Taking the Lead

Being confident in your own abilities is a challenge for some of us. It becomes even harder when you are doing something that is new to you or outside of your previously imagined skill set. Getting positive feedback can help but not if it is the only thing you rely on because there are so many ways for the mind to twist positive comments if they don’t align with your negative self image. Accept the word of one who knows.

To move this in a more concrete direction, I’ll consider the feedback I got from Showcase and the comments from the pro we worked with last night. You know that the studio is not going to crush your dreams and the coach isn’t going to be overly critical because they want you to keep taking coaching lessons. So you can always have this little part of your mind saying things like “they are only saying good stuff because they have to”. And then you hyper focus on the things they noticed that need improvement and let that knock your self confidence down a few rungs. Again, accept the work of one who knows.

Over time, it has dawned on me that there is no such thing as a perfect dancer. There will always be things that can be improved. It doesn’t take away from your strengths to point out the things that aren’t as strong. It doesn’t make you suck as a dancer if a judge/pro/coach says you need to work on X. And you can acknowledge those areas without suffocating in them. Accept the praise for what you do well and it is OK to even have a little bit of pride because it took a lot of work to get to where you are.

Anyway, I bring all this up because we worked with one of the pros last night. It is nice to get a male perspective because the lead and the follow do have different parts to play and even though instructors are taught both, one who spends more time leading is going to have a deeper understanding of it. So when someone at that level compliments you on your skill, it means a lot.

We worked on the Argentine Tango and my mind was blown. The funny thing is that a lot of times, it is just small and subtle changes but they make a big difference. There was a light bulb moment for me when we were doing an exercise and suddenly I could feel what foot she was on and how she was responding to my weight shifts. Got some great tips and things to use and I’m really excited to see where we can take this dance.

Looked at our routine critiques as well. I think since these two were Eastern European, they were a little tougher on the technique grades than most judges. But they really hit it just right for me. Lower marks for technical things and higher marks for performance value. It isn’t that I don’t care about technique but you work with what you’ve got and there are limits to certain things so I just do what I can. I think the performance stuff is what gets the attention of most of the audience anyway and I did get a lot of positive feedback that day.

Oh, and for one of our Peabody heats, the comment was that I was dancing the dance exactly the way it should be danced. That came from the same pro we were working with last night. Stuff like that just makes you feel good.

One more coaching lesson tonight and we are going to work on Fox Trot and I’m curious to see how it goes.