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Artists Dance Competitions Educators motivation

Ditch these terms

“We’re a recreational studio” or “they are a recreational dancer.” These phrases get used as a crutch to say, ‘we’re not very good’ or ‘they don’t train that much so they don’t have to be good. They’re just recreational.’ Some dancers train more hours per week. Some like to pop in once a week and pursue other endeavors like sports, extracurriculars, band or other passions. The qualifier ‘recreational’ has come to have a diminishing or condescending tone. Do we still need it?

“They’re a competition/competitive dancer.” Do these dancers spend hours every week at the studio to chase that dangling carrot of top adjudication? Is that the motivation? Do we need the qualifier ‘competition’ or ‘competitive’? There’s nothing impressive about it.

Dancers are dancers. Full stop. If you dance, you are a dancer. We get out what we put in, and measuring accomplishment externally, by awards or others’ assessments of us, is far less rewarding than the intrinsic satisfaction we from feeling a little stronger than yesterday.

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Artists creating motivation

Pick up the pieces

There’s something you used to be really good at. You practiced all the time and you made the time to practice.

Other stuff took you away from practicing your craft so much. School, work, family, life in general, or sometimes there’s a global crisis.

Maybe it’s been years and you’ve convinced yourself that you lost it, that you used to be good, it’s all in the past and that’s that.

Go find it again. It’s still there. You may need to dust it off, clean off the rust and start from the beginning. Pick it back up, one small piece at a time.