Dance competitions can bring out a very particular side of a dance studio owner.
You’re standing backstage watching your six-year-olds rehearse and suddenly you find yourself saying:
“Again.”
“Spacing!”
“Where’s your hairpiece?”
“Who’s got her glove?”
“Why isn’t she here?”
“Someone message her mum!”
Meanwhile, your dancers are absorbing every bit of that energy.
Competition days are busy. Things go wrong. Dancers get sick. Costumes disappear. Someone forgets choreography they’ve known perfectly for six months.
But there’s an important question we need to ask as dance studio owners:
What do we actually want our dancers to remember about competing?
Of course we want them to perform well.
But dance competitions can give students so much more than a trophy.
They can create friendships, confidence, resilience, independence and some of the funniest memories of their dance years.
The way your dance studio approaches competition day plays a big role in determining which experience your dancers get.
A positive dance competition experience balances preparation and high standards with fun, encouragement and perspective.
That doesn’t mean you stop caring about technique.
It doesn’t mean you stop cleaning routines.
And it certainly doesn’t mean your competitive dance team can’t aim to win.
It means winning isn’t the only way the day can be considered successful.
There are competition organisers and studios that explicitly describe positive, supportive experiences, confidence and development as part of what they aim to create for dancers. (levelupdancecomp.com.au)
As a studio owner, you can create your own definition of a successful competition day.
Maybe success means:
* Dancers felt prepared when they went on stage
* Students supported their teammates
* Teachers stayed calm when something went wrong
* Kids had fun between routines
* Everyone behaved respectfully
* Dancers walked away proud of themselves
* Your team learnt something they can take into training
* Families left feeling good about being part of your studio
You can still celebrate a first place.
Just don’t make it the only thing worth celebrating.
Spend enough time at dance competitions and you’ll see every type of teacher.
There’s the teacher frantically rehearsing the routine five minutes before the dancers go on stage.
“Again!”
“No, that position is wrong.”
“Go again!”
There’s the teacher changing formations because a dancer woke up sick.
There’s someone trying to fix a costume disaster.
There’s the relaxed teacher playing games with the dancers.
And occasionally there’s the teacher nobody can find.
Most of us have probably been several of these people at different points in our dance teaching careers.
The useful question isn’t which one is “right”.
It’s whether you’ve consciously decided how you want your team to behave.
There isn’t one correct answer.
Some dancers benefit from running their routine before performing. Younger children in particular may find familiarity reassuring when everything else about the competition environment feels different from their normal dance studio.
The key is knowing why you’re rehearsing.
Are you helping dancers feel prepared?
Or are you creating more panic?
There’s a big difference between:
“Let’s run this together so everyone feels confident.”
and:
“We’re doing this again because that was terrible.”
Same routine.
Very different experience.
Think about your dancers, their age and what they need to walk onto the stage feeling confident.
Here’s the problem with making winning the entire point of your competition program:
You don’t control the result.
Dance adjudication involves subjective judgement. Even when you’ve been teaching for decades, you’ll sometimes watch results and think:
Really?
Sometimes you’ll place when you weren’t expecting to.
Other times you’ll be convinced a routine danced brilliantly and it won’t receive the result you expected.
That’s competition.
If your dancers’ entire experience depends on where an adjudicator places them, you’re handing control of their experience to someone else.
Instead, create other things to look forward to.
One of the easiest ways to make competitions more fun is to build traditions around them.
They don’t need to be expensive.
In Bec’s studio, this happened almost accidentally.
After seeing another studio owner hand out little “Lucky Dogs”, she decided to order them for her own competition students.
She ordered 200.
The box arrived.
They weren’t dogs.
They were octopuses.
And so the Lucky Octo was born.
The dancers received little eggs, opened them together and discovered which coloured octopus they’d received.
It became a moment.
That’s what you’re trying to create.
Not necessarily an octopus, obviously.
The point is to give dancers something about competition day that isn’t connected to scores.
Simple competition traditions could include:
* A small surprise at each competition
* Team photos
* A competition-day playlist
* Funny teacher challenges
* Games between routines
* Team awards that have nothing to do with placings
* A special snack
* A team mascot
* Collectable items across the season
* A competition ritual before going on stage
Ask your dancers what they’d enjoy.
You might be surprised by how simple their answers are.
Your teachers set the emotional temperature backstage.
If they’re tense, dancers notice.
If they’re having fun, dancers notice that too.
That doesn’t mean every teacher needs to become a TikTok personality.
Maybe that’s completely unnatural for you.
Fine.
Find what works within your dance studio culture.
Perhaps one teacher runs games.
Your assistants might do dance battles with the younger students.
Someone could organise charades.
Your senior dancers might help entertain the six-and-under team.
The goal isn’t forced fun.
It’s creating little moments that remind everyone:
We’re allowed to enjoy being here.
Your dancers walk off stage.
What’s the first thing they see?
Your face.
What’s the first thing they hear?
Your words.
That moment matters.
If the first response is:
“That spacing was terrible.”
you’ve immediately told the child what matters most to you.
Instead, celebrate them.
High five.
“Great job.”
“Well done!”
“You did it!”
There will be another class.
You can review the adjudication.
You can fix the spacing.
You can clean the timing.
Competition day doesn’t need to become one continuous correction session.
Good dance studio leadership means knowing when to give feedback, not simply knowing what feedback needs to be given.
Competitive dance already involves plenty of moving parts.
Costumes.
Make-up.
Shoes.
Props.
Hair.
Quick changes.
Performance times.
Warm-ups.
Awards.
Travel.
Parents.
Why add complexity that doesn’t improve the experience?
Hair is a great example.
If dancers need one hairstyle for jazz, another for lyrical and another for ballet, you’re adding another job to an already stressful day.
Sometimes there will be a genuine artistic reason for a particular look.
But sometimes we’re doing things because we’ve always done them.
Ask yourself:
Does this detail make enough difference to justify the stress it creates?
If the answer is no, simplify it.
Someone will forget something.
It’s inevitable.
With enough dancers attending enough competitions, eventually you’ll have a missing hairpiece, glove, earring, shoe or costume piece.
Your reaction matters more than the mistake.
Imagine Lily has forgotten her hairpiece.
A teacher realises and becomes visibly stressed.
Other dancers hear the conversation.
Now Lily knows she’s caused a problem.
Someone suggests taking everybody else’s hairpieces out.
Suddenly the entire team knows Lily is the reason their costumes have changed.
What’s that doing to Lily five minutes before she performs?
Instead, work through the options calmly.
Do you have a spare?
Can you borrow one?
Can she perform without it?
Is it actually important enough to worry about?
Sometimes the best answer is:
Leave it. Who cares?
Not because you don’t have standards.
Because your dancer’s emotional state is worth more than a hairpiece.
Children are very good at noticing adult energy.
You don’t necessarily need to say, “I’m stressed.”
They can see it.
They hear your tone change.
They watch teachers whispering.
They see someone rushing around.
Then suddenly they think something is terribly wrong.
When something goes wrong at a competition, ask:
Can I solve this?
If yes, solve it calmly.
If no, let it go.
Stress without action doesn’t solve the problem. It simply spreads the stress around.
More isn’t always better.
When dancers have large numbers of routines in one competition, you also increase:
* Costume changes
* Potential hair changes
* Warm-ups
* Choreography to remember
* Time spent at the venue
* Pressure on dancers
* Pressure on parents
* Pressure on teachers
That doesn’t automatically mean fewer routines are right for every dance studio.
But it’s worth questioning your dance studio systems.
Are you entering each routine because it’s genuinely valuable for the dancers?
Or because that’s simply how you’ve always approached competitions?
Your competition strategy should support the culture you’re trying to build.
This might be the most important practical step.
Don’t wait until you’re standing backstage to decide how everyone should behave.
Before competition season, sit down with your teachers, assistants and senior students who help your younger dancers.
Talk about the experience you want to create.
Your non-negotiables might include:
1. We never make a dancer feel bad for forgetting something.
2. Every dancer gets encouragement when they come off stage.
3. We rehearse to build confidence, not fear.
4. We leave room for fun between routines.
5. We stay calm when something goes wrong.
6. We don’t make placings the only measure of success.
7. We support other dancers and studios respectfully.
This is dance studio leadership in practice.
You aren’t just teaching choreography.
You’re teaching your staff how you want children to feel when they represent your dance business.
Before your next competition, have a short team meeting.
Ask one question:
What could we do to make this competition more fun for our dancers and families?
Don’t immediately think bigger.
Think smaller.
Could you bring a game?
Create a team tradition?
Give every dancer a funny little keepsake?
Take proper team photos?
Have your senior dancers organise something for the younger kids?
Could your teachers simply spend more time laughing with the dancers instead of talking about scores?
Choose one or two ideas and try them.
Then ask the dancers afterwards what they enjoyed.
Over time, those little choices become your competition culture.
Being competitive isn’t inherently a bad thing.
Wanting dancers to perform beautifully isn’t a bad thing.
Wanting your team to win isn’t a bad thing.
But if winning becomes the only thing that determines whether competition day was worthwhile, everyone is under enormous pressure.
Your dancers can’t control every adjudicator.
They can’t control another studio.
Sometimes they can’t even control whether their teammate wakes up sick.
But your dance studio can control the environment you create around them.
You can choose encouragement.
You can choose perspective.
You can choose preparation without panic.
You can choose high standards without making children scared to make mistakes.
And you can create traditions that make your dancers excited to turn up regardless of what trophy they take home.
Before your next competition, ask yourself:
If we didn’t win anything today, would our dancers still go home feeling like they’d had a great day?
That answer tells you a lot about the competition culture you’re creating.
Listen to the full Dance Principals United podcast episode for Amanda and Bec’s conversation about competition pressure, backstage chaos, Lucky Octos and the practical ways studio owners can make competition days more positive.
And if you know another dance studio owner heading into competition season, share this episode with them. Sometimes we all need the reminder that the trophy isn’t the only thing our dancers take home.
