I began competitively dancing at the age of seven. I started dancing ten hours a week and did nothing less for the duration of my career. I love to dance more than I can explain and can’t imagine my life without it. I am so proud to say that dance is such a big part of who I am, but I would be lying if I said I didn’t walk away with a few scars. Although the sparkle from the billions of rhinestones and sequins may be blinding, the dance world is not at all how it seems. It has now been almost three years since my dance graduation, and I have since spent a large portion of this time reflecting on my dance career. Today, I would like to share the truth of my experience.
Disclaimer: This is all relative to my personal experience and the conclusions I could draw from my own career. Not every retired competitive dancer will feel the same and that is more than okay!
For the majority of my first years in competition, I felt uncomfortable looking at myself in the mirror, and I hated it. A large portion of the first 18 years of my life was spent staring at myself in the ceiling-to-floor mirror walls of my dance studios, wearing skin-tight clothing, surrounded by tons of other little girls wearing as little clothing as I was. It was inevitable for us to look around and compare ourselves to each other. Growing up, I was never overweight, but I was also never the tiniest ballerina in the room. This resulted in me discovering a wide range of things I didn’t like about myself at far too young an age to understand what an “insecurity” was. The constant awareness of what I looked like took an extreme toll on my self-esteem and, to this day, I still struggle with all things confidence-related because of it. The sad but true reality is, when I catch up with old dance friends, all of us now in our twenties, it seems we are all carrying the same baggage.
Within competitive dance, rivalry and jealousy is a plague that affects far too many dancers at all stages of their careers (granted a bunch of young girls spending countless hours together with no drama occurring is a stretch for even the most glass-half-full of thinkers). Girls can be mean, and every dance studio I trained at was plagued with the same hurtful words said behind backs and side-eye glances that could make your heart stop. The fact of the is that no matter how much you sweat, how flexible you are, or how many spins you can do on one foot, some troll will always be there reminding you that you are not as talented as you feel.
When I was nine, my studio entered a competition where dancers went up against other dancers and improvised until they were gradually eliminated and there was one dancer left. I ended up being that one dance, and I felt incredibly proud of myself at that moment. I was crowned “Junior Miss Dance” and was given a trophy, sash, crown and a small cash award (a very exciting day for a third grader). As soon as I’d got off of the stage with my winnings, feeling about as on-top-of-the-world as it gets, one of my teammates said, and I quote, “The judges were being unfair, and you shouldn’t have gotten that, Meghan. There were tons of girls who were a lot better than you up there.” I’m sure what she meant by “tons of girls better than me” was that she was better than me, but it crushed my spirit all the same. I’d gone from feeling invincible to feeling like a crumpled piece of paper in a matter of seconds. Whether she was jealous that I won, or mad at herself for losing, she shamelessly took out her emotions on me, and to this day I still remember how bad it made me feel. I wish I could say this was a one-off occurrence, but sadly it wasn’t. This story stands out in my mind not because it was the worst, but because it was the first.
Of course, everyone wants to win at a dance competition; if you don’t, you have no purpose being there and perhaps your time would be better spent knitting socks or learning Spanish. Since there are no actual criteria for how to score dance competitions (for example, in gymnastics, the harder the move the higher you will score), everything is left to the judges’ discretion. You could be the most beautiful dancer to have ever performed, but in the political world of dance competitions, that is not always enough. There are a number of things that go into the judges’ decision of who wins. Something that could affect the judges’ opinion towards or against a dancer is the studio that the dancer trains at. If one amazing dancer performs and she belongs to a studio with 30 students entered at the competition, and one mediocre dancer performs and she belongs to a studio with 130 students entered at the competition, the amazing dancer should still win, right? Wrong. The fine dancer from the large studio brings in so much more money that the dancers from these studios often do better, even if a win is not deserved. Often, the competition just wants to make sure that the large studios will return. Although dance competitions should be solely about the dance and the performance of each dancer on stage, the revenue brought in by each studio plays an unfortunate part in success.
Perhaps the most frustratingly true part of dance politics, though, is the most influential. It is an unsaid yet widely known truth that the prettiest girls at competitions win. There is a specific look that accompanies a winning dancer, and it is a very particular and unattainable one at that. You must have a pretty face and a pretty smile. Although you wear layers of face makeup topped with false eyelashes, a pretty base is still necessary. You must have perfect hair (the amount of hairspray used at competition could set the city of Toronto on fire with one match). Strong legs are a necessity. No cellulite. No obvious jiggling. Toned and tan legs are expected (I had my first spray tan at age eight). Being skinny is also sadly expected. Whether all girls that dance competitively are thin from the dance training, or larger girls avoid dancing competitively, in my many years of competing I only saw a handful of plus size girls on stage. The “look” that dancers are expected to have is quite rarely attainable and could be largely related to competitive dancers having low self-esteem and minimal confidence in their adult years.
A large percent of the time I’ve been in existence, I have been dancing and I want to emphasize that, despite some bad, I am truly grateful. I am thankful for the doors that dance has opened for me, and I plan to continue dancing until my body will no longer allow me to. Dance itself is not the issue, it is the negative aspects of dance culture which come with it. I have loved every opportunity that I have had to dance but there are some things I would need to see change before I sign my future daughter up for her first ballet class.