How not to do an American accent

Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
Everyone can do an American accent... at least everyone thinks they can. But how many would pass muster with a Hollywood studio? The BBC's Stephen Robb took a lesson from one of the movie industry's top accent coaches.
Any actor or actress hoping to convince in a foreign accent must have three words in the back of their mind at all times.
They won't be phrases like "shape of mouth", "position of tongue" or "placement of voice" - although all of these will be fundamental to learning and adopting an accent.
The three words haunting the performer, driving hour after hour of dialect practice, are "Dick", "Van" and "Dyke".
The American's "strike a light, guv'nor" Cockney caricature in Mary Poppins is widely regarded as delivering the worst film accent of all time. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it was not.
And that's up against competition from Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, an Irishman and a Russian at stages of his career.
British dialect coach Barbara Berkery admits that a lot of actors seeking her tutelage plead at the outset: "I don't want to sound like Dick Van Dyke."
Her glittering cast of former students include Gwyneth Paltrow, whom she trained for Emma and Shakespeare in Love, and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones's Diary and Miss Potter.
Half-hour challenge
Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and Zellweger was nominated as Bridget Jones, but probably the greater tributes to their English accents were the nominations from an obviously impressed British Academy - they sounded the part.
Berkery has also coached Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), Jim Carrey (A Christmas Carol, due out next year) and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean), and is currently working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his English accent for Prince of Persia.
The American's "strike a light, guv'nor" Cockney caricature in Mary Poppins is widely regarded as delivering the worst film accent of all time. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, it was not.
And that's up against competition from Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, an Irishman and a Russian at stages of his career.
British dialect coach Barbara Berkery admits that a lot of actors seeking her tutelage plead at the outset: "I don't want to sound like Dick Van Dyke."
Her glittering cast of former students include Gwyneth Paltrow, whom she trained for Emma and Shakespeare in Love, and Renee Zellweger for Bridget Jones's Diary and Miss Potter.
Half-hour challenge
Paltrow won an Oscar for Shakespeare in Love and Zellweger was nominated as Bridget Jones, but probably the greater tributes to their English accents were the nominations from an obviously impressed British Academy - they sounded the part.
Berkery has also coached Brad Pitt (Seven Years in Tibet), Jim Carrey (A Christmas Carol, due out next year) and Geoffrey Rush (Pirates of the Caribbean), and is currently working with Jake Gyllenhaal on his English accent for Prince of Persia.
In other words, or for words in another accent anyway, London-based Berkery has become the English dialect coach Hollywood turns to. "It's a nice position to be in," she says.
Usually conducting her training for several weeks in the run-up to a production, and then throughout the shoot, Berkery has consistently achieved convincing results with hugely-dedicated and highly-talented actors; what she can do with me in half an hour is a different challenge altogether.
Exposure to US films and television means most people probably believe they can affect a passable American accent - myself included.
But Berkery explains that "mimicry is not the same as doing accents - if somebody is just mimicking, I think we do feel it isn't quite truthful."
Her work involves building the accent authentically by teaching the real mouth shapes and tongue positions involved - for a general American accent, she tells me, that means a wide mouth and the tongue higher up in the mouth.
She also tells me to smile, in order to place the voice towards my nasal resonator - one of the three voice resonators along with the facial and throat resonators. Berkery describes learning to do an accent as having "a mask on the face that fits perfectly".
With my lifted tongue, wide mouth, attempted smile, and the concentration involved in maintaining these as we start voice exercises, my mask resembles something like Jack Nicholson's The Joker with a lobotomised, vacant look in the eyes. I feel certain that a cinema audience would find it distracting.
Berkery takes me through some of the major vowel changes from standard English to general American - their short "ah" in bath and sample, the "aw" in cloth and Boston - and the sound that comes out of my mouth is unrecognisable to me.
It is a long way from my own south-east England accent, but not much nearer my trusted American impression. It does sound vaguely American, but like an over-the-top, slightly camp game show host with an occasional lisp - not what I had been aiming for at all.
And I find the process very unnerving. "The voice is the soul and you are moving it," says Berkery.
"People do find it very frightening - it's like being off-balance."
As we continue, moving from vowel exercises to working on consonant changes, Berkery frequently offers comments like "Make it less" and "Don't do as much".
Not only is my performance dreadful, there is clearly much too much of it; my overacting makes Dick Van Dyke's infamous turn look like a masterclass of subtlety and technique.
"You mustn't play an accent," Berkery says. "You must play a character who has an accent, but you must never play an accent."
Berkery and her students start with nothing and build an accent from its essential parts.My brief lesson hints at the phenomenal amount of work involved in reaching a point where that accent convinces on a giant screen, in surround sound and over a two-hour running time.
While Berkery suggests most actors "can have a good stab at the accent if you have enough time", she stresses that those that "get it really perfect" do so through exceptional dedication.
She had two months working with Zellweger before filming started on Bridget Jones's Diary, comprising lessons in the morning followed by afternoons out together in London when the actress was forced to keep up her accent.
Zellweger later worked undercover in a publishing house using her English accent, and also maintained it on set for the entirety of the film's shoot.
"Some people never, ever heard her own accent until we finished the film," says Berkery.
"It was a testament to her talent and hard work. It was a complete transformation; she is a girl with a very strong Texan accent and she did completely transform herself."
An authentic accent will be "second-nature" to an actor, Berkery says, likening it to fluency in a foreign language where a person doesn't have to think about the process of speaking.
"You don't want the audience to notice," she adds. "You don't really want people to think, 'That's a good accent,' because if you think that you are not thinking about the character."
On those terms, maybe my accent wasn't such a flop after all - nobody's ever going to be distracted thinking how good it was.

Adult Dance Schools - Getting A Raw Deal? by Kevin Shwe

Wherever you go, whichever town you live in you'll be able to find a dancing school for children. Not to mention the new ones popping up all the time.
But what about dancing schools for adults? There are nowhere near as many and all the ones available seem to cater exclusively for professional dancers, or are 2 - 3 year college courses.
So where does an adult beginner wanting to learn to dance start? Well naturally it quite depends on your goals. If you just want to learn a couple of dance moves or do it as a hobby your aims are very much different from a late adult beginner wanting to do it professionally as a living.
The college route of doing 2 - 3 years is something that should be looked at by someone looking to do it professionally. But even they have to begin somewhere often learning part-time to begin with in order to audition successfully for a dance college.
So if you're a beginning adult looking to learn for fun or with professional aspirations, to begin with you should look for either a part-time dancing school for adults or a dance studio. There aren't many dance schools that operate part-time for adults so you may have to look into dance studios.
You should try to find your nearest dance studio that offers top level instruction and a range of classes that are near to you. The better the quality of instructors, the better prepared you will be for what's ahead. Even if you're doing it for fun it makes sense to have a good dance teacher, you'll learn how to dance properly then!
If you want to dance for a living you should try and do a variety of skills from commercial and hip-hop to the core college subjects such as ballet, jazz and tap as well. If you're doing it for fun you can do whichever dance classes take your fancy!
The problem for adult beginners is because naturally there are fewer dance schools for adults, they have to go to drop-in classes at studios where the training isn't so gradual. So it is very hard to begin with when they're finding their feet which can become discouraging.
So to summarise find a good dancing school or a dance studio with good dance teachers and dance classes that will continue to inspire you even when the going gets tough!