Dance comes with challenges. It’s part of what makes it so fun.
We challenge ourselves physically, mentally, and creatively—and it can be hard.
Sometimes we’ll be working on our pirouettes, and we’ll fall out of them. We know what to do, and we know how we want to end, but we keep falling out of them anyway. Now, we can get frustrated because we have to get it without falling out if we want it in our dance. Being frustrated is okay, it’s natural, but we all know that frustration won’t solve our issue. In fact, if we stay with that mindset, it can make us sloppy, create new problems, and make us resistant to learning. We know we don’t want that, but what can we do?
We can change our perspective.
Let’s take the energy we are using to fuel our frustration and use it to find a different way to look at our problem. If we already know how the pirouette feels, how it ends, and how it looks in the mirror, maybe it’s time to see what it looks like videoed from different angles. If we know we need a strong core, a straight leg, and a high demi-pointe, then maybe it’s time to go back to the basics of how to strengthen each of those elements. If we’ve practiced it 100 times a day, maybe it’s time to take a break for a week. But the most effective way to change from frustration to success is our mindset. It’s not that we have to be able to do our pirouette to put it in our dance; we get to put in our dance if we are able to do it.
We don’t have to; we get to. How lucky are we?
Suddenly, it’s not as daunting. Suddenly, it’s only the beginning, and it’s a process that you can apply to far more situations than a difficult dance move.
Prestige has been affected greatly during this pandemic, just like everyone else. Every regulation-pirouette we have tried to get dancers in the studio hasn’t worked the way we planned. The frustration we’ve faced has mirrored your own, and we don’t need to hide that. Despite knowing that what we are doing is for the best, it has been overwhelming, but we decide to change our perspective. Prestige still gets to make a difference in people’s lives. We still get to share our love of dance. We get to learn new ways to teach, we get to partner with programs from all over the world in the comfort of our living rooms, and we get to encourage you from afar.
We get to have hope, we get to be excited for our return to the studio and to be reunited with our community.
What do you get to do?