Taking Corrections

“Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery.”

-Martha Graham

When taking corrections it is important to always keep your cool. From experience and in human nature, we don't like when others pick out all of our negative flaws. At times it can be frustrating to learn you have made a habit to a correction you are now trying to overcome. Taking corrections is a stressful task, but one that has to be accomplished for team and self-improvement. Approaching correction taking is either going to tear you down to your breaking point, or leave you feeling more confident in knowing the correct sequence and execution of the dance.

As a beginning note in correction taking, try having an open mind and keeping your cool under the stressful networking of it all. It can be long, tedious and repetitive, but in the end it's about fixing what is wrong in the routine and perfecting it to its best, so that there are high impressions of it when it reaches an audience. You may feel like breaking down, but if you keep your cool and stay open minded, I can only hope that it will leave you feeling more confident in the dance and with yourself as a dancer. This can be achieved by being courteous to the correctors, motivating yourself and taking breaks to calm yourself down, if feeling completely overwhelmed.   

Having someone or a group of someone's looking over your every move, telling you all the things you are doing wrong is like a stab to your confidence in every bit. I challenge you to take it in slowly and focus on the progress you want in order to succeed. It becomes a frustration to learn what you have been doing all along is completely wrong, and needs a total renovation. It's difficult to break a habit, but with the help of a positive outlook, confidence in yourself and an understanding corrector you should find yourself correcting moves accordingly.

Yes, getting an outstanding amount of critiques is hard on a dancer, it can leave you feeling hopeless, stressed and not good enough. I want to stress that that’s not how the critiques should be making you feel. If someone is willing to take the time to give you a critique, they are giving you their attention, and they want you to be successful. To be honest it is much easier to give a correction if you know it will be applied, so by someone giving you a correction they are telling you that they believe in you, and truly just want to see you take it, and make it better than it was before. They are giving you the correction for your own self-improvement, which may later lead to the improvement of a team, if it's a group dance.

The point to remember is when your peers are giving you corrections, keep a steady ground of focus, they don't want you worked up, they just want you to be doing the moves correctly and fixing them now and instead of finding out later when it's harder to break the habit. They are taking the time to help you become a dancer, so you should show respect and be courteous, even if you disagree or are feeling overwhelmed. It's natural to feel frustrated when others point out your errors, but if you take corrections as a positive over a negative the whole process will feel so much better, and run smoother as well.

~Julia Brewer