How to Win a Dance Competition

Take dancing lessons. Before you start practicing your dancing piece, you must make sure that you have a good foundation. Try taking dance lessons where a teacher can fix your mistakes and help you with your positions. Dancing can be very hard for a few people and needs the right training. Judges can catch the smallest errors while watching a dancer perform, which can lead to point-reduction.

• Try finding a personal instructor to coach you, as when an instructor looks at a group, the focus is on the group overall, and the coach might not notice or fix your errors.^[1]
• Try looking at yourself in the mirror and practicing your steps. You might notice certain technique problems, which you can fix while practicing.
• Ask your teacher about what you can improve on. Tell them if you have any difficulties or problems, as they will help you solve them by teaching you the correct technique.

Warm-up and stretch before your daily practice. Warming up daily is very essential, as it prevents your body from getting too tired after your practice, helps raise your internal body temperature to increase your heart rate and blood flow to your muscles so you can perform better, prevents muscle soreness, and helps decrease tension in your muscles and joints.^[2]

• Stretch/warm-up for at least 15 minutes before you start to dance to prevent any cramps and to help you get ready for your routine.
• Loosen your joints by stretching, as you wouldn't want to look stiff while dancing.
• Try searching for ways to warm up on internet browsers, as they'll have a variety of different ways to help you stretch.

Practice well. As the old saying goes, "Practice makes Perfect", so you must keep practicing your routine. A minimum of 1 hour a day is essential to help you excel at your moves and your technique. Work hard until you're 100% satisfied with your dancing. Keep working diligently, and with a positive mindset, you'll surely do your routine well.

• Try tracking your progress. Observe the way you learn, including how long it takes you to memorize your routine. Think about the steps you are doing wrong, and break them into parts to learn them better.
• Feel the rhythm as you dance, and enjoy what you're doing. Do not dance with a negative mood, as it'll make you want to stop dancing further.
• Accept criticism from anyone, especially your instructor, and take it as a sign to improve your skills and work harder.
• Show your dance routine to a few people and ask for their honest opinions on it. Work on the parts that they suggest you improve.

Practice good balance and posture. Two main things that judges look at when you dance are your balance and posture. As you dance, if you trip over a little or fail to carry out a step, it can catch the judges' eye and might make you lose points.^[3]

• You must keep your back straight while dancing and mustn't hunch it. Keep your chin up and focus on your footwork simultaneously.
• Position your hands in the correct manner. Even before you start dancing, the judges will observe your posture when you join the stage. Make sure to keep your back straight and your chin up while doing your entry.
• Do not look down. Look straight instead, or at the judges. Looking down might make you look nervous and anxious.

Practice every chance you get. If you are bored or free, practice dancing until you feel comfortable with the moves. The more comfortable you are with the routine, the more likely you’ll rock your performance at the competition. Ideally, each session of practicing should include 15 minutes of warm-up, 30 minutes of routine practice, and 10 minutes of observing what you can improve on. That's basically 55 minutes to 1 hour of practice a day.

• Consider making a schedule for your dance practice. This will help you stay organized and will help you find time for dancing and your other activities, too.

Perform in front of many people. Once you are familiar with your dance routine, call your family and friends to watch you dance. It'll help you re-create the competition environment and help you show your performance skills and understand their opinions.

• Listen to their advice. Let them give their opinions on your performance so you can work harder towards fixing your errors if they find them.

Practice your balance. Stand with one foot in the air, do a back-bend, or undertake any exercise that can improve your balance while dancing. ^[4]

• Time yourself, and the next time you do the same exercise, try to stay balanced for a few seconds longer than your previous score. Try to outdo your previous score every time you do the exercise, and you'll become a pro at balancing in no time.
• If you're good at gymnastics or aerobics, practice them and try to incorporate them in your dance routine to make your performance further fantastic.

Look at other performances to improve yours. Websites like YouTube have tons of dance performances. Watch performances related to the style and song you have chosen. Try watching reality dance shows, such as Dance Moms. Listen to their instructor teaching the dancers their routines and fixing their technique. Watch the performers dance, and observe their technique, posture, balance, and rhythmic movements carefully.^[5]

• Try to mimic the performer to improve the way you perform.

Record your performance and spot mistakes. Ask someone to record you dancing, or record it yourself. Analyze your dance routine several times, and find all the mistakes you've made, whether they may be your posture, your mistakes in rhythmic movements, or your technique. Spot very minor mistakes, too, and keep practicing harder until you fix them.

• Try to practice in front of the mirror. As you practice this way, try to observe your movements. Look carefully at your footwork, and acknowledge your mistakes.

Give yourself a positive pep-talk. This means that you must talk to yourself using encouraging words. Give yourself a pep-talk, and tell yourself that you can do it. Remove negative thoughts by replacing them with much more positive ones.

• If you find yourself saying, "I can't do this", replace those thoughts by saying, "I can do this; I've practiced very hard, and I'll do my best."
• Do not stress yourself out. Nothing wrong is going to happen if you lose the competition! Stay positive, and enjoy what you do. That's when you'll have a better shot at winning.

Find positive quotes that help you feel good. If you have/know a few quotes that boost your confidence and encourage you, use them, and repeatedly mention them in your head.

• You can also try to visualize yourself winning the competition or dancing very well, also receiving tons of praise and applause.

Don't worry about other's abilities. There are several amazing dancers, many of them with years of experience, and you are surely one of them. Worrying about other's potential will only bring you down. Instead, keep using encouraging words, and know that you'll do your best, and that's all that really matters. You might find other's performances to be amazing, but it doesn't mean that the judges will find it equally astounding.

• Judges look at each performance in different ways. They usually judge based on the memorization of your moves, your expressions, technique, posture, and clothes, at last.
• Each opinion might be different, and the judges will only choose the winner if their performance matches their expectations. They might find your routine to be better than a professional's one!

Overcome your fear of failure. Don't keep worrying about what could go wrong. Instead, think of how you'll perform amazingly, and imagine that everyone will love your performance. Think of the steps that you found to be slightly strenuous, and push yourself to practice them and overcome the fear of not winning.

• Put your energy and effort into being very entertaining for the audience and enjoying dancing yourself. Do not worry about what the judges or the audience are thinking.

Take the competition as a challenging and new experience. Don't think of it as your last chance; think of it as an opportunity to improve yourself and experience something new and out of your comfort zone. If you do win your competition, an awesome job! If not, you still have so many chances in the future to improve yourself. Take it as a learning experience to help you win the next time. Never give up or lose hope.

Make eye-contact. As you dance, you must make eye-contact with the judges and your audience. Looking at the floor or somewhere else appears to make you look less confident. Hold steady eye-contact with your audience to make you look more confident, fearless, and entertaining.^[6]

• Making eye-contact with the people who view your performance will make the audience find your performance much more interesting.

Have clean transitions, timing, balance, and footwork. These are the things that you will be judged on, too.^[7]

• Clean footwork is essential for good dancing. Most of your transitions base on your footwork. As you perform, you must complete your previous move and move into the next move smoothly. Keep your balance steady, and even if you stumble or fall, get up, and don't stop dancing.
• Timing is one of the most objective things in dancing. It should be precise and clear to the people who view your performance.

Show your facial expressions. Each song usually displays certain emotions. Your song will, too, and you must make facial expressions in order to make the audience feel the emotions. If it's a sad, contemporary piece, for example, you have to make expressions that show unhappiness, sorrow, and dedication to become better. Smile a bit, too.^[8]

• If you cannot feel or find any emotions in your routine, just keep smiling. If you watched 2 dancers of equal skill, but only one was smiling, you'd stick to watching the smiling dancer.
• Do not go overboard with exaggerated smiles or other expressions. Keep your expressions natural.