Do This For A Better Dance Competition Experience
There’s a sparkly little light popping up at the end of tunnels. Performance venues are starting to open back up, recitals are underway, and competitions are back. True, nothing is back to ‘normal’ yet, and all signs point to there being more ups and downs as we navigate a changed world, but that bright little light at the end of the tunnel is there - giving many of us dance teachers, dancers, and choreographers hope.
I’ve been watching my Dance Teacher Facebook groups, and there’s a lot of posts these days about competitions. To be completely clear:
This isn’t a post about the pros / cons of competitions, or the structure / changes dance competitions have made to accommodate COVID.
My own experience with dance competitions is limited.
But I am seeing enough posts and hearing enough conversations about dance competitions to warrant popping in with the one strategy that not only transformed my performances on stage, but wildly helped my own students as well.
See your competition as indicators of where you’re going, or want to go, rather than indicators that you’re failing, or will never measure up.
This simple perspective shift is EVERYTHING.
Competitions, auditions and casting can send us into lack mindset real quick. Thoughts like ‘I’ll never get to where she is’ , ‘I’ll never be as good as him’, and ‘No matter how hard I work I never get where I want to be’, attack our hearts and heads.
Teachers have to manage not only the fallout of this, but also have their own variations of lack mindset thoughts. For teachers, these thoughts might look like ‘I’ll never choreograph anything on her level’, ‘Why can’t I ever create work as good as that’, or ‘I’m always letting my students down - I suck’.
No matter your role in dance, we can all benefit from a little mindset work when it comes to competition, and competition season.
The next time you feel yourself going down a comparison spiral, or you see or hear your dancers doing the same, offer up the thought that the competition is a sign of all that’s possible, all that we’re capable of and aspire to. Let it be a signpost for where you want to go, and the direction you want to be headed in, rather than a sign that you’ll never be enough.
Will you give this a try, for yourself or your students? Let me know in the comments! I hope this approach can help your students shift from lack to possibility, for this competition season, and beyond!