Competitive dance: Is trying to level the playing field a waste of time?

If you’re applying for an entry-level job requiring a Bachelor of Arts you might be a little angry if a 15-year industry veteran with a Masters degree showed up to interview.

That’s why in competitive dance it is seen as a positive step when competitions include different ability levels. Most have always had a “novice” category for first-time competitors, but now it is not uncommon to see competitions listing “novice,” “open” and “elite” or something similar.

Two years ago, I found myself writing to competition organizers asking for them to consider dividing the competition into different levels of ability — this was following a dance competition for high school teams I had attended with the group I was coaching. The overall high score was a group of boys who had seemingly never had formal training, comically strutting around in high heels and blonde wings to Madonna’s “Vogue”. It had the audience in stitches, but to grab the overall high score from teams whose kids trained day in and out at their studios and schools seemed unfair. If it had been entered as a “novice” I would have been okay with their score and standing — so I know these formats were created for a reason.

But recently, on an online network of dance teachers, we were griping (as per usual) about Dance Moms. The girls at the infamous Abby Lee Dance Company are, in the eyes of some, professional dancers — but apparently not in the eyes of most of the legitimate competitions they attend such as DEA and Jump. For many, this feels unfair; they get paid, so they shouldn’t be allowed to compete on a level playing field with dancers who only train four nights a week.

I stopped to think: what exactly are the ALDC girls paid to do? There are cameras filming them as they rehearse (something every competitive dancer does) and attend dance competitions (see the first point). In what way is this putting them at an advantage? Aside from Maddie, who danced in the “Chandelier” video for Sia, hardly any of these girls could be considered a professional dancer… except, of course, that they get paid.

We want to be able to say it’s black-and-white, that if you’re paid to dance you are a professional. But if that were the case, then I would have a number of 16-year-old friends who were getting paid $10 an hour to teach beginner-level junior tap once a week who would have had to be entered as a “professional.”

Then I start to wonder, as the conversation gets broader and broader, is even the concept of having levels such as “elite” a tad coddling? If a dancer wins the Top Overall Rising Star Junior Solo, is that really an accomplishment when they’re the only one in that category?

Many say it’s “unfair” to have dancers who dance less than 10 hours per week compete against dancers training twice as much. Some also consider it unfair to compete against dancers who receive solos choreographed my household names such as Travis Wall, or dancers home-schooled and receiving daytime training.

Take, for example, Kalani Hilliker, a 13-year-old dancer whose name became widely known after stints on Abby’s Ultimate Dance Competition and Dance Moms. Reality TV aside, Kalani is not a professional dancer, but she is homeschooled, and trains full-time working hours.

It’s enough to make any dance teacher crumble up their program and throw it to the ground screaming, “That’s not fair!”

And at that point I find myself sounding like my baby boomer mother, shrugging and offering, “Life’s not fair.”

My own students had a similar experience last year at competition. Most of them were teen dancers who had been dancing three years or fewer. Their director couldn’t enter them as novice anymore, since they had been competing since their first year of dance. But now they were up against kids who had 12 years of training, and rarely did they ever come out on top. I heard my fair share of “That’s not fair” — not from the students, but from the director — because the judges didn’t have to take into account years of training.

Though I held my tongue while still employed by that studio, I couldn’t help but think that perhaps it was the director’s own fault for thinking that dancers who have only spent six months at the barre should be competing. If those first three years had been spent training — not competing — entering in the novice category in their third year of training would put the kids exactly where they needed to be.

She had a choice to make, and she made a choice that she knew would put her at a disadvantage.

And in the end, what’s what it all comes down to: choices. We all, as directors and teachers have choices to make which factor into how good our dancers are. As directors we choose our dancers’ schedule — it’s up to us to determine how much a competitive dancer should train, how many hours of technique we include, how much we push them. It’s up to teachers to choose what is important in how they structure their lessons.

And most importantly, it is us to choose what we take to competition. In the end, if we’re competing, we have to accept that there is the potential of being beaten and that our dancers will be compared to others.

5 common mistakes young choreographers and dance teachers are making

It is easier than ever to gain recognition as a choreographer thanks to the wide array of social media platforms available (heck, I'm taking advantage of that fact right now). With our increased capacity for outward communication and marketing and a newfound mainstream appreciation for dance (to the credit of Dance Moms and So You Think You Can Dance), not only are dancers themselves becoming mainstream aspirational figures, but so are their choreographers.

A little more than five years ago, the names Alexa Moffatt, Emily Shock, Kate Jablonski and Molly Long would have probably been lost on even the most dedicated of dancers. Today those names carry ferocious and dedicated fan-bases, and many of us dream of becoming "the next [insert young, famous choreographer here]." It's usually among those of us whose opportunities for professional performance have past (or, like my inflexible self, were never really all that fruitful to begin with) and who are certain with just the right hash-tags and flashy choreography, our choreography can not only be seen, it can be watched over and over, emulated and maybe start some sort of pop-culture revolution.

Hyperbolic? Yes. But you never know.

But with inexperience and eagerness come inevitable mistakes, ones that yours truly is also guilty of committing.

I've gathered up just a few of my own faux-pas, as well as those of some of my peers.

1. Using social media to go after the wrong audience. I've been grateful for Instagram and Tumblr — I've seen some talent from across the globe that has shocked and inspired me. But how affective are the tags "#dance," "#tilt," "#wewerkwednesday," "#dancemoms" and "#dancerprobs," to name just a few, in the sense of marketing? Probably not that much. As littered with hashtags as every studio's Instagram pages are, are they really resulting in new students, or even tickets purchased to your showcase? For every choreographer I have seen decorating their posts with "#tilttuesday" and "#boydancer," I have not seen a single one tagged with the city they are in — so I have to ask, what are we accomplishing, other than an obnoxious social media presence? Best case scenario, you end up as lucky as Chicago choreographer Kate Jablonski, who in 2011 had a dancer from Ontario relocate to Chicago for a year to join her company after watching them on Youtube. The odds of this happening any odd day for any odd company? Pretty slim.
2. Causing dancers to peak before high school. My generation of dancers — the ones who left high school in the mid-2000s, when being able to do four pirouettes still meant you were the boss and an oversplit made you the champ of all champs — have had to lift our jaws off the floor and eat some humble pie as we watch today's seven-year-olds execute flawless aerials, eight pirouettes, hyper-extended straddle jumps and multiple kick-spins. It's entertaining and awe-inspiring for awhile, but also worrisome, especially when observing the same studios at the senior level. One of today's tap geniuses, Kaelyn Gray, offered this advice to teachers: "Observe class at the 12-14 level. Then at the 15+ level. If there isn't a significant difference between the two, something is very wrong." By attempting to accelerate dancers too quickly, we miss out on a carefully-laid technical foundation, exhaust dancers and also take away the "wow!" factor from the one age group that should be delivering it more than anyone else.
3. Rewarding singular technical and trick achievements too much. I don't have quite as many gripes about acrobatics and tricks as other choreographers — I've always thought that tricks help make a dancer versatile, and if executed beautifully I don't mind seeing a side aerial or a back walkover here or there in a number. But one huge issue that has come from an overly trick-based dance education (and I don't even just mean acro-tricks) is that too many dancers lack the same drive to refine their overall performance quality that they have to "getting" their newest skill. I've taught a child who got her turning switch-split at 13 before she even learned to land her regular split jump without a ground-shattering BANG! I've seen a pre-teen dancer in her first year master her "pump" turns before she even learned to do a proper double-pirouette without sickling her working foot behind her supporting leg. I've seen advanced dancers who can pull out turn after jump after flip but still cannot walk or transition from position to position with rhythm, posture or confidence — and that is a huge problem.
4. Only taking pride in competitive students and choreography. When I was a recreational dancer growing up, we started our choreography for our big year-end show in January, we ordered nice costumes from catalogues,and we could mostly count on our same friends being in each respective class with us the next year. It wasn't perfect — we all liked to gripe about how the competitive team got more attention (and as grew up to teach competitive dancers I eventually understood why) or that they developed closer relationships with the teachers (unavoidable, as I learned). But if that was the alienation I felt 13 years ago, I cannot imagine how I would feel now, where most studios I've worked with start recreational choreography mere weeks before their recitals, not caring whether or not it looks good, simply send their students out to put together an outfit from Walmart and who cancel their recreational classes left and right to adhere to competitive commitments. While we cannot stretch ourselves thin, we need to make sure that we can be properly dedicated to the recreational programs of our studios — it's easy to forget how much money can come from recreational students, so it's important to make that program look just as good and retain the students from year to year.
5. Treating ballet as a "have to do" instead of a "want to do." We've all said it to our students at one point or another: ballet is the foundation of all dance. It promotes posture, alignment, grace, all those things that every dancer needs. But when conventions like Jump offer a free ballet group for every studio that enters just to generate more interest in the dying art, I have to wonder if all the rhetoric that we drive home about dancers needing ballet to improve their other styles makes ballet into a chore — you wouldn't invite your friends over to watch you vacuum your living room, you'd invite them over to drink coffee in it, right? Many of us have slowly downgraded ballet, convincing our students that it's not worth it to perform, or to pursue as a post-studio career. While not every competitive dancer is a brilliant ballet artist, there are surely some with the potential to soar to great heights in the discipline who may be held back because ballet solos don't get enough hits on Youtube and ballet costumes don't show enough skin to win.