Become a Self Mentor

It looks like you don’t have many problems with keeping your practice consistent, at least to a reasonable degree. Your main pain point is not being happy with the speed of your progress. You do the work, train hard and regularly, but not much improvement seems to happen… You feel stuck and lost in your dance journey, and you don’t know how to move to the next level. 

If it doesn’t work, there must be a reason. Find the reason, and you’ll find a solution. You need to learn to better evaluate your current level of dance skills, find the reasons for your weak points, and identify ways of fixing them. That doesn’t mean that you don’t need to work on other aspects such as developing creative skills, or deepening your history knowledge. It just means that right now your main blocking issue is fine-tuning the QUALITY aspect of your training sessions.

Here are some actionable ideas on how to improve your dance habits:

• Stop jumping from one choreography to another. It’s definitely not enough to simply learn a sequence and think it’s ready to be presented on stage. Very often we rush and move on to the next choreography right away, right? Regardless if you are creating your own new routine, or learning someone else’s, it will take multiple sessions to bring it into a good shape. And simply running it again and again is NOT enough. The key point here is to WORK on mistakes. Not just to acknowledge them in your mind, but actually stop and go through those weird arm positions, drill sharp hip drops, or simply ‘clean’ and memorize that combo. Whatever needs to be fixed must receive special attention prior to running the dance again. Only after this work is done, you will be ready for a full run again, in order to see new mistakes, and new opportunities for improvements.

• Analyze the nature of your mistakes and/or weak points. ⁣⁣Practice smart, not hard. If you don’t understand exactly what you are trying to improve, you will not improve anything. Improvement does NOT come from simple repetition of the movement. It doesn’t make sense to repeat mistakes over and over again! If you only train your body to perform movements incorrectly, no wonder you get disappointed afterward. Fail on a turn? - Analyze why! Stop blindly bumping your head into the wall again  and again. Pause and start asking yourself questions: What EXACTLY doesn’t work on my turns?⁣⁣⁣⁣ Why EXACTLY do I lose balance?⁣⁣⁣⁣ Where EXACTLY is my weight distribution?⁣⁣⁣⁣ What EXACTLY happens with my arms? Do they help me, or make me struggle more?⁣⁣⁣⁣ How can I solve these problems?⁣⁣⁣⁣ Observe your body right during the practice, and ask those questions with every repetition of the moment.

• Decide on your practice goals prior to the session. Choose between 1 to MAXIMUM 3 tasks for each session depending on how much time you have available. Being specific and having a narrow focus will help you achieve specific improvements in your dance. 

• Don’t mix your creation process, and work on improvement of skills. For instance, you are working on a new choreo. Suddenly you realize that your shimmy/belly flutters/arabesque isn’t good enough for what you want to do. You immediately stop choreographing, and switch to polishing technique. Then you get frustrated with both: your technique and your unfinished choreo, and you simply quit or postpone. Both processes are important, and both deserve their own time!!! So choose when and what you are doing, and resist the temptation of mixing those tasks.

• Combine video recording and practice with a mirror. Don’t wait until you receive your performance video to see all the weak points in your dance. Incorporate video recording in your training practice, and take responsibility on being a ‘self-coach’ along with a possible outside mentor. And don’t confuse the benefits of self-video recording and practicing in front of a mirror. They give you different things. You video record yourself in order to identify mistakes, and as a checkpoint to see the progress and improvements. You practice in front of a mirror to polish your technique, and to supervise if you are doing what you think you are doing. Basically, the video is your “report“, and the mirror is your “process”. Both are equally important.

• Work with a teacher, or submit your videos for feedback. Sometimes we indeed can’t see what’s wrong in our dance, or how to improve it. That’s when working with an outside eye can be beneficial! A professional teacher will have more experience, and can provide more in-depth insights. With that said, don’t use it as a complete substitute from doing your own self-analysis, otherwise you are simply depending on other people, and robbing yourself of so much more growth in your dance. Do your own work first, then reach out to a teacher/mentor if necessary. This way you will fix the ‘basic stuff’ yourself, and give the opportunity for the expert to dive much deeper into improving your dance skills!

• Use the power of imagination. I often catch myself imagining a teacher, or an outside eye observing my practice. What would she/he say? What corrections would I hear? And then I work exactly on those improvements. This trick may sound weird, but it’s a great tool to put yourself in a working mood. Self-discipline is great, but we all know how challenging it is to reach our maximum potential without any external push. Adding the layer of a fun imaginary world can make it easier. The main thing is to keep it on a positive note. It’s not about self-beating and critique.  It’s about identifying weak points, fixing them, and pushing yourself to invest 100% of your energy throughout your practice session.

• Participate in competitions. You may not like the concept of competition in the arts, but in your case such events would be beneficial. And don’t be shy here. Participate not for the sake of participation, but with a goal to win. It will motivate you to grow and push your skills to the next level with each competition. Just remember: it’s not about you being better than other dancers, or other dancers being worse than you. It’s about being the best possible version of yourself as a dancer. The results of these competitions are not about you as a person, or your dance potential in general, but about your performance specifically on that day. So treat competitions as a tool and opportunity to grow, ALWAYS ASK FEEDBACK from the judges, and cultivate a healthy mindset towards your goals and outcomes. Additional tip: choose two competitions that are a few months apart, and enroll in both. Do THE SAME choreography for each event, but see how you can improve your presentation after receiving feedback from the first contest.

• Celebrate your progress. This is about our own blind spots. So often we get caught in chasing our next goals, criticizing ourselves for imperfect shimmies or stiff arms… But we forget how much we have already achieved!!! Find your very first dance videos or photos, and acknowledge three things that you are proud of achieving. Realize that you’ve come a long way. Don’t forget to celebrate it! Also, pay attention to your overall mindset and typical critical inner talk. If you keep repeating to yourself: “I’m a bad dancer”, “I’ll never get it”, etc… , then no wonder you don’t see any progress in your dance. Add mindset exercises and positive affirmations to your practice along with improving your dance habits.

I hope you got inspired with some of the suggestions! Don’t try to implement them all at once. Choose one or two that spoke to you the most, and implement them right now. Then in a month add one or two more, and so on. Gradual change has more chances for success, but your commitment needs to be consistent. Good luck with it!

Action-steps review:

• Stop jumping from one choreo to another. The key point here is to WORK on mistakes. 

• Analyze the nature of your mistakes and/or weak points. ⁣⁣If you don’t understand what exactly you are trying to improve, you are not improving anything. 

• Decide on your practice goals prior to the session. Being specific and having a narrow focus will help you to achieve specific improvements in your dance. 

• Don’t mix your creation process and work on improvement of skills. Both processes are important, and both deserve their own time!

• Combine video recording and practice with a mirror. Basically, the video is your “report“, and the mirror is your “process”. Both are equally important.

• Work with a teacher, or submit your videos for feedback. BUT don’t use it as a complete substitute from doing your own self-analysis. Do your own work first, only then reach out to a teacher/mentor if necessary. 

• Use the power of imagination. Imagine a teacher, or an outside eye observing your practice. What would she/he say? What corrections would you hear? 

• Participate in competitions. It will motivate you to grow and push your skills to the next level with each competition. ALWAYS ASK FEEDBACK from the judges, and cultivate a healthy mindset towards your goals and outcomes. 

• Celebrate your progress. You’ve come a long way. Get into the habit of reviewing your old videos from time to time.

Suggested book:

“You are a Placebo” by Joe Dispenza. This book offers the necessary understandings to change old beliefs and perceptions, and teaches a model of personal transformation that correlates to your desired goals.

Related episodes of the Belly Dance Life Podcast:

Ep 198. Victoria Teel: The Story of Fan-Veil Addiction

Ep 144. Aida Bogomolova: Paying Attention to Each Detail

Ep 130. Aziza: How to Be The Best Version of Your Dance Self

Ep 105. Nabila: It's Never Too Late to Start and Succeed

Ep 19. Jasirah: How to Practice on Your Own. Tips & Tricks

Ep 01. Marta Korzun: About Competitions and Individual Style

Suggested articles:

Checkpoints For Successful Knee Shimmy

Tips for Self Video Recording

Tips for Memorizing Group Choreographies

Additional resources for the members of the Iana Dance Club:

The Iana Dance Club is an online platform that offers 300+ video tutorials in the format of 20-min technique drills, choreography breakdowns, 3 to 10-week intensives, and in-depth full-length courses. If you are not a member of the club, you can join it for a 7-day free trial, and explore all the tools available there.

• All of our choreography intensives are focused on developing skills of self-coaching and polishing presentations which you can apply to any future dance routines. Check out the intensives Mejance Al Foulla, Tab Wana Maly (Tarab), Mahraganat (Street Shaabi), Dancing to Turkish 9s, and Samai Combo.

• I build all our technique drills with constant reminders about different nuances, bringing your attention to all sorts of possible mistakes that may happen. Simply following instructions with your full attention will help identify possible problems in your technique. And we have over 200 technique tutorials on all sorts of topics.