Short Courses & Events / Archive

How to Hack Your Next Audition: The Limbic Response

Tuesday 17th June 2025, 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM (London Time)

We all know the feeling: staring down an audition panel, we lock up, our knees and hands shake, our breath stops, and we’re in emotional free fall.

This is your limbic system going into hyperdrive. In the audition setting, when the limbic system or paleomammalian cortex kicks into action in the face of a perceived conflict, we experience the body’s answer to stressors from people and social interactions.

Meant to optimize our chance of survival, this primeval reaction activates our freeze, flight and fight response and might make us feel like we should do anything but sing opera.

While it is a natural and understandable response meant to ensure our success, at the heart of the problem is a paradox that there is no physical danger, but rather a threat of judgment or failure that all performers can relate to.

This course will walk you through steps to work with your limbic response and choose the most appropriate course of action to nail your next audition while honouring your internal mental and emotional landscape.

As performers, it is crucial that we understand the basic functioning of our vocal instruments and limbic brain, how their interaction impacts our daily experience and what messages we send to the outside world. This is essential for our understanding of ourselves as performers and auditionees, and helpful for audition panellists as well – ultimately, finding a balance between our vocalism and limbic messaging will provide us with advantages in auditions, lessons, performances, and our daily social lives.

🏷️ Price £30 (UK VAT inclusive)
🎥 Recording automatically sent to all who book (even if you cannot attend live)
▶️ Rewatch as many times as you like
📜 Certificate of attendance available

Dr Katherine Skovira

Katherine Skovira, D.M.A. (she/her) is a nationally recognized contemporary music performer and researcher. Of her work, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote, “The diabolical enthusiasm of Katherine Skovira… left me nearly begging for mercy...the artistic equivalent of NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft.”

 

CPD Course Logo

Attend this course for as little as £22 as part of the Voice Professional Training CPD Award Scheme.

Learn More

Sorry, this is an archived short course...

We have plenty of upcoming short courses coming soon. See details of some of them below or look at the full list of short courses.

Music Theory Fundamentals for Voice Pedagogues
Tuesday 5th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 12th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 19th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 26th May 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 2nd June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Tuesday 9th June 2026
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)

Music Theory Fundamentals for Voice Pedagogues

Dr David Cane

Voice pedagogy has advanced significantly in the last decades in relation to knowledge of the vocal apparatus (anatomy and mechanics), acoustics, and performance psychology (to name just a few subfields) – this is a wonderful thing! Nonetheless, musicianship and the foundations of music theory are still relevant to the teaching and coaching of singers and this course aims to empower voice teachers and coaches with skills to support the fundamental musicianship development of their students.

In Conversation With… Amanda Flynn
Wednesday 10th June 2026
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
(London Time)

In Conversation With… Amanda Flynn

Dr Amanda Flynn

Join us for the first event in our new public interview series exploring vocal health and sustainability in musical theatre performance. Free and open to all!

Learning together: group singing and choral pedagogy
Friday 12th June 2026
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
(London Time)

Learning together: group singing and choral pedagogy

Dr David Cane

The benefits of group singing are well documented and well known. Singing together can foster a sense of social connection and community as well enhancing wellbeing and mood.  However, group singing is not only a shared cultural and artistic experience, but can also be a powerful site of learning. While many of the developments in voice pedagogy have tended to centre around the one-to-one model of teaching, this course with Dr David Cane explores the pedagogical (and potentially the political) potential of teaching and learning to sing collectively.