To all the champ dancers discouraged with their progress
I see you, doubled over in the studio as you catch your breath after yet another run-through of your treble jig. You’re dead tired, with nothing left in the tank. You feel like you’re not getting better–you’re getting worse. Your shirt is drenched and the saltwater of your tears mixes with your perspiration as you wonder “Why am I not improving?”
I’m here to tell you YOU ARE IMPROVING. You are just not improving as quickly as you did before. When you were a beginner, the leap from good to better was easy. It was the difference between pointing your toes, or getting off your heels, or really listening to the music. It was easy to improve one thing and move onto the next, especially when you had good role models that you could emulate–whether that was a novice, prizewinner or champ dancer.
Now that you’re a champ, you’ve reached a level that many Irish dancers only dream of. However, you won’t be improving as fast. If the difference between a beginner dancer and a champ dancer is five feet, the difference between a prelim and an open dancer is four inches. If the difference between a new Opens dancer and a WQ is an inch, the difference between a WQ and a WMH is a centimeter, and the difference between a medal and a globe is a millimeter. Because you’re tinkering and fine-tuning and figuring out what works from week to week instead of “learning the single jig”, it may feel like you’re going backwards, especially if you made rapid progress through the grades only to feel like you’re stalled in Champs.
From week to week you may not see progress. But I promise, taken over the course of a year, or two years, or the rest of your dancing career, the effort you put in will make a cumulative difference in your dancing. Every time you think about turning out that back foot a little bit more, or working the consistency of your rhythm, or keeping that pesky right arm in, is going to pay off one day. It may not be by the next feis, but if you’re a champ, you are playing a long game. Local competitions are opportunities to try out new things on stage or get more comfortable with steps, but they aren’t the end-all, be-all.
The other part that may make you feel like you’re sliding backwards is that your awareness of what good dancing looks like grows faster than your dancing ability. Instead of feeling sad and trapped about this, use it to fuel your practices. You can self-correct because you know what looks good and what doesn’t. You may not be dancing like a world champ today, but you can figure out how to incorporate that into your dancing over time.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Ira Glass, which applies to any creative endeavor, including dance (emphasis mine):
“All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. […] It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
Happy practicing, y'all. Let's get into the studio and find our next victory, no matter how small.
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