Pursuing Platinum: Teaching Dancers a Winning Competition Mindset
By Michelle Loucadoux
You survey the dressing room while hundreds of dancers from all over the state (and from outside!) prepare for their group routines. Then, your gaze shifts to your dancers. They look…terrified.?
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One dancer is obsessively marking her choreography, another dancer is bouncing from one foot to another while chewing a granola bar, and your lead dancer is doing…nothing. She is staring into space like a deer in headlights. Oh boy, you think, this is going to be a learning experience.?
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The dance competition industry generated over $500 million in revenue in 2012, according to the research firm IBISWorld. And we can all assume that it has grown significantly since then. In short, competitions (and conventions) are a thing. And, if you’re a dance educator who is taking your dancers to one of these increasingly popular events, it’s important to know how they impact your dancers’ mental wellness.
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The Challenge with Competition
Competition is a healthy part of life. Humans naturally compare themselves to others to see how they stack up. This can provide fuel or information for greater improvement in the future.?
According to psychologist Leon Festinger and his 1954 social comparison theory, we compare ourselves to others to determine both identity and worth. And in doing this, we are able to evaluate, among other things, our abilities. Comparison (and thus, competition) acts as a benchmark so that we can better understand our place in the world and our place among other humans.?
The problem comes when the mindset surrounding comparison and competition turns negative — when a dancer’s internal dialogue turns from, “I am not as skilled as that dancer, so let me learn from her,” to “She’s better than me and I am terrible so I might as well not try.” Unfortunately, rather than using competition as a learning tool, dancers sometimes use it as a way to perpetuate their already negative self-image.
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First, dance is completely subjective. The winner of a marathon is determined solely on the person with the fastest completion time. What if marathons were scored on both time and style? What about costume and creativity? Marathons would look very different if this were the case. The more factors we add to an equation, the more difficult it is to determine a fair outcome. This is one of the challenges with dance competitions.?
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A dancer might win a high score award at a competition because they delivered the most powerful emotional performance. Or they could be given a high score because of their technical ability. Or they may have exceptional choreography. Or a myriad of other factors.?
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The fact is, dance is extremely difficult to judge — both in a dance competition and in the classroom. This can sometimes make competition disempowering for the dancer. Because there is rarely a clear rubric for a consistent outcome.
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Second, without the right mindset, competition can breed a lack of control over the situation. If a dancer is competing with another dancer for, say, a high score in a category, they usually can’t control the outcome of the decision. This can be disempowering to dancers.
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Dancers can say, “It doesn’t matter how hard I work. The judges liked that dancer more than me in class, so I won’t win anyway.” The hard truth is that no dancer can force a judge to give them a high score in a highly subjective competition. And if that high score goal is their sole source of self-worth and accomplishment, that can be a recipe for disaster.?
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Cultivating a healthy dancer mindset before competition
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So, how do we encourage our dancers to try their best, but not tie their self-worth to the outcome of a competition? First of all, it’s difficult. And as a dance educator, you should know that you won’t always be successful. But there are a few things you can do to set up a healthy environment for learning and (hopefully a little bit of) fun.
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You can attempt to shift dancers’ mindset before leaving for competition. Obviously, pursuing platinum is an extrinsically motivated goal. The dancer (or you!) can’t control what score dance competition judges give them. But, if you replace the goal of “winning” with a goal that can be accomplished, win or not, that puts the power back in the dancer’s hands.?
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Before leaving for competition, you can encourage dancers to set their own standards of achievement. They can set the bar for a particularly emotionally engaged performance, they can aim to focus more on their placement, or they could even just set a goal to have fun. All of these things can be accomplished with focus and dedication, independent of a judge’s scores. In this situation, instead of competing against others, dancers can focus on competing against themselves.
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David Villa says in Forbes Magazine that, “In my eyes, the definition of a winner is someone who gives 100% of their effort in preparation for and during competition 100% of the time, regardless of the circumstances faced before them. Winning involves more than beating an opponent or the final score on the board. A person can be a winner as long as they give everything they’ve got.”
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So, when dancers create and achieve their own goals, it doesn’t matter how much a judge likes you or whether they win a platinum. When they compete against themselves, hard work is the only determinant of their success.
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Creating a healthy mindset during competition
Dance competitions and conventions are great for inspiring dancers and jolting them out of a routine and into a burst of improvement and motivation. They can also be scary. When dancers travel to a competition, they enter into a new space in (potentially) a new city with new teachers and new classmates. They are challenged with new dance styles on a new schedule with higher stakes and increased expectations.?
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All of this newness can be perceived by dancers as a threat. And this perceived threat can cause dancers’ amygdalae to fire. The amygdala is the part of the brain involved with how we experience emotions related to fear and it is famously credited with the fight, flight, or freeze reaction to a stressful situation.?
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When the amygdala fires, the brain and the body kick in with multiple physiological reactions, such as rapid heartbeat and breathing, and trembling or shaking. These symptoms both increase oxygen to the body and prime the muscles for action — which was great in the caveman days when we needed to run from a bear. They’re not so great when we want to balance on one foot during an eight-count développé.?
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But this reaction to fear, or a perceived threat, can also take away from dancers’ ability to process more subtle relational cues. And it makes it more difficult for them to learn. They don’t often see or hear clearly because their bodies are trying to run from the bear rather than soak up inspiration from a convention class centered around waacking.?
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A good way to get doe-eyed dancers to refocus on learning (rather than running from that bear) is to encourage them to focus on the present. The 5–4–3–2–1 Exercise is a widely-accepted coping technique for anxiety and it’s an easy one to incorporate when you’re in a competition situation. Here’s how you can try it:
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First, try to calm your breathing. Find a comfortable place to sit and relax as much as possible. Then, one by one, focus on the following things:
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The University of Rochester Medical Center’s website says, “This five-step exercise can be very helpful during periods of anxiety or panic by helping to ground you in the present when your mind is bouncing around between various anxious thoughts.”
Bringing dancers’ attention to the sensory aspects of their surroundings can take away that fear that can get in the way of performing, learning, and (most importantly) having fun.?
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Final thoughts
Dance competitions can be an important part of a dancer’s growth and education. Dancers can learn new styles, make new friends, see where they stack up with other dancers their age, and gain encouragement and motivation from their peers from around the world. The flip side of that is that is that if dancers aren’t prepared with an appropriate mindset, competitions can be stressful, frustrating, and defeating.
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If you’re a dance educator considering visiting a competition or convention this year, try setting your dancers up for success ahead of time. Encourage them to set their own bars for success and supply them with the tools they need to relax themselves in a stressful situation and observe their surroundings. Pressure makes diamonds. And diamonds are always more valuable than platinum.?
If you would like to join Danscend’s Council for Dance Educators to receive free mental wellness worksheets to use in the classroom, educational conversations with mental health professionals on topics that relate to dancers’ mental health, and sources and resources for more learning, click here to join and enter the code FREETRIAL at checkout for your first month free.