Another competition is in the books for the Dancing Queens ladies! They all took the floor at the Atlanta Open in Episode 6, except for Gaëlle who was there only to spectate. There were some tense moments on and off the dance floor, highlighting the fact that our dance journeys are not all sunshine and rhinestones. While dancers may be considered athletes of the gods, we’re still human and we have bad days.
We saw in Episode 5 how much pressure some of the ladies are under. Sabrina is struggling with balancing her passion for dance with her devotion to her family. Pooja is trying to prove that she can be just as good of a dancer as her mom and sister. Donie is dealing with body image issues and frustrations over her efforts to conform her look to what she thinks the judges want to see.
Episode 6 showed what can happen when that pressure builds up and finally boils over. During the singles round (where each dance is judged separately), Sabrina lost her place during the jive and stopped dancing. She and her pro partner Stas had an argument about it off the floor. They seem to have recovered by the time they returned for the scholarship/championship round (where placements are based on your performance in all dances), but ended up with 2nd place instead of 1st. Tensions were still running high when they met for a lesson back at home about a week later.
Sabrina wasn’t the only one to have a rough time in Atlanta. Pooja placed 5th out of 7 in the final round, which she said she was fine with in her interview, but it’s still not where she wants to be. While her husband wonders why she competes if she’s not placing well, she’s attending 6am practice sessions with her mom and sister to try to catch up. While at the competition, Colette received a call from her son’s school that he had to be sent home, and so she had to coordinate with his caretaker from the other side of the country. Donie placed 4th and remains convinced that she isn’t placing higher because of her appearance.
Any serious dancer knows that the journey is not smooth or steady. There are good days and bad days, like with anything else. Sometimes you go into the studio to practice and your balance is just off. One day you’ll know your choreography backwards and forwards and the next week, it’s like you have temporary amnesia. As much as dance can be an escape from the stresses of our daily lives, sometimes those stresses refuse to be left behind and we dance distracted or upset. Sometimes we just feel grumpy!
The goal can’t be to eliminate the bad days because that just isn’t possible. The goal is to build up resilience so you know how to get through the bad days and recover quickly once they’ve passed.
Like we discussed in the review of Episode 3, ballroom dance is a mental game. As a dancer, you have to learn how to manage your emotional state and how to reset when your emotions run wild. Mental strength is a huge asset for a competitive dancer, but we can’t be strong all of the time. We can’t always be in that zen space where nothing can shake us. Shit happens and Life gets overwhelming. Sometimes we can’t hold it together anymore.
And that’s ok!
I’ve learned that holding myself to an unrealistically high standard to always be on point and perfectly in control hurts me more than it helps. What has been more effective is recognizing what throws me off and developing strategies to give myself grace and then help me reset and realign. It’s harder to get back up if you’ve never prepared to fall.
Training and performing in a dance style that requires a partner adds extra spice to the mix. Our good days don’t always line up with our partner’s good days. Dance partners can get on each other’s nerves, just like other relationships. Dance partners fight just like other relationships!
In my review of Episode 2, I wrote about the dynamics of the pro-am relationship. It may be hard for some to imagine that as a pro-am ballroom student, you would ever get into a fight with your teacher, but it’s certainly happened to me and I’ve witnessed it happen with other students/teachers. If friends, family members and spouses can fight, why not dance partners? You could call it a sign that the relationship has grown close enough to know how to push each other’s buttons.
Maintaining and respecting each other’s boundaries and communicating about those boundaries are key to building resilience in the partnership to help you through those rough patches. It’s not reasonable to expect that you and your partner will always get along while at the same time, growing and deepening your relationship. Bad days will happen.
For my readers unfamiliar with the pro-am ballroom world, I wanted to provide some additional context to the tense scene between Stas and Sabrina at the Atlanta Open, outside of the pro-am relationship. There are rules of etiquette in the ballroom world that dancers are expected to follow, and when students don’t follow those rules, it can reflect poorly on both the student and their teacher.
When I first entered the competitive ballroom world, I was coached that as soon as you enter the ballroom at an event, you should assume you are being watched by the judges. So even if you aren’t dancing, you need to maintain a certain level of decorum. This unwritten rule was front and center in my mind at competitions where I did not perform well and/or received disappointing results. I was careful to maintain composure until I was out of the ballroom and away from others (how successful I was is another story).
Getting into an argument with your dance partner, especially in earshot of other dancers, would definitely qualify as a violation of those rules (though is that what actually happened in this episode? Only the editors know!). In a pro-am partnership, the pro is in the difficult position of trying to support their student through whatever is upsetting them while at the same time, trying to avoid a scene that may affect others’ (the judges’) perceptions of their student. As a veteran dancer, yes, Sabrina would know how she was expected to behave in the ballroom, and at the same time, she is human! She is allowed to have a bad day.
Only two more episodes to go! Catch up on the reviews of other Dancing Queens episodes here and don’t forget to support the blog by clicking the button below:
The Girl with the Tree Tattoo 