If there is one thing that you need as a dancer, it’s confidence! You can have the most amazing moves, the best costumes, earth-shattering routines and music combinations, but if you don’t have the confidence to carry them through, you will never fulfil your potential.

Our dance school not only teaches dance steps, but we also nurture confidence in our students that helps them not only with their dance routines but also outside the dance studio.

Here are some tips on growing your confidence while dancing:

Practice and more practice!

The more work you put into your dancing, the more practice you have, the better you will become. This instils confidence and allows you to keep building on what you are doing. Not only that, but the classes will feel easier, the routines will click in your mind quicker and you will get more from each session.

Practicing your dance, putting in those hours and hard work is the number one way to improve your confidence and make progress as a dancer.

Work on the fundamentals at all times

While practice is the best way to boost your confidence, it is also worth focusing on the dance fundamentals at all times. Posture is one of the best examples – learning what posture works for what dance and how to best show this yourself.

Learn to make the most of your different postures and how this impacts the dance. Then focus on other fundamentals with the same dedication and your confidence will grow.

Be yourself, different is good

There is no doubt that dance can lend itself to putting people into a category. You are a ‘this’ kind of dancer or you specialise in ‘that’ style of dance. And while that’s okay, because we need some structure to what we do, you also want to be your own person.

Being yourself, being a little different, is a good thing. Embracing those differences also helps to boost your confidence and make you a better dancer. Remember, if everyone had the same approach and no-one stepped outside those dance or style boxes, we’d never have innovations or new dance styles.

Act confident until you feel it

We’ve all heard sayings like ’fake it til you make it’ – they sound a bit cliched and, well, fake! But there’s a nugget of useful truth inside these sayings. Sometimes if you act confident, even if you don’t feel it, eventually you’ll convince yourself.

Pretend you are a character. Think about how that character would react to situations – their body language, posture, facial expressions, what they would say. As a confident dancer, how would your ‘character’ react? Then play the part! Give it enough time and this will become reality and your acting will be replaced with real confidence.

Don’t stress mistakes

As a dancer you will make mistakes, that’s inevitable. The best dancers are confident enough to know that a mistake is just that and they will continue with what they were doing.

This is something to work on at any stage of your dancing career – don’t allow any mistake to derail you. And if it does, make sure you only stop for the shortest time then get back to it. Don’t let anything stop you from dancing!