How to Call In Confidence to your Dance

Who here doesn’t have a lot on their mind? Hm. I don’t see any hands…
And how many of us have a lot of things on our dance mind? Oh, there they are ; )
And those things can undermine our confidence…

As dancers, we always want to dance more beautifully, more truthfully, to refine our technique, to remember our core–the list goes on and on (and on). Sadly, it often goes on while we are dancing. It can be real hard to enjoy dancing while we are still ticking all those boxes and watching ourselves for any screwups (not to mention yelling at ourselves when we catch one).

All those things we try to keep in mind as we dance, they may be important elements, yet having to track them constantly is distracting from the present moment. We all know that the feeling in the moment is the most important thing–but too often that feeling is shame and anxiety as the little voices yell at us.

We’d like to feel joyous delight.

So how do we get there?

One way is by calling in the qualities we would like to embody via a pre-show process (I hesitate to use the word ritual since I avoid them in general, but if that works for you then you may prefer to go with it),

For example, we might want to embody confidence. As part of our process we draw ourselves in to confidence. We call it in to our dance. Strong legs. Beautiful arms. Each of these things, we illustrate with out body and soul as part of this process. We give ourselves time in each place to feel it, to bring it in to feel its comforting presence at our back.

We honor and activate that element.

What technical things skills are you developing? Include a functional shout out to to those skills and qualities. Call them into your dance. Act out or illustrate each element as part of a movement warmup statement of intention, flowing through a series of poses, each one illustrating one intention for our dance.

What do you want to see in your dance/performance? Call it in. 

And let me know how it goes.

Love,
Alia