ISSUE 005- WHY IS EVERYONE IN SUCH A RUSH TO BE ADVANCED?

Barely surviving an advanced class doesn’t make you an advanced dancer. So why are we all in such a rush to move up?

Beginner, intermediate and advanced are supposed to describe where you are in your training within a particular style. That’s it.

They’re not rankings. They’re not a reflection of how talented you are. And they definitely don’t determine your worth as a dancer. Yet there seems to be this constant rush to move up.

People take a few beginner classes and immediately start wondering when they can go intermediate. They survive an intermediate class and suddenly they’re eyeing up advanced.

But what exactly are we racing towards?

You don’t get a certificate when you leave beginner. Nobody rings a bell 😂

And I think in rushing to call ourselves “advanced” we’re completely missing some of the best parts of actually learning how to dance.

Beginner doesn’t mean boring!!!

I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that a higher level automatically means better choreography.

Beginner = boring and basic.

Advanced = exciting, sexy, intricate, impressive choreography.

Absolutely not true.

Beginner choreography can still be creative, musical, it can be sexy, make you feel amazing and challenge you.

A good teacher shouldn’t need to make choreography advanced to make it interesting.

The difference between levels should be what is being demanded of you as a dancer, not whether the choreography is good.

Sometimes the simplest choreography performed incredibly well is far more impressive than watching someone fight for their life through 45 seconds of harder choreography. Difficulty does not automatically equal quality.

Advanced choreography does not make you an advanced dancer

This one might hurt a few feelings 😂

Barely surviving an advanced class does not mean you are now an advanced dancer.

There is a difference between getting through choreography and actually being able to dance at that level.

If you're spending 100% of your brain power trying to remember what comes next, which leg you're standing on and where you're supposed to be facing, you're not getting the same training as the advanced dancers around you.

They might be thinking about texture, dynamics, musicality, performance, how they're making individual choices whilst maintaining the technique and the choreo the teacher has given.

Meanwhile you're just thinking:

LEFT OR RIGHT?! WTF IS NEXT? IT'S SO FAST!😭

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with being at that stage.

There IS something wrong with convincing yourself that physically making it to the end of the combination means you've mastered the level.

“But I can do that part…”

Can you? Or can you occasionally get yourself into the position without dying?

Because those aren't quite the same thing 😂

Especially in heels, there is a massive difference between being able to attempt something and having the strength, control, alignment and technique to execute it safely and consistently.

If you land something one out of five times, you're probably still learning it. And that's okay. You don't have to pretend you've mastered something in order for your progress to count.

ENJOY being a beginner

I actually think people massively underestimate how special it is to be a beginner.

When you're new to something, you're learning ALL THE TIME.

You get those little moments where something you've struggled with for weeks suddenly clicks.

A movement that once felt completely unnatural starts becoming automatic.

You watch a video from six months ago and think, wait… when did I get so much better?!

Enjoy that.

Stop trying to rush through the stage where you're actually learning the most.

There is something so much more meaningful about putting the work in, building your foundations and eventually reaching the point where your teacher tells you:

“I think you're ready to move up.”

Because then moving up actually feels like an accomplishment, you earned it and didn't just decide that beginner wasn't cool enough anymore.

We’ve turned levels into status symbols...

I think this is where a lot of the problem comes from.

Somewhere along the way:

Advanced = good dancer.

Beginner = bad dancer.

Except that makes absolutely no sense.

You could be an incredible professional dancer in a particular style and walk into a style you've never trained before as a beginner and even an advanced heels dancer can still take a beginner heels class and get something incredibly valuable from it.

Your level is contextual, It isn't your identity.

Being able to say “actually, I'm a beginner at this” without feeling embarrassed is probably a sign of a much more mature dancer than desperately trying to prove you belong in advanced.

And teachers… we’re contributing to this too 👀

Because let's talk about some of these “beginner” classes.

✨ BEGINNER FRIENDLY ✨

Then you turn up and there's a double pirouette, split, three weight changes in half a count and a fucking kip-up. Be so serious 😭

If we continuously label classes as beginner that quite obviously aren't, how are dancers supposed to have any realistic understanding of what beginner actually looks like?

We've almost had to invent another level underneath it.

“Absolute Beginner.”

“Complete Beginner.”

“Entry Level.”

“Foundations.”

Because somehow just saying beginner no longer communicates this class is for people who are learning the basics.

Teachers have a responsibility to level classes appropriately too.

Because if we make genuine beginner training seem beneath people, we can't then be surprised when everyone is desperate to move up.

You're not only affecting your own training

Okay. Here's the bit some people aren't going to like.

If you consistently take classes significantly above your level, you can disrupt the training of everybody else in the room.

You need to hear this so don't hate me haha

An advanced class should be taught with the assumption that the dancers attending already have certain foundations.

That means the teacher should be able to use terminology without stopping to explain every word. They should be able to teach at a certain pace, give advanced corrections, they should be able to assume a certain level of body awareness and understanding of the style.

If the teacher constantly has to stop because you're asking questions that would be completely reasonable in a beginner class, but shouldn't need answering in an advanced one, that changes the class for everybody.

If you don't understand spacing and you're constantly getting in people's way, that affects other dancers' training.

If the teacher has to choose between slowing the entire room down for you or leaving you completely lost, nobody really wins.

And remember:

Everyone else paid for that class too.

Choosing the appropriate level isn't just about knowing your own limits.

It's basic respect for everybody else's training.

Respect the art form

I think this is something we've started losing sight of.

Dance takes time.

Whether it's heels, ballet, hip hop, contemporary, jazz or anything else, you're learning an art form that people spend YEARS developing.

There isn't a cheat code.

There isn't a shortcut where you skip beginner, take enough advanced choreography and somehow absorb all the technique you missed along the way.

The dancers you're watching in advanced classes didn't magically arrive there, they did the "boring" drills, they repeated movements hundreds of times, they built strength, learned terminology, developed coordination, got corrected, got things wrong, went back and did them again and they built foundations that now allow them to do advanced work.

So when you try to speedrun your way through those stages, you're not progressing faster than everyone else.

You're creating gaps.

And I do think there's something to be said for respecting an art form enough to accept that becoming good at it takes time.

Advanced dancers still need the basics

And here's the funny thing.

When you genuinely become advanced, you don't suddenly graduate from fundamentals.

Professional footballers still practise passing a ball.

Musicians still practise scales.

Dancers still need to practise weight transfers, walks, turns, alignment, lines, relevés, bevels and all the other things we learned at the beginning.

The difference is that your understanding of those “basic” movements becomes deeper.

You notice details you couldn't even recognise when you first started.

That's why an incredible dancer can do something ridiculously simple and somehow make you unable to look away.

They haven't outgrown the basics.

They've mastered them.

Push yourself. But don't take the piss.

Now before somebody reads this and decides I'm saying you should stay comfortably in beginner classes for years and years.

NO😂

Challenge yourself.

Take the harder class sometimes, put yourself in rooms where you're not the strongest dancer, try something that scares you, be the worst person in the room occasionally.

That discomfort can be incredibly important for growth.

But there is a BIG BIG difference between:

“This class is slightly above my current level and is going to push me.”

and

“I fundamentally don't have the training required to participate in this class.”

You know the difference...

Push yourself.

But don't take the piss.

Maybe moving up isn't actually the goal

Instead of constantly asking:

“When can I move up?”

Maybe we need to start asking:

“What am I actually trying to get better at?”

Because taking a harder class isn't automatically progression.

Having better control is progression.

Understanding your body is progression.

Improving your technique is progression.

Building strength is progression.

Finding your individual style is progression.

Being able to perform simple choreography beautifully is progression.

And sometimes the class that allows you to work on those things isn't the hardest class on the timetable.

So stop treating beginner like somewhere you need to escape from.

Enjoy learning, enjoy being shit at something and slowly becoming less shit at it 😂

Respect how much work it takes to become genuinely good.

And when you're ready to move up, move up because your training has taken you there, not because you like the label better.

Because ultimately:

Beginner isn't an insult and Advanced isn't a compliment.

They're just stages of training.

And if you really want to become an advanced dancer?

Stop trying to prove you're advanced and start trying to become undeniable at the basics.