"Breaking Through Plateaus: Strategies for Overcoming Skill Plateaus and Achieving New Heights in Dance"
The beginning of your dance journey is exciting, new, and fun. You start by trying something for the first time and maybe you get good at it quickly! You might see big improvements in a short period of time, you might feel amazing with a new-found confidence and assuredness in your body, and you might feel like you are unstoppable! But as happens to everyone at some point, you might hit a plateau. At Hustle & Flow Dance, this often looks like a dancer not being moved into a higher level of class, despite being in the same level for more than one session. You’ve received feedback from your teacher and you feel like you are trying everything to improve in the areas they’re asking you to, but it’s just not working.
Here are the top three things you should do if you’re experiencing the ever frustrating skill plateau.
1. Go back to basics.
As a beginner to advanced beginner level dancer, you are expected to have unrefined dance technique because you’ve never trained in it before. But as you progress through the levels of any dance style, basic foundations become just that - the foundation on which you dance. If your foundations are weak, the choreography layered on top will also be weak. Yes, it can be boring and it can feel tedious, but once it is muscle memory and ingrained in your body, your dancing will be so much stronger! Great technique never goes out of style, so get yourself into a foundations class! Not sure where to find one? Send us a message and we’ll point you in the right direction.
Foundations and basics for heels dance → jazz technique, ballet, beginner heels classes
Foundations and basics for hip hop → beginner hip hop classes that focus on grooves and not on choreography
Foundations for sassy sneakers → jazz technique and hip hop technique
Foundations for contemporary → beginner contemporary classes, jazz technique
2. Choose one thing to work on in a drop-in class.
When you go to a drop-in class, don’t worry about getting the best video class footage that you can get. Choose one element of class/dancing to focus on and let everything else go. Maybe you’re focusing on picking up the choreo quickly, sharp movement, being BIG in your movement, or completing each movement before moving onto the next. If you try to focus on everything at once, you will not succeed. Instead, focus on ONE element and slowly build onto it. If you choose to take a video of yourself in class, do so with the intent of using it as a learning tool and not for your Instagram page - see where you are at now and keep working on the same skill until your video shows you the growth you are looking for!
3. Be consistent.
Dance teaches us resiliency. When things are difficult, when you’ve hit a plateau, just keep going! Sometimes it takes a while for our body to create muscle memory and to adapt to new training and movement. Think of it this way: You have had years of moving your body in a certain way - maybe you’ve never pointed your toes before you started dancing! - and now as an adult, after maybe decades of moving in a certain way or not moving in a certain way, you’re asking your body to learn and adapt and develop muscle memory in a matter of weeks, months, or even just one to two years. That’s a lot of learning and unlearning you’re asking your body to do in a short period of time! Trust the process. Stay consistent. You WILL break through the plateau and see change!
