a female dancer wearing a pink floral crop top standing with arms out wide in a ballroom with other dancers

How to Avoid Common Convention-Week Injuries

How can students leave it all on the floor without hurting themselves? Ensuring that both teachers and dancers approach these rigorous weekends with safety in mind can go a long way toward preventing frequent convention injuries.

a male teacher holding a microphone while leading a female dancer by the hand

How to Keep Your Cool at Jam-Packed Conventions

Convention ballrooms are always exciting, but sometimes they can also be overwhelming, with hundreds of dancers jockeying for space—and attention—on the carpeted floor. Whether it’s your first time attending a convention or you’re a seasoned faculty member, everyone has a role to play to keep jam-packed classes feeling safe and uplifting. Here’s how teachers can manage crowded convention environments, and how students can navigate them.

a group of students huddled together for a photo

How to Clean a Guest Choreographer’s Work While Maintaining Its Integrity

Keeping competition routines in tip-top shape is always labor-intensive—but especially when the number is the work of a guest choreographer, who may have set it months ago and probably isn’t available to oversee the cleaning process. Here’s how to polish even the smallest details of a guest artist’s routine without altering the piece’s integrity.

a female wearing black with curly hair speaking into a microphone

How to Be a Fair and Constructive Competition Judge

Judging dance competitions demands a unique blend of skills, from articulating useful corrections on the fly to staying focused for hours at a time. With just a few minutes to see and score each routine, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by everything you may want to say—or, worse, to have nothing to say at all. Here’s how to stay organized, alert, and constructive during long judging days.

3 dancers huddled downstage with other dancers dressed in black costumes surrounding them

Is Lip-Syncing a Do or Don’t for Competitive Dancers?

Facial expressions are a big part of competitive dance performances, and what dancers should be doing with their mouths onstage has long been a matter of great debate. Many teachers, choreographers, and judges are staunchly against lip-syncing of any kind, while others believe that it can be a light-hearted, appropriate form of expression.

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