Cheating: Why We Do It & Costs

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We have all had days when we felt ourselves cutting corners and “cheating” here and there…it happens, right? You fudge your turnout a bit by rolling your arches a little; you manage to get up to speed in allegro by not pointing your feet all the way.

Sometimes this seems to work just fine, and we let ourselves “get away” with it. But let’s just stop and think about what’s really going on when we cheat or practice mindlessly.

The Cost of Cheating: Poor Muscle Memory

First off, in dance, much of our training comes down to muscle memory. The repetitive nature of daily class and practice is to train the body in the technique so that it knows what to do when we perform.

After a certain level of training, no one goes onstage thinking about every technical feat they are about to do- they just take a deep breath and do it. They trust their bodies to perform as they have been taught.

When we practice mindlessly, we undercut our ability to create proper muscle memory. And once we learn something incorrectly, it can take a really long time to unlearn it and reprogram the body properly. So practicing mindlessly isn’t just a bad idea, it’s a Terrible Idea, which interferes with your progress in a real way.

Mindfulness and Muscle Memory

We can avoid this trap by practicing mindfully. What that means is being 100% present when you are dancing, even if it’s just another class or rehearsal. Every step is an opportunity to program your instrument the right way.

Usually, we get distracted by our minds, not our bodies. We let our minds wander forward to what’s coming up in the class or later in the day, or back to what’s already happened. We can also get distracted by things or people around us.

Sometimes, we have an out-of-body experience when our minds start thinking about something completely disconnected from what we’re doing, like what we’ll have for dinner and what movie we want to see over the weekend.

When the mind starts to wander, we are no longer connected to what we’re doing. Try some of these simple techniques to bring your focus back into your body.

Tips to Increase Mindfulness

  • Focus on the breath.

When you breathe mindfully, it is very difficult to let the mind wander. If you can count the breath while practicing, try counting your exhales 1 to 5, and then starting over again. Once you count past 5, you know your mind has wandered. If counting the breath throws you off, just stay mindful of your breathing as you practice; when you lose your sense of it, go back to it. Feel the inhales and the exhales and don’t lose track of that rhythm.

  • Repeat a cue word(s).

Like mindful breathing, saying a cue word on the exhale can keep you in your body. Lately I’ve been using “My mind is on the breath” during yoga when I start to wander. A directive can be helpful too, like “Get in the body.”

  • Push yourself out of your comfort zone.

Sometimes we get so comfortable with what we’re doing that we are lulled into passivity, and we start to go through the motions. Mixing up the routine, like letting go of the barre on difficult combinations, or changing your place in the center, can be enough of a shift to get you back into your body.

Pace Yourself

Sometimes it isn’t possible to be 100% present, particularly when we are overtired, which is why it’s important to know how to pace yourself. Pacing is a crucial aspect of mindfulness and injury prevention, but it’s a big enough topic that we’ll talk about that in another post- keep your eyes peeled!

Until then, start to notice how often you practice mindlessly.

Ask yourself, what is it costing you to not practice mindfully?

Give yourself at least one good reason to make mindfulness part of your routine. Then try some of these techniques to bring yourself back into your body and be fully present.

Feel free to let me know how it goes in the comments section.

Criticism: How to Handle it Gracefully

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One of the challenges of training in the performing arts is staying positive in the face of a lot of criticism. I was reminded of this the other day when I had the opportunity to observe a master class at the U.S. Performing Arts Camp here in NYC. (I’m teaching a master class there next week on Mental Fitness!)

I watched a group of musical theater students sing their audition pieces for a Broadway performer who gave them feedback to improve their performance. It was just amazing to see these teenagers get up and sing their hearts out, and then listen to the feedback and try it over all again.

I was reminded of the courage that it takes, not only to put yourself front and center and perform (which to most people, is a positively terrifying idea), but to submit to immediate criticism. Even feedback delivered in a nice way, as it was that day, can be hard to take. There are days when the slightest tinge of criticism can send us reeling emotionally.

But how should we handle feedback that isn’t delivered positively?

How do we handle negativity when it comes from the teacher?

This is a very complicated issue, so let’s just dive into one part at a time.

How’s Your Self-Talk?

The first and most important thing to consider is how you communicate with yourself. Your attitude colors how you hear feedback. If you tend to be very self-critical, then you are more likely to hear feedback as negative, even when it isn’t.

Conversely, if you tend to be positive and constructive with yourself, you are more likely to be able to take criticism in a constructive way.

Make it Not-Personal

It’s also important to take a step away from the personal when receiving feedback. This is Very Hard to do. After all, performers are the instrument: when you sing or act, it’s you; when you dance, it’s you; when you play, it’s still you even though there’s an external instrument.  We all connect so deeply to what we do as performers that we often feel we are inseparable from what we’re doing. While that’s natural, it’s also important to start developing the ability to distance yourself from your art form so that you can accept criticism in an objective way. This means understanding that criticism is about what you’re doing and how you’re doing it, not about who you are as a person.

My Story

To that end, I’d like to share a story from my training with you. When I was sixteen, I started studying dance at UNCSA, and my main teacher was Melissa Hayden, a former Balanchine ballerina. I spent my first year of training with Milly in shock: I had always had kind teachers – they couched their corrections in positive language and gave as much praise as criticism.

Milly was different. She used language that was harsh, she was dismissive, she was impatient, and she did not like to have to repeat herself.

That first year I cried a lot- I had difficulty understanding her corrections, so it probably seemed to her like I wasn’t even trying to do them. I became unsure of myself and wondered if I was good enough to be a dancer. Her criticism felt very personal to me. It was impossible for me to listen to a correction without feeling like she hated me and my dancing.

But then, during my second year with her, something clicked. In part, I became more comfortable taking corrections from teachers whose styles were different from what I was used to. I also got a thicker skin and started distancing my emotions from the corrections. I worked hard not to take them personally.

The Whole You

How do you develop that distance? We’ll tackle that in another blog post.

For now, just start thinking about all of the parts of you that make up who you are: your mind, your heart, your body, your brain, your interests and passions, your family, friends, relatives, pets. You are a lot more than your art form, and thank goodness for that!

The criticism you get from your teachers and coaches is not directed at you as a person, but at what you’re doing as an artist and a student of a performing art. Sometimes, just telling yourself that is enough to create the distance I’m talking about.

Teachers Are People Too

I also realized that it wasn’t out of malice that Milly lost her temper, but out of frustration at not being able to make me see what she wanted. I realized that she had trouble saying what she wanted with words, and because she was no longer able to demonstrate, she couldn’t show me what she wanted either.

I started to have compassion for her situation and I made it my responsibility to figure out what she was getting at. This was a subtle shift in how I approached working with her, and it made all the difference. I was no longer a victim of someone whose commands made no sense to me. Instead, I was actively trying to find the gems in what she was saying.

Because I became curious, instead of frustrated, I was calmer and more in control of myself. Because of that, she saw that I was really listening. It calmed both of us down.

In Closing

I mention this story because in the performing arts, you rarely get to choose who you work with. Some coaches are incredibly gifted at communicating what they want, and others are not. You still want to learn and grow, so how that happens is really up to you.

There may be people with whom you really can’t find common ground- that does happen. But for the most part, teachers and coaches want to get the best work out of you, so if they deliver their message in a less than positive way, see if you can interpret it in a way that works better for you.

Ask yourself if you’re taking things too personally, and try listening for the gems in their criticism. If it makes any difference, let me know. Like I said, Big Topic- so we’ll come back to this again in future posts!

 

 

Positive Feedback Loop: Make Your Own

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In my post on using video as a feedback tool for improving, I mentioned that the hardest part of that exercise is not becoming completely negative while watching yourself on video.

I promised to come back to this topic because how we feel about our own image either in the mirror or on video gives us some useful information.

The Role of Corrections

For starters, from the earliest days in the classroom, dancers seek out corrections from their teachers in part because corrections are a form of attention.

If you look at other fields of study, being corrected is not necessarily a good thing- it means you’re doing something wrong. But in dance, we seek out that feedback. It is not unusual to hope for attention in the form of criticism, and it informs how we interact with our image.

When most of us look in the mirror, we look with a critical eye, we focus on finding problems and fixing them. This means that we don’t often see the whole picture: we miss the parts that are going well. But dancers are loathe to see the good stuff. Students have asked me, how it is possible to improve and not lower our standards if we are “wasting time” noticing what looks good, instead of “working hard to improve”? Good question.

Positive Feedback Loop

First, noticing what looks good creates a positive feedback loop. When your teacher or friends compliment you, it feels good, right? It doesn’t feel like a waste of time, does it? Of course not! We all love to hear what’s going well. It lifts our spirits and makes us feel fantastic. Those good feelings help us to approach our work in a more positive way. That’s a positive feedback loop.

You are already engaging in something similar when you use the mirror. When you correct a problem, do you notice later that it’s better? Of course you do! That’s how you know to move on and look for something else to fix.

But most of us gloss over the improvement, and move right away to the next problem. This is a missed opportunity. We should pay as much attention to what we’ve fixed as we do to what’s wrong. It builds self-esteem in part because it’s proof that you are improving.

Cultivate Your Own Loop

We all need positive feedback- it helps us grow and improve. But it is unreasonable to expect all of that feedback to come from your teachers because they have the entire class to monitor. You can start cultivating your own positive feedback loop by noticing what’s going well, and allowing yourself to feel good about it. This is an active position, one in which YOU take action, rather than waiting for external feedback.

I would guess that some of you are wondering if this exercise will give you a big ego or cause you to stop working hard. That is highly unlikely in part because dance tends to attract individuals who are driven and ambitious. It’s unlikely that paying attention to the good stuff is going to diminish your drive or suddenly eradicate your well-trained critical eye. Instead, it’s likely that you will start feeling more  emotionally balanced and supported.

Give it a try and see how it goes. You may run into a few things that get in the way:

  • Your body.

All dancers have some part of their body that they wish were different, from the feet to the ears. You may have a hang-up about a body part, and every time you see yourself, all you see is that part you don’t like.

This is a complex problem, but to keep it simple, try this: make peace with yourself. If you want to dance happily, you need to make peace with your body, both its good and “bad” parts. This doesn’t mean you have to ignore them, or stop working on them, but instead, they need to stop being obstacles to your positive feedback loop.

This is so important, I’m going to say it again. You must make peace with the parts of your body that aren’t the way you want them to be in order to move forward with your training and improve.

  • Your self-talk.

It is common among high achievers to engage in what is called negative self-talk. Self-talk is the words or thoughts that you have in your mind when you dance or see yourself. You might see an unpointed foot and say, “Come on, point!!” or “That foot always looks so bad.”

Over time, these negative messages accumulate in your brain and affect the way that you work. Negative self-talk is a major impediment to your positive feedback loop, so it’s a good idea to start noticing if you do it.

Ask Yourself Some Questions

To wrap up, in order to create a positive feedback loop, you’ll want to look at the two issues raised here and ask yourself a few questions:

  • Do I have a stumbling block in my own body? Is there something that I don’t like that I always focus on or look at?
  • When I see that body part, what thoughts go through my mind?
  • When I make a mistake, what goes though my mind?
  • What kind of language do I use with myself when I am working in class?

It’s a good idea to write down the answers, especially the words that you use in your head. Once you do this for a few days, you will be able to see a pattern.

If it’s not positive, try to start incorporating some positive feedback into your day. Every time you spot a “negative” in the mirror/video, also find a positive and really enjoy it. If you find that you use a lot of negative language with yourself, try incorporating some positive phrases in and see how it feels.

Research in performance and sport psychology has shown that positive self-talk and feedback improves performance by a huge margin. Why not give it a try? Let me know how it goes!

Comparisons Done Right: Summer Study

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Comparisons…like apples and oranges.

Summer intensives offer so many opportunities for growth and learning. If you go away to another school, the experience is also an opportunity to see how you measure up against other students.

My first few summers away were full of observation. I remember being in awe of some students, watching them almost obsessively and trying to imitate their technical and artistic bravura. There was always this period of intense watching before I could shift my focus back into my own body.

Overall, observation and imitation helped me pick up little things that I hadn’t been exposed to before, like stylistic flourishes and different qualities of movement. And as I got older, I continued to observe other dancers and “steal”** from them, but it occupied a lot less of my energy because my work became more about my own needs.

Comparisons Done the Right Way

I am a proponent of observing fellow dancers in your classes and learning from them. But in my experience, many students approach this exercise in a negative way, comparing themselves and coming to conclusions about how “bad” they are, and how good everyone else is. If this sounds familiar, or if you think that you might be spending too much time looking outside yourself instead of inside, ask yourself some of these questions:

  •  How much time do I spend during barre and centre looking at someone other than myself?
  • What thoughts are going through my head when I look at other dancers?
  • Are my thoughts positive and constructive?
  • Are my thoughts negative and critical?
  • Am I making comparisons between those dancers and myself?
  • What is the nature of those comparisons?
  • Am I ultimately learning anything by looking at other students in my class?
  • Am I improving by using the information I’m getting from observation?

If you find that you are spending more time looking at other people than working on your own stuff, you might want to ask yourself why that is. Are you hiding from yourself? Or are you just very distracted?

It is really only useful to observe others up to a certain point, after which, your work really needs to be about you.

If, on the other hand, you are using observation as a tool to improve your dancing, and it isn’t interfering with your own concentration, then you’ve probably found a good balance.

Framing Comparisons

Think of comparisons as opportunities to learn or “steal” something, rather than a measure for how you fall short or don’t measure up. That is, “I really like how she scoops up her foot in coup de pied as she’s doing a developé…I’m going to try to do that.”

That’s much more helpful than, “The way she articulates her feet is amazing; there’s no way I can do that.”

Framing your observations in terms of what you can learn changes the reason for looking, as well as the impact- and it makes observation worthwhile rather than upsetting or damaging to your sense of self.

 

** The art of the steal: A teacher of mine once told me that all artists “steal” from each other. Musicians imitate their predecessors, painters mimic their teachers, and of course, dancers do as well. “Stealing” is when you see someone do something in a way that moves you, or makes sense to you- it can be technical or artistic- and then you imitate it. Most of us do this instinctively without even thinking about it, because the training model encourages it. We watch our teachers and we mimic their way of moving. I always found this to be one of the great reasons to watch other dancers closely.