For competitors children, pursuing a dance diploma is a pure extension of the years of dedication they’ve put into their craft. However the transition from the fast-paced buzz of the competitors and conference scene to the school classroom isn’t all the time seamless. As two former champions and a university dean share, as soon as on campus, aggressive dancers have to adapt their mindset, priorities, and method to coaching—shifts that may end up in surprising and illuminating alternatives for progress.
Again to Fundamentals
After capping off her competitors profession by profitable Senior Feminine Greatest Dancer at The Dance Awards Nationals in 2024, Sierra Drayton was excited to begin her freshman 12 months at Buy Faculty, State College of New York. However the brand new setting offered some unanticipated challenges. “I wish to be sincere: It was fairly tough for me at first,” she says. Apart from the everyday school adjustment of being away from house in a brand new place, Drayton additionally confronted new kinds of shifting. “In contrast to children coming from conservatory applications, I had by no means educated in trendy approach earlier than,” Drayton says. “It was overwhelming at instances, not understanding the right phrases for something, or learn how to provoke motion and rotation from the backbone.” Faculty ballet was additionally a switch-up. “The tempo is far slower, with an enormous deal with the fundamentals, which makes you analyze how all of the approach was put into your physique within the first place,” she says.
Isaiah Villegas, The Dance Awards’ 2023 Senior Male Greatest Dancer and an incoming sophomore at College of Southern California’s Glorya Kaufman Faculty of Dance in Los Angeles describes an analogous expertise. “At my studio, I zoned out a bit when it got here to approach lessons—rehearsing for comps was the main focus,” he explains. “Now I’ve ballet each morning at 9 am, and I’ve to lock in and actually concentrate with a purpose to get one thing out of it.” Whereas Villegas discovered himself bodily dancing much less in school than in his comp days, class grew to become extra gratifying. “It made me fall in love with dance once more, and I loved seeing my approach progress because the 12 months went on,” he says.
Course of Over Product
Kiesha Lalama, interim dean of the Faculty of Theatre, Movie, and Animation at Level Park College in Pittsburgh, observed that former comp children have been struggling throughout their first semester. To be taught why, and to grasp her incoming college students higher, she spent two years judging on the comp circuit. “I noticed that the most important problem for this group going into school is the shortage of immediate gratification,” Lalama explains. “They’re used to rehearsing Monday via Thursday, the adrenaline rush onstage over the weekend, and coming house with a trophy by Sunday.” In distinction, most dance majors wait months earlier than an end-of-semester or end-of-year efficiency.
“Comp children possess distinctive qualities—storytelling, fearlessness, the flexibility to adapt—which might be helpful belongings in school,” Lalama says. “As soon as they shift their focus from product to course of, and discover their very own self-motivation—that’s when all the things begins to click on.”
Altering Views
In school, the rivalries that characterised aggressive dance life are inclined to fade, which might help foster a way of neighborhood. Going into USC, Villegas was fortunately stunned to acknowledge so many classmates from the competitors circuit. “A few of that aggressive power lingers, as a result of it’s what we did for thus lengthy,” he says. “However we’re all on this new setting as a result of we wish to continue to grow, so we problem one another in a wholesome approach.”
That mentioned, the shift from all the time being onstage to spending nearly all of time in entrance of a mirror in school can invite a brand new stage of self-criticism within the studio. Comp stars, used to measuring their success primarily based on awards and judges’ suggestions, can generally take self-critiques to an excessive. “Competitors is all about chasing that subsequent win, however I remind my college students that perfection is not the purpose,” Lalama says. “It’s about what they be taught as artists alongside the way in which.”
Rewards Value Ready For
“Whenever you allow your self time to find, discover, and hone your craft in school, the teachings discovered may be simply as gratifying as profitable,” says Lalama. Drayton skilled this when she had the possibility to carry out one in all her prizewinning solos from The Dance Awards precisely one 12 months later handy off her title at this 12 months’s occasion. “After all of the exhausting work I put in freshman 12 months mastering my motion high quality, it felt like my soul was buzzing in a different way onstage, and I wasn’t dancing for anyone’s approval however my very own,” she explains. “Greater than any plaque or title, understanding my very own artistry and who I wish to be as knowledgeable dancer is the very best reward.”
