Ep 38: The Fight For Fundamentals

In this episode, Cara breaks down what it really means to fight for fundamentals in today’s dance industry and why it matters now more than ever. With dancers constantly exposed to advanced tricks on social media, the pressure to move faster is real. But skipping steps comes at a cost.

Cara shares why true progress isn’t about doing more, it’s about doing the basics so well that they become second nature. From parent expectations to dancer impatience, she unpacks the real challenges teachers face and how staying committed to fundamentals protects dancers, builds confidence, and creates long-term success.

Cara talked about:

• What it means to fight for fundamentals instead of rushing progress
• Why weak foundations lead to inconsistency, instability, and injury risk
• The pressure from parents, dancers, and social media to move too fast
• Why fundamentals must become automatic muscle memory, not “good enough”
• How strong foundational training creates faster, safer long-term advancement

Key Tips for Teachers & Studio Owners:

• Stay committed to fundamentals, even when progress feels slow
• Clearly educate parents and dancers on long-term goals
• Use measurable progress markers to show growth
• Train movement patterns, not just positions
• Start fundamentals from the very first class with strong teachers

Fighting for fundamentals can feel like you’re holding dancers back.
But in reality, you’re setting them up to move forward faster, stronger, and safer.

Short-term progress might look impressive.
Long-term success is built on fundamentals that never fail.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome to It's All Relative, the podcast where dance technique meets purpose, progress becomes visible, and passion fuels the path forward. I'm Kara Dixon, co-founder of Relative Motion, and our team is made up of professional dancers, teachers, and choreographers here to make high-level training feel doable, measurable, and exciting again. Whether you're a teacher searching for fresh cues, a dancer craving more clarity, or a studio owner chasing a bigger vision, this space is for you. Each week, we'll break down complex technique, dive into real studio strategy, and share tools that spark transformation from the inside out. Because in this community, we train with intention, we lead with love, and we know that better dancers start with better teachers. So let's grow, let's move, and let's rise together. Because at the end of the day, it's all relative. Hi friends, and welcome to our newest episode of It's All Relative. Today we are talking about something that is vitally important as teachers in the dance industry, and that is the fight for fundamentals. Now, as we're talking about this today, we're going to break down what it means really to fight for our fundamentals, why that concept is so important, especially in today's dance industry, and what might come up against us as we're doing that. So to fight for fundamentals, it means, hey, to do anything advanced, we are going to have to really have our dancers understanding fundamentals at an incredibly deep level. They need to know it when they're little, they need to know it as they get older, and it needs to be so ingrained in their muscle memory that by the time they're we're going to teach them really advanced techniques, the fundamentals are just a no-brainer. They're just a natural go-to for them. Right now, what we're seeing a lot in the dance industry is dancers are just trying to kind of throw these tricks. They're trying to just go into really elaborate moves, sometimes really complex moves, oftentimes super unsafe moves if they don't have the fundamentals already in alignment. And actually, these techniques and moves could actually be very safe. However, without the technical foundation, without those fundamentals in place, every time the dancer goes to do one of these techniques or one of these tricks, it really is a hit or miss whether they're going to be able to actually accomplish it. And if they accomplish it, are they stable enough not to get hurt or not to slowly deteriorate the body as they continue to practice, as they continue to train, and as they get on stage and they have all the adrenaline going and they're going to this trick. And so we're seeing so many things in dance training right now that are mind-blowing. The things that the human body can do and the things that we're asking us to do are really quite incredible. But with that comes the fact that often these days, we're starting to try to skip over steps. We're trying to skip through. Okay, the dancer knows that plia enough. We they can do the next thing. Okay, the dancer knows how to straighten their knees enough. They can go to the next thing. Okay, they can press all the way through their tondu into that next move enough. But really, when we look at it, it's not that they need to do it enough. It needs to be so ingrained as the way their body naturally moves that there's no question that it's not, okay, are they gonna do it this time? It's that they've done it so many times. Of course they're gonna do that this time. And so then we take a lot of the question marks out of whatever that technical element is, that next level technical element is that we're trying to get them to do. It's not so much, are they gonna stretch their foot? It's not so much, are they gonna lift the hip? It's not so much, is this gonna be an alignment? We know that stuff's gonna happen. So now it's just a matter of really taking that to the next level. Though the issue and kind of like the pushback is that it makes it feel class is going really slow. And so you might see this with parents where they're like, okay, you're just working on these basic movements all the time. And so that's where part of the pushback can come from is parents looking in the classes and saying, hey, I know my dancer can do more. I see them moving around the house. They're doing this, they're doing this, they're doing this. But in class, I see that you're moving very slow. I see that it looks like stuff that they've been working on for years. And just is a really funny story to kind of go along with that is I was new in teaching and I was teaching in a really highly acclaimed, highly technical studio. And the studio owner came up to me one day and you will never believe this meeting I had with one of the parents. And it was of a student that I also had. So it was just filling me in on what's going on behind the scenes. But she was like, the parents really upset because she says that her dancer comes into ballet class and she always and has for years, does these plies and then follows it up with the tondus and then it follows it up with the degets. And the the parent doesn't understand why her daughter's not progressing farther than that. Why every time, year after year, she comes in and she's doing the same stuff, she thinks her daughter's at a higher level. And I had to explain to the parent that even if her daughter becomes a professional ballerina, a professional ballet dancer, a professional contemporary dancer, whatever, every time she comes to the bar, even if she's lead for the New York City ballet, she is going to start with plie, move into Tondu, go into tank. These are things she's going to do for the rest of her life if she's pursuing dance. This isn't just a R studio thing. This is okay, no matter what level you are in becoming a dancer and becoming an athlete and artist, you have to constantly train your body back to the basics. You have to constantly make sure that those fundamentals are locked in, that their muscle memory is locked in. It's easy to untrain the body if it starts to build other muscle memory. And we always go through. And the cool thing about ballet bar, and for those of you who teach ballet, the cool thing about ballet bar is that you're going through all the movement patterns that we're asking our lower body to do. We're going through all the movement patterns that we're asking our upper body to do. So through this system of exercises, right? And in the order specifically that they build these exercises, we start out with this like muscle warming, the plie, right? Now we're going slowly through movement patterns in each direction with our tondus. Now we're making the movement powers flow through each other with the rana jams, right? And so we add the froppies, we add all these themes, and our body has felt what the movement patterns are that they're gonna be called to later in the class and in other genres as well. And so just it's kind of interesting to think back to that parent's mindset because right, if you're not in that dance world, you don't understand the value of okay, this is gonna be the flow of a ballet bar for the rest of your life doing ballet. And as teachers, as studio owners, as business owners, it's hard to not feel the weight of that pressure to get the dancers moving faster. Okay, if they've been working on this for a couple of weeks, we should need to move on to the next thing. But also, if we can stay the course, if we can stay grounded, if we can keep the pace, even though the pace feels slower than maybe what the parents are comfortable with, then when they start to really understand these fundamentals, they are going to very quickly move into really high levels of technique. Once they understand these things that they're gonna be caught on more than once. So as a judge, when I'm adjudicating competitions, you look and often you're saying stuff about the plie, often you're saying stuff about stretching through the knees, often you're saying stuff about stretching the feet, often you're saying stuff about the shoulder alignment, often you're saying stuff about the neck and the head alignment and the way the arms are being carried, the way the pelvis is aligned, the way the core is holding the body and moving and allowing for that control, but also the freedom. So we're saying a lot of that in judging. And if those are things that the dancers have locked in, then the times that we say that about judging, so it could be saying it about an extension, saying it about a leap, saying it about a turn, the times that we're saying it over and over again, four different things, if we fix that one technical element, now that carries on throughout those things. So we're fixing a lot of things quick when we focus on the one technical aspect of those things. And so that's one thing I want to really encourage. Now, I know the other pressure that we're getting as teachers and studio owners is we're getting that same pressure from the dancers. And so the dancers are coming in, they've seen all this stuff on social media, they're fully immersed in seeing the highest level. Now, that hasn't always been the case, right? There have been times when we were younger when you didn't have access to just seeing every dancer at any part of the world at any moment doing their most impressive thing. And that just wasn't a thing. And so it's like you see your studio when you go to your regional comps, you see those once a year when you go to nationals, you see dancers that are competing at the national level. It was also a little bit different to get at the national level because you had to win at the regional level to be invited to the national level. So even that setup is a little bit different than it used to be. But now dancers are seeing everything. They're trying it in their garage, they're trying it in their basement, they're trying it in their yard, they're showing you what they can do. Like, hey, I learned this from YouTube. Can we try it in class? And it's hard as a teacher to slow that dancer down because we can't control that, right? We can't control what they're doing when they're not in the studio. So, what we need to do is really find ways to challenge those dancers that they're gonna continue that challenge that we've given them at home versus spreading out into the YouTube realm or the Instagram realm and finding these tricky things, trying to figure them out without the guidance, without the support and without the alignment and placement that they need and the strength, they need to actually do it powerfully and safely. And so a couple of things I wanted to just briefly dive into is we're trying to get this fundamental, the fight for fundamentals going, and making sure that we're in where in the fight for fundamentals, making sure that we're also fighting for our dancers. Because really, the fight for fundamentals is the fight for our dancers not just to see the short-term goal of this year, the tricks that they could do with their solo or internationals, but the fight for fundamentals is the fight to get your dancer this long-term goal of do they want to be a professional dancer? Do they want to follow this life as an athlete? Do they want their body to sustain them for much harder, much more advanced things for professional jobs, for teaching later? We need to protect their bodies. And so as we fight for fundamentals, we are fighting for our dancers. And so I think sometimes when we're holding the ground and we're like, no, we're not ready for that, we're not ready for that. It feels we're on different teams. How can we bridge that gap and let our dancers know, hey, I'm fighting this so hard because I'm on your team and I want you to have a long-term career. I want you to be able to follow through with your bigger dreams, not just your dreams to nationals or your dreams to whatever your audition is for the season. But what are your long-term goals for yourself? And so one thing is always educating your dancers. Be a good communicator, educate the dancers, and educate the parents as to what you see their dancer strengths are, what you're really going to focus on working on, and what you see as their potential long term. Parents, and I am a parent, parents appreciate this because it shows the long game. And it's easy as a parent because you're investing resources, time, money, all the things. It's easy for a parent to be like, I want to see results. And so if you show up with the long game and the parents start to understand, especially if they've never danced before or danced at a high level, the parents start to understand what it is your plan is for their dancer, what they can expect long term. Now we're on the same page, we're on the same team. Now, if the dancer has a bad day, or if the dancer wants to push their technique to the next level, the parents can also help you communicate to the dancer what it is the goals are, what's on the line if they push the technique to the next level and their body's not ready. What is on the line? And what are we going to expect and be excited about if we stick with this plan to really understand the fundamentals and really get that going for the dancer? This is a long-term, hey, if we put in the extra time now, we're gonna soar through the technique later. It's a long game. The other thing is train the dancers in a certain way. So getting them with our apparel, especially, we can give the dancers goals and their measurable, visible goals. So, hey, this is what you're seeing now. This is what I want you to feel. I want you to feel it here, and I want you to see it here. And so the more you can give tangible, measurable visual goals to your dancers and to their parents, they can see the progress, but they can also measure it. So, especially if they don't understand what they're really trying to achieve, it's hard to say, hey, your dancer's making tons of progress. But if you have something very visual and your dancer had this much turnout before, and it's only been two weeks and they've increased their turnout by this much. Hey, their extension only got here before without lifting their hip. It's only been three weeks and now they've increased their extension by 45 degrees. Then the parents are starting to go, okay, okay, I see what you're saying by long game. I understand it. They might not understand the fundamentals of a plie or the breakdown of a tondu or the botma or whatever, but they're gonna understand the goal and that you're showing them the pathway and the improvement. And that's gonna be really awesome for them in getting on board in this fight for fundamentals. The next thing is yes, we are going to train lines. And I mentioned before with ballet, it's not just gonna be the bat ma line. A lot of dancers can botma up and kick their nose, right? They're flexible dancers, but they can't go through a full extension and get there. And so, not just the lines, but now that the dancer can call their muscles to sustain certain positions, can they get there through the movement pattern? So if it's a botmot, maybe they need to understand the muscle engagement, the muscular engagement through that brushed position. But if it's a devil pay, they have to understand all the muscles through that posse, through that attitude, into that extension. It's a totally different way to call upon our muscles. And so things that a dancer might be able to accomplish with a botmont, maybe when we get over to the devil pay, it's like it's not there. Even harder is that grand rendez-je because now we're going through one full alignment, through the transitional point into the next alignment. It's really hard. And maybe your dancer is getting this, but they're not getting that. So just help them understand the movement patterns. This is another layer of fundamentals. Often with the fundamentals, we're like, okay, they understand this placement, their muscles can sustain them here. This is the alignment in a very almost two-dimensional way, right? Now we're adding that three-dimensional, they're going through one plane into another plane. That's vitally important. So train the muscles, train the placement, then train the movement pattern. And now what your dancers are going to start to see is that if it takes them a grand rendezme to get through a Cheney Ramberset, they had the grand rendezam. Now they can just add that in to the more complex technique. If they're trying to do a leap or turn into an aerial, if they're trying to do a turn straight into a leap, once they get one of the alignments and once they get the movement pattern, now we're gonna combine those two together. And they've already mastered them individually. So now it becomes this more advanced technique without making it a whole new thing the dancer is learning. They just have it in their wheelhouse, they have it in their toolbox. Okay, you need me to do the pirouette. Now you need me to do the plie, which I also feel very comfortable doing. And now from the plie, I'm gonna push off into the leap, which is how I normally push off from leaps. And so I can just combine these elements that my body's already trained individually to do. It might take a couple of runs, but now I'm doing it. And so that really advanced technique happens almost authentically, almost seamlessly, without the pushback, without the resistance, without the fear. And then with the fear comes the instability and the injury potential. And so if we can train these things, now what I want to just kind of shake us up in the last couple of minutes to say is don't start training these things when your dancers are like, I'm almost ready for the mini company or I'm almost ready for the junior company. When they're that seven and nine range, that is not the time. It's a good time. If they're starting dance when they're seven, that's a great time to start the fundamentals. But I want to challenge studio owners specifically that you're gonna want the first day that the dancers step into the class, you're gonna want them to be learning the fundamentals. And sometimes with our preschoolers, we're just gonna make it fun. They're gonna roll, they're gonna do scarves, they're gonna do all these things. It's just me fun. And we do that for two or three years. And now they're three years into dance, and they don't really understand that plie as far as a muscular engagement. They're just making a diamond. And so for student owners specifically, I'm gonna challenge you because it's easier to put in our mind, it's easier and less resistance to put our younger, less experienced teachers in the preschool classes. I'm gonna challenge you to put pretty experienced teachers in there. You want teachers that can be silly enough to make this fun, but you want them to be they to understand the mindset of a young dancer enough to break these techniques down to their simplest form, make it fun for them, but also make them legitimately learn something. Because if you can put the real value of the fundamentals into a fun learning environment, the dancers have structure, they're understanding real techniques, but they're also having a blast. That's a miracle moment because those dancers are going to end up being your company members. And a lot of times when we get them in the seven and nines, we're retraining habits, even though these dancers have danced for three or four years already. And we're starting them as if it's our first day in the studio. And that's frustrating for the littles. It's also frustrating for the parents, and it's very frustrating for teachers because bad habits are worse than no habits. And so if they're starting at seven, they have three to four years of bad habits. It would probably be more beneficial for your teachers if they were just coming in fresh. If there was nothing in their mindset of what they're capable of doing, and you just started with the fundamentals like right away. And so, in those three to four classes, three to four-year-old classes, have really experienced teachers. Have teachers with fun energy, have teachers that are gonna get down on those dancers level, but also teachers that are gonna make really learning good fundamentals super fun because that's where your miracle moment is for later. All right. I hope you guys had a great time today with me. We are going to jump into even more topics next week. I can't wait to see you there. If you have not registered for our Orlando teacher training event, it's called RM Live. It's in July from the 17th to the 19th. Definitely find information. We want you there. We want to spend this time with you. We're doing our level one lower body. We're gonna do our upper body. We're also gonna do curriculum building. It is the most powerful three days that our company offers because you get two certification trainings, and you and your faculty get to work on curriculum building for the next year. Essentially, you leave with a strategy in mind, not that's just one size fits all, but a strategy in mind that literally works with your team, your dancers, exactly what your program is set up to accomplish, to create, and we build it around you. And so it's really specialized, it's really unique, and we would absolutely love to have you in the room. The space is filling up quick, but we would love to have you there. If you are looking to have an amazing experience this summer with a bunch of other really inspiring, passionate, talented teachers, come join us. You'll find that information on the relative motion experience.com slash RM Live 2026. We'll see you there, friends. That's a wrap on today's episode of It's All Relative. Thank you for spending your time with us. We believe what you bring to the dance club matters, and we're honored to support the way you teach, lead, and inspire. If this episode moved you, made you big, or gave you something new to try, hit that subscribe button so you don't miss what's next. You can connect with us anytime at RelativeMotion Dance on Instagram or visit relativemotiondance.com for more tools and training. Until next time, keep growing, keep leading, and keep dancing with others. And remember, it's all relative.