resolve it by visiting the other half eventually.

Use this position to play with dramatic tension, or to schmooze.

Back corners (upstage left or upstage right)

These are the weakest positions on the stage, but they’re very interesting. You’ve pulled away from the audience and off to the side, almost as if you’re huddling in a corner. Depending on your demeanor, this can create a “damsel in distress” effect, or make the audience feel like voyeurs, getting a glimpse of you when you’re vulnerable.

Use this position when that vulnerability fits with your intention, the mood, or the song lyrics. It is especially powerful when you alternate it with stonger positions to play with the audience’s expectations. They thought you were vulnerable until – BAM! – you advanced into a stronger spot, and claimed your power.

This would be awesome with a song like Harramt Ahebbak*, which is a song about hurt and betrayal, but sung from a place of empowerment and pride. (I’ve heard it called the Arabic “I Will Survive.”)

So how do you use that to make creative choices?

The neat thing about the relationship between position and psychological effect is that it goes both ways. You can choose your position based on the effect that you want to create, or you can let your current position influence what you want to communicate.

Let’s look at those individually:

1) Start with the intended effect, and then move to the position.

If you know what you want to communicate, you can choose a stage position that highlights that.

If you feel like schmoozing, use one of the downstage positions. If the music is calling you to express vulnerability, retreat to a back corner.

2) Or pick a position, and adapt your dancing and demeanor to it’s effect.

If you’ve just landed upstage center, switch to grander movements that show off interesting lines.

This is an especially handy technique for improv. If you don’t know what to do next, you can look to your stage position for guidance. Just landed downstage? Maybe you should schmooze, or show off some subtler moves.

Next Step

A fun way to get the hang of these ideas is to exaggerate them.

Put on some music, and dance around casually. (It doesn’t have to be good; you just have to move.)

Visit each of the stage positions, and communicate its effect in the most exaggerated way you can. (You can reinforce this by speaking aloud, too.)

For example, in center stage, you might throw your arms up in a big “ta-da!” gesture and shout “I’m so great!”

Or in the back corner, you might huddle down into a ball, and say “somebody please protect me.”

Or you might go to a front corner, open your arms in a welcoming gesture and say “hey, how are ya?”

This will feel very silly. That’s a good thing.

The silliness will help ingrain these ideas, so you can use them naturally.

Your Turn

Do you tend to use certain stage positions more than others?

Special Thanks

Special thanks to my clients in The Improvisation Safety Net. I originally wrote this for them, and their excellent questions helped me refine it.

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