Ep 45: Why Advanced Dancers Still Struggle With Basics

Why do advanced dancers still struggle with basic corrections? This episode uncovers the hidden gaps between performance technique and true technical understanding.

In this episode of It’s All Relative, Cara dives into one of the biggest frustrations in dance training and dance education: why highly advanced dancers continue to struggle with foundational technique. From unstable pirouettes and sickled feet to collapsing turnout and lack of pelvic alignment, Cara breaks down why dancers often perform technique without fully understanding the muscular engagement, body alignment, and movement patterns behind it.

This episode explores how dance technique training, anatomical awareness, stabilization, and visual learning systems can transform the way dancers absorb corrections and apply them consistently across every style of dance. Whether you’re a dance teacher, studio owner, or competitive dancer, this conversation will reshape how you approach corrections, fundamentals, and long-term dancer development.

Cara talked about:

• Why advanced dancers compensate for weak fundamentals instead of truly fixing technical issues
• How flexibility without strength and control creates instability, injury risk, and inconsistent dance technique
• Why verbal dance corrections often fail without visual learning and anatomical understanding
• The importance of stabilization, alignment, turnout control, and muscular engagement in advanced dance training
• Why advanced dance technique is really layered fundamentals stacked with strength, control, and awareness

3 Tips to Help Corrections Stick

1. Stop over-cueing and simplify corrections so dancers can fully understand the foundation before layering more information
2. Ask dancers what they feel instead of constantly repeating corrections to build stronger mind-body connection and body awareness
3. Focus on stabilization, strength, and alignment before aesthetics so dancers build sustainable technique instead of relying on momentum or compensation

This episode is a powerful reminder that advanced dancers do not outgrow the basics. In fact, the higher the level of dance training, the more important strong fundamentals become. When dancers truly understand alignment, stabilization, turnout, and muscular engagement, they stop relying on compensation and start building sustainable technique that supports both performance quality and long-term body health.

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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. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And I am ready to get talking. So today we are gonna talk about why advanced dancers still struggle with basics. And I know talking to so many of my friends who are teaching in the studio, so many studio owners we work with, so many teachers that we're behind the scenes with in the studio when we're doing our teacher trainings, whether it's in studio environments or whether it's our one-off actual teacher trainings with just teachers and no dancers in the environment. We talk all the time about why advanced dancers still struggle with basics. And we look at it and we're like, have you just ever looked at a highly advanced dancer and thought, how are they still struggling with the same correction? I know we've all been there, right? I know we have all been there where we're like, that dancer is so incredible. And then we go to do something that maybe feels like it should be a no-brainer. And that dancer is struggling, or they're doing something in their choreography or in one of their pieces, and we're like, why is that same correction still being said? Why are we not locking in that correction? And I say this because I'm really passionate about this because we'll go into studios and I just know these studios are working at such a high level. And yet I can get their dancers in exercise. And nine times out of 10, if I have a dancer try to sustain one of the lines from their performances, they can't sustain the line. They can make it happen and then get corrections from it, but they have a hard time slowly engaging it or sustaining it once they're there. And so it just leads me to this conversation of why are our advanced dancers struggling with the basics? And so, an example of this would be so many studios we work with, so many dancers we see, they're struggling with sickled feet, right? They're struggling with unstable pirouettes, they're struggling with collapsing turnout or not being able to really find their true turnout or sustain it. Maybe inconsistent placing placement, maybe a lack of pelvic awareness or pelvic alignment, which is the offset of so many corrections. And this is frustrating, I know, for teachers because I know that we're feeling like, okay, why are we on this treadmill of corrections? Why are we saying the same thing over and over and over again? Why does it feel like we need more time in the studio versus really locking in the time we have? The dancers, most of our advanced dancers are in the studio quite frequently. They're in there a lot, right? And so it becomes frustrating to think that there's never enough time, right? Especially as a teacher, is there ever gonna be enough time? And so we see our dancers, and instead of really understanding their technique, they get into this drive of just performing technique. They're going through muscle memory, they're going through movement habits versus really understanding the movement patterns or really understanding that muscular engagement or how the body initiates. And so now they're performing their technique, but they're not really truly understanding their technique. And so now we get into this very cyclical emotion where we're giving the correction, they're performing the correction. We're giving the correction, they're performing the correction, but we're lacking that understanding. And so there's this gap, right? There's this gap where we get real results, where there's this gap where we say it, they actually understand it, and then they can replicate it over and over and over again, not just when they're doing that technique, but when they're doing any technique. And so that's what we want to talk about today. And the first thing is we see advanced dancers, and what's happening is they're compensating really well. They aren't really absorbing the correction and changing something, they're compensating for getting that correction. And so many advanced dancers, they look technically strong, but they're compensating artistically, right? They're making this action happen where it becomes beautiful, but if we break it down to the fundamentals, the technique isn't actually there. And so that's what we're seeing a lot in our advanced dancers. An example would be gripping their quads for extensions versus stabilizing their pelvis, right? A lot of times, if their pelvis is out of alignment, then they're gonna be very quad-heavy for their extensions. They have to use the quad to lift the leg, but they're gonna use the quad and lose turnout. They're gonna use the quad and try to dig that leg into the hip joint, forcing turnout from the knees and feet. We talk about this a lot. So instead of the turnout happening from the top of the leg and really presenting the turnout, they're setting the feet and then they're forcing the knees to make that work. Arching the back to create extensions, right? And that's starting to come from that pelvic alignment as well. And then they get these gorgeous extensions. Maybe their arabesque is just phenomenal, or they have these beautiful acro lines, but the arch of the back to create that extension is doing this almost hyper extension, the lower back, which is causing so much damage. Another thing is using momentum instead of control. I see so many times where these dancers have these gorgeous lines, and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's so beautiful. And I get them into the studio and we work on the line slowly, and there's nothing there stabilizing it. There's nothing there to actually help that line activate when it needs the control for it. And they can only do it when there's the momentum for it. And so those are just examples of our how our dancers are compensating, how they're using something else. And now they're creating a new correction in order to get the technique to look beautiful. But now we're going back to that treadmill that we talked about where, okay, instead of fixing this correction, we developed a new correction that needs to be fixed in order to see the same aesthetic. And so what happens is our talented dancers, they can hide their weaknesses. They can make things look beautiful, even though there's a little crack in the foundation. And so typically what happens is we're still getting the line to sort of appear, but we're breaking apart anatomically. So we're starting to have moments in the body where we're deteriorating things that that dancer is going to need later. We're working away at the hip joint. We are working away at the lower back. And so you're starting to see these lower back injuries, you're starting to see these hip injuries, we're starting to see knee injuries when we're forcing the turnout or landing with a lot of impact when the turnout's not really being sustained from the top of the leg. And so our talented dancers are hiding this and they're doing things that are actually tearing their body apart, but we're not going to see it yet. And as teachers, we're frustrated because it feels like we're engaging these corrections and it looks good, but why is it not ever being fixed? Why am I still giving that correction? Why is it still not really happening, right? And then choreography can mask foundational instability. So a lot of times we can build the choreography to make something look like an aesthetic choice. It can look like this artistic choice. And really the dancers can play into that by looking gorgeous and not really seeing right where the cracks are in the foundation, because we can build the choreography to make it look like the amazing lines that we can see with the momentum. We can see if it's almost like a stylistic choice, but it's almost building into those overcompensations or those weaknesses. And the last part is flexibility often disguises a lack of strength. And we see this where a lot of our naturally strong dancers lack flexibility. A lot of our super flexible dancers lack that strength and control. And so a lot of times when dancers get super flexible, even getting into these overextensions, we almost it tricks the eye, right? It's almost like an optical illusion. If we get them to use the momentum, we get them to use the flexibility, we almost don't notice that they're lacking the placement and they're lacking the strength and they're lacking the control. And we can choreograph around that. And I'm saying we, because I think as a community, we start to see this happen a lot. And as teachers, we almost need to take a step back and think, okay, am I doing this? Am I seeing the flexibility? Am I almost building more flexibility out versus really stepping back and being like, does my dancer have the strength for that? Am I also, am I building these two alongside each other, or am I literally just building one because I could almost let them overcompensate in that area and get away with it, right? We can almost get away with it when they're super flexible. We can almost, it almost still looks like they're stronger or more controlled than they are. And so really taking it back a level and saying, okay, if my dancers are flexible, is there a way to slow all this technique down and get them the control and make sure they have the strength and the alignment to build into something that's really not just aesthetically in the moment pleasing, but something that will give them body safety long term and also give them something that will, if they want to become professional dancers, build into a career. Are they able to go into an audition and slowly and controlled have these lines for a casting director? Or does it always have to be this type of choreography, this type of momentum, this type of flexibility being called upon? So taking it back and looking at that, because a lot of times as teachers, I think that we look at them and we're like, I know something is off. I know something is off. Why is my correction not really going there? Why is my correction not really landing? And so this is our starting point to kind of look, okay, are they compensating? Are they just compensating really, really well? And that's why we're getting to a certain point and we're seeing these plateaus. Also, sometimes corrections don't stick when dancers don't really understand what to change. They're hearing the correction, but they don't understand, okay, what am I being asked to change? And so one biggest reason why this happens is most of our corrections are verbal. Most corrections that teachers give are quick and they're verbal, and sometimes especially across the floor. Or if we have really big classes and we're trying to give a general correction because most of the dancers are struggling with this, it's very verbal. Like, all right, you guys, think about really activating your turnout in general, right? Versus what dancers need. Most dancers are visual learners. And so they need a visual understanding. Most of them aren't gonna understand if you say inner thighs. We go into studios all the time and do a quick check before we even get started. And the dancers are wearing our apparel and be like, okay, what's the green panel? And most of them have no idea. And so if you're cueing inner thigh, inner thigh, inner thigh, and they actually don't know where that is, that verbal correction is just melting away because it's not gonna stick on anything, right? And so dancers need a visual understanding from that visual understanding, they need a physical awareness. Okay, I can see what my teacher's asking me to do, but how does that feel? How does that feel on me? And so a lot of times teachers might pull out the skeleton or they might pull out coloring pages. And so dancers are starting to get a visual understanding, but they're not getting that personal physical awareness. They're not getting that mind-body connection on their own body. And so a lot of times with our apparel, it's the first time the dancers are like, oh, that's what you're asking me to do. Oh, that's where I should be feeling it. Oh, that's where my inner thighs are. Okay. And so it becomes this visual understanding on an outside perspective. Now it becomes a physical awareness on their own personal body. And now we're giving them anatomical clarity. And so, okay, I want you to see this, but I want you to feel this. And now it becomes okay, their mind is actually connecting to visually what it should look like, but also how should that feel on their body? What muscles should be engaged? How do other muscles need to release? And how should other muscles be the activator? And that's not what we're used to feeling, but how can we start to feel it? Right. And so getting that anatomical clarity. So a lot of times what happens is certain corrections, the dancers hear them over and over again, but they don't really mean anything, right? You might say, okay, pull up. That means nothing to a dancer, right? Pull up. We know exactly what that means because as teachers, we have understood this for decades, right? We've taken this into our mind, we've executed it in our body. So pull up to us is a very innate, instant thing that we can call on and do. When we say pull up to a dancer, they're like, What am I pulling up? If they pull up their shoulders, that's the opposite of what we want them to do, right? If they pull up their hip during an extension, that's the opposite of what we want them to do. So certain corrections, point your toes, right? If a dancer pointed their toes, they'd actually end up crutching their toes and not really stretching their feet. So we need to think, okay, are these corrections sticking? Are they landing? And some dancers, they try harder, but they're still not able to really execute because they're not fully getting it. We're giving them verbal cues that are great. These verbal cues are not bad. They're so good, but the dancers are trying harder without really understanding. So what's happening is they still can't execute. Now we're getting the frustration, they're getting the frustration. Everyone's trying it 110%. And so it all starts to crumble, right? We all start to get overwhelmed, we all start to feel burnt out. And so the other thing is that vague cueing creates confusion. So if we are in the studio, like I said, point your toes. That's a cue that teachers have been using for, you know, generations, but it's vague because we really don't want the dancer to only think about their toes. And if a little one just points their toes, it just stops there. It look, it's not aesthetically pleasing. It's not really what we want them to do anatomically. Sometimes if we say stretch your foot, the dancer thinks, okay, from the ankle down. They are not really thinking, let's get this whole lower leg engaged. And so, what can we do to make the anatomy visible, make it really understandable? And then it becomes attainable and it's no longer vague. It becomes something that's doable. And so the body has to understand the correction before the body can reproduce the correction, before it can be consistent. And a lot of times the dancers, they're nodding, they think they get it, they think they're working at 110%. They probably are working at 110% and just not getting it. And so the moment that we can bring in a visual learning, we can do anatomical mapping. In our company, we use anatomical apparel to make these concepts tangible. We make the concepts come to life on the dancer's body and it makes it doable. The dancers see it, they feel it, they can replicate it, they can reproduce it. Once they do it once and they feel it and they can feel the difference, they can do it again. And a lot of times what happens with anybody is when we're learning something, we feel like we've got it, but we've never actually done it or we've never actually felt it, it's hard to do it again. And I think about this with learning. Sometimes I'm a very visual learner, but sometimes if I see someone doing it over and over and over again, I'm like, yeah, I've got, okay, makes sense. It's clear that I see it. But if I leave, say I'm in a training and I leave and I've never actually tried it, when I go to replicate it, even though mentally I'm like, eh, got it. When I go to replicate it, I actually don't have it. Right. But if I'm in a training and someone shows me and I try it after them and I get it and I work through the kinks and I start to understand it, then when I'm in a different environment, a different situation, and have to do it again, I can pull that back up and replicate it. And I think this is the same thing that happens with our dancers, is even if they see it from the outside, like they do an anatomical coloring sheet and they're like, makes sense. There's the psoas. Then they go to do it. It doesn't, right? It's not there anymore. And so, how can we make the body alive on their body? How can we bring the visual onto their body? How can we make them fully feel it, fully understand it? Because in that moment, now they can reproduce it. Now they can replicate it. Now they can take it from their lyrical class into their jazz class, from their jazz into their ballet. They can start to make that technique happen across the board and make it streamlined from one thing to the next, which is what as teachers we want, right? Because then we're 10xing our time, we're 10xing our impact, we're seeing the results. And so that also gives us a breath, right? As teachers, knowing that, okay, it's landing and they can reproduce it. But also, I think that this is another point that we get stuck on. And I want to use this point to wrap us up in this podcast episode and, you know, lead us out is that a lot of times when we're talking about doing the basics with our dancers, when we're talking about the fundamentals, they're thinking this is beginners' work. Fundamentals. Oh, that's what babies do. That's what the beginners do. We're not beginners, we're advanced. Here's the thing fundamentals are not beginners' work. Beginners need to learn it. And the earlier we teach our dancers our fundamentals, the better it's gonna be for them long term. But fundamentals are things that are underlying in every technical element that we need to do. And the more advanced the technique is, the stronger our fundamentals need to be. So we're taking our fundamentals, and for the babies or for our beginners, the fundamentals are just gonna be the fundamentals. It's gonna be learning how to plie, learning how to stretch through the tongues, learning these basics, right? But the fundamentals as our dancers get older are now gonna be layered. They're gonna have to learn how to go from that plia into a beautiful brush tondeo that's gonna become their extension. They're gonna have to really realize okay, what is the turnout doing below 90 degrees? And how are we gonna activate the psoas from 90 degrees up and really have that muscular engagement develop into these long lines, into these controlled strength lines? And so our fundamentals never change, right? They're always gonna be important. And the more that our dancers practice the fundamentals, the more they can layer the fundamentals. And the layering of the fundamentals is what our advanced work is. We're taking the lines that we do in our ballet bar from level one and we're layering them. And so an advanced technique is really a fundamental layered on a fundamental, right? Layered on a fundamental until it becomes advanced. So we're doing fundamental stacking basically. And so advanced technique is refined fundamentals under pressure. It's when our fundamentals are stacked and now they are showing you something. It's like the advance is almost unfolding, right? And so we get that stabilization, we get that alignment, we get that weight transfer, we get that rotation, we get that pelvic control, and we put them all into a pirouette. We put them all into a pirouette that goes into an aerial. We put them all into a jump or a leap or something where a turn and a leap are connected together or combined. We put them into gorgeous adagio movements. We put them into our transitions. And now instead of it just being a younger dancer learning a glissade, it becomes this gorgeous unfolding of elements and it becomes this aesthetic that doesn't need the momentum, right? It has the control, it has this beautiful layering of the fundamentals on top of fundamentals, and it can become abstract lines, it can become advanced transitions, it can become this choreography that isn't just this competition piece, but that could be beautiful company work. And so the higher the level, the more our fundamentals matter because we can't take fundamentals that are weak or have cracks in the foundation and stack them. All of our fundamentals need to be complete. They need to be clear in order to stack them on top of each other. And so, three things I want to give you as we're kind of closing out this episode is one, we want to stop over cueing and we want to simplify the corrections so that we can get the fundamentals to have that true foundation. And so the moment we give our dancers cue after cue after cue after cue, they are overwhelmed and we're cracking away at the fundamental. We want to think, okay, what is it they're really not doing? What is it they're really not understanding? And how do we really approach that thing? Because if they don't understand it here, they don't understand it across the board. So find one correction and really go at it. Go at one correction and Our dancers understand it, simplify it, get them to really get it. Then the second point that I want you to really think about this week, because this will help us so much in the classroom, is ask your dancers what they feel instead of repeating the cues. I think a lot of times we're repeating the cues because we have an idea of what they're not understanding, but ask them what they feel because a lot of times they might actually feel something that is a holdup that we weren't even addressing in our correction. So if we've said a cue and we've said a correction and we've repeated it, stop and be like, okay, let's slow this down. What are you feeling? Where are you feeling it? And we're gonna focus on stabilization over aesthetics. That's gonna be our last theme for this week. If something's aesthetically pleasing, see if your dancers can do it slow, see if there's any crutch that they're using, especially if during it and it's beautiful and aesthetically pleasing, you're saying the same correction. Okay, what is that correction? Let's slow this down and see why that correction is happening and let's work on alignment and stabilization. And then let's go back and see if we can get that strength there along with the aesthetic. So, three things for this week. We're gonna stop over cueing and simplify the correction. We're gonna ask dancers what they feel instead of repeating cues or corrections. And we're gonna focus on stabilization and strength and alignment before aesthetics. All right, you guys, listen, we are leading into a season where we are ramping up for RM Live. This is our teacher training event that happens in Orlando, Florida. It's literally so many powerhouse teachers in a room together, and we are working through all this and more. We are breaking down advanced technique to stack those fundamentals. We are working hand in hand with teachers and studio owners to talk about what you're really seeing in the studio and what we're really struggling with, and we're gonna build it up in an individualized way. So this isn't like a big overarching conference where everything's a little bit more general. This is gonna be hands-on. What are you seeing and how are we gonna get those dancers to the next level? And if you constantly feel like your dancers understand corrections intellectually, but aren't applying them, or that there's some kind of holdup with them even understanding it, that's exactly what we're diving into in RM Live. And we would love to have you there. We are gonna be working on anatomy-based training. We're gonna be working on visual teaching systems, helping those corrections stick faster and give you results quicker. And we would love to have you in the room. It's in Orlando, it's July 17th through 19th, and our registration closes on June 15th. So get into the room. It's the relative motion experience.com slash RM Live 2026. Come join us. We want to see you there. See you next week. 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 world matters, and we're honored to support the way you teach, read, and inspire. If this episode moved you, made you think, 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 Relative Motion Dance on Instagram or visit relativemotiondance.com for more tools and training. Until next time, keep growing, keep leading, and keep dancing with purpose. Because remember, it's all relative.