EP 49: The Cost of Criticism

Could criticism be the very thing holding your dancers back? This episode explores how the way we give feedback can either build belief or create barriers to growth.

In Episode 49 of It's All Relative, Cara Dixon explores The Cost of Criticism and how the way we communicate with dancers directly impacts confidence, growth, motivation, and studio culture. From social media commentary to in-studio corrections, Cara examines how criticism in dance education can either inspire growth or create barriers that hold dancers back from reaching their full potential.

This episode is packed with insights on constructive feedback, positive dance teaching, dance teacher communication, and creating an environment where dancers feel challenged, encouraged, and empowered to grow.

Cara talked about:

• How criticism and personal bias can impact dancer confidence and studio culture
• The difference between objective truth and personal perspective when evaluating dancers
• Why social media criticism is influencing the way feedback is delivered in dance education
• How focusing on dancer potential creates stronger growth than focusing on dancer limitations
• The role of encouragement, belief, and intentional cueing in effective dance teaching

3 Key Takeaways from Cara:

1. Separate your perspective from the dancer's reality and avoid turning assumptions into facts.
2. Replace criticism with specific, actionable feedback that helps dancers understand how to improve.
3. Focus on identifying and developing potential rather than labeling dancers by their current struggles.

If this conversation resonated with you and you're ready to elevate your teaching, join us at RM Live 2026, where dance educators from around the world come together to learn, grow, and transform the way they teach. Learn more at www.therelativemotionexperience.com/rmlive2026.

—
Connect with us! 🎧

Relative Motion: https://www.instagram.com/relativemotiondance/
Youtube Relative Motion: https://www.youtube.com/@relative_motion

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. Hey friends, and welcome to episode 49 of It's All Relative. Look, I am so excited because we are jumping into month 12. We are almost in a year of having this podcast running, and what a gift. I love it. I love our time together every week. I love the amazing guests that have been on with me, the amazing educators that have gotten to share some of their expertise with our listeners. And also, it's just been so amazing to travel around both the US and internationally and have teachers in classes all over just be like, hey, I heard your podcast episode, or hey, I really love this part about this, this, and this. And just to know that we're all connected in community together is just really, really special. So today is episode 49. We are so close to that one year mark. And thank you so much for being on the journey with me specifically, you know, and having us reconnect and be together every week is just so special. So thank you for that. Today's episode is going to be a topic that I think is really important in our community, and that is criticism. So, one thing I wanted to start with is the idea that in our community, we're artists, right? And so there's a lot of personal sharing that's happening. We're creating art. It's very personal. And it can feel like we're just really putting ourselves out there. And so I think in some ways, people feel raw, right? Because they're sharing things that are very like this piece of art, these feelings, this choreography. Everything is a piece of ourselves that we're sharing, right? But I also think that we've gotten to a point, especially with everything that's happening with social media, where you put something out there and nobody has really a face to what they're doing, that people are fine just writing something or sharing an opinion of something that they probably wouldn't in person, right? You probably would let something slide or let something slip in person that we will not on social media. On social media, it's almost like see something, say something. People just feel really inclined to give any thought that they have, they make it just everyone aware of it. And so I'm saying this because, you know, you'll look, say, in the Dance Teacher Network, you're in there and you can just see one person says something, everyone has an opinion. And so I think part of this is that we've come to this point where instead of saying something's an opinion, people are saying, you know, that's my truth, right? This is my truth. And my truth, I'm gonna put that in quotes a little bit, is like saying this is my perspective on an experience. This is my perspective on what happened. And so we have to realize that if you're going through something, there's two people that are going through the exact same thing. You could pull those two people aside separately and get two completely different stories about what happened, even if they were both there experiencing the exact same thing at the exact same time, and it was just one experience, right? This person said this thing, that was my experience. But you could pull those people aside and that experience could sound two completely different ways: the take on the experience, the perspective on the experience, their experience in the experience, right? And part of it is what we're coming into it with. We're coming into it with our own background and experiences that are gonna weigh in on the perspective of this experience. And so what it feels like is it feels emotionally like what we experienced was real. What we experienced was the truth of that moment. But there's two people experiencing that moment and they're both sounding like totally different moments, right? Like maybe there's some key elements that are consistent, but the overall moment can feel like two totally different reads. And so I want to challenge us sometimes when we feel really heavily about something, that that situation could not specifically be the truth. It might just be our truth, it might just be our take on it. And I think sometimes what's happening when we're in the studio and we're wrapped up in these dancers all the time is that certain things about the dancers might feel like quote unquote truth, right? That dancer never works hard. That dancer always has a bad attitude, that dancer, this, that dancer, that. And there's a lot of layers to what that is. But some of the layers we see could be what the dancer is actually bringing into the room. Did they have this horrible time? Are their parents getting divorced? Do they have a terrible time at school today? Are they stressed about this, this, and this? And part of it's what we're bringing into the room. We are tired. We have these things going on in our own lives, and we just can't take one more pet attitude in here. Does it feel different in May than it does in September? Does it sit differently when we've gone month after month after month without a break? And so I want to challenge us there. We're gonna circle back to that. But another thing I want to challenge us with is the fact that we're just saying whatever we feel, right? And I think sometimes on social media specifically, we expect this level of perfection. And so I'm just gonna give an example in that we post reels all the time at Relative Motion Dance. We post reels all the time. And so one aspect of that is that we're taking sometimes content from a class, sometimes we're taking a dancer and just doing a brief exercise. So it could be like, hey, if your dancer's doing this, give this a shot. This is the before, this is the after, this is the cue that we use. Some of it is like if you're trying to get a higher releve, here's three exercises that could help get there. If you're working more on turnout, here's an exercise, save it for your next class, right? And so we're not in there saying like, hey, every dancer we use is perfect. Like nobody's perfect, right? So we're just showing something that has been helpful to us that we've used in studios and gotten results with. And we're just encouraging people, like, hey, if you want one more exercise, here's one that we love. But we're using young dancers through teens, through older teens, right? And maybe like it really told me. And so what happens is we'll get people who will comment, right? And you're commenting sure on our exercise, but that's fine for us. We post knowing this is public, anybody can write anything. However, just a reminder, sometimes it goes through my head, these people are also commenting on children. And so we'll get comments like her turnout's not that great, or look at her feet, you know, criticism towards the child. And I think that there is this level of disconnect that we're not thinking, we're actually saying that to a child. You think you're commenting to a company, but like that kid could easily see that video and be like, oh, okay, that's about me. And so I think are we starting to lose the lines here of criticism? And are we starting to take that criticism that we're so openly willing to do online to a child, basically? And also, is that starting to come into the studio, right? Like we've been in studios before, we're doing teacher certifications, this and that, where when the teachers start to practice on their dancers, there's a little edge of maybe passive aggressiveness, like maybe try using some train out on this exercise versus hey, I really want you to focus more on showing the green panel here. I know you have way more turnout. I love to see you engage this part of your leg more to find it. And so are we losing that awareness because it's become so easy on social media to just throw out some feedback, throw out a comment that could be, you know, helpful or hurtful. Is that comment encouraging? Is it helpful, or could it be considered hurtful? Is you could try using some turnout. Is that gonna get the dancer to understand differently? Or are they really just not trying, or do they not really understand what we're even asking them to do? And so if they're shutting down, we're getting frustrated, right? And so could we say things? Could we approach things a little differently? One thing I absolutely loved last week, if you guys caught my conversation with my dear friend Gina Piero, she'll be at our live event next month, but she's launching this incredible system at our live event. It's called Teaching for Transformation. And this is a system where you record yourself teaching, even if it's just a short clip, and you throw it into the system, and the system will give you all the positive things that you did teaching. The way you said this was really empowering, the way you give this example was really a powerful theme for the dancers. It really showed what they needed to do, and then also give some feedback that helps you elevate teaching to the next level. So when you use this wording, you could have shifted it a little bit in this way and this new wording. And so after we got off our recording last week, she was screen sharing some of this system to me. Whoa, it is so in-depth and so amazing. I just I was shook by it. I was so taken aback by how incredible it was. And so I'm pumped. I am pumped to try it on myself at the live event, but I'm also pumped for all of our attendees to get to record a little bit of their teaching and run it through the system because I do think as teachers, we're in the studio all the time, right? We're engaged, we're immersed. And it's easy sometimes to slip. It's easy sometimes to bring our experience and say, okay, if the dancer is doing this, this means they this, this, and this, right? And it's easy for the dancer to come in emotional or come in shut down, or even come in and something that we say feels like maybe something their teacher said and they shut down from it. And we just don't know that that's what's happening. And so we are going back and forth in this teacher-student relationship and we're not reading each other right. And what we're saying, maybe if it was tweaked just a tiny bit, would engage the dancer in a totally new way. And so I love it. I love the idea that small shifts can make big, powerful impacts. And so that is something that I'm just like so, so pumped about. Now, I want to shift back. I want to shift back to this idea of us losing track of what we're saying, how we're cueing, what energy we're putting out based on our perspective and our quote unquote truth, because our experience now is different than somebody else's. Now, our team has gone into studios that the teachers are like, they're not doing this, they're not doing that, we can't get them to hear. And we come in with a different energy because we're not in the studio every day. We're not having to deal with this, we're not seeing this all the time and not seeing the improvement, right? And so we come in with a new perspective. We also have our apparel, so it's a new tool for the dancers. It's a new way to shake them out of their current mindset, their current energy, and give them something that changes and elevates their mindset. And so we also don't have the thoughts. We're coming in with a different perspective. We know what the teachers have told us, but we're coming in with fresh eyes because we're not in there all the time, right? And so it does help. It does help for us to come in and cue things differently and also for the teachers to say, man, you know, okay, if we cue this slightly differently, this can be the results that the dancers have, which is awesome. With this, I want to give a real life example of something that I witnessed that I was kind of it put this idea into my mind even further. Is that I was watching this little dancer performing and she was really strong. She was young, so she had a lot of technical things that she needed to work on, but her raw talent and her work ethic was incredible. The way that she just wanted it so bad, but also she was coming in with a certain amount of understanding of her body that a lot of her kids her age don't have. Well, one teacher who'd worked with her was basically like, oh, she just doesn't know anything. She just doesn't know anything. And it blew me away because from an outside perspective, I was like, wow, this dancer has so much talent, she has so much potential. But this teacher who'd worked with her just one time was like, meh, you know? And so it reminded me of something that on our team is kind of like a we do not do this, you know, like anybody on our team, this is just something that's a hard line in the sand. We do not do it, is telling yourself about a dancer that there's nothing, right? You can't work with this, there's nothing, there's no potential, they don't understand anything because it divides, right? It puts this truth out there that is not based on truth. And so we at relative motion, we're like, you go in as a teacher, your job is to encourage them, it's to see their potential, it's to build their belief to the next level and it's to get them there. And so when a dancer shows up, they're showing up. They've already done that first step. They're there, right? And we'll have to address what their attitude is, what their commitment level is, all that stuff later. But they're there, right? And so the next step for us as educators is to say, okay, we have these dancers. This is their potential. Are they there yet? Nobody's to their full potential. We're all, even as adults, still learning and growing. So when we walk in, no dancer is to their full potential yet. Even the highest level dancer you work with still has things that they're working on. But then we walk into studios sometimes at super advanced dancers. We walk into studios sometimes and these dancers are fresh. They're brand new, right? And so we're just excited that they're in there, excited that they showed up and that they're ready. And then we assess the potential, like, okay, this is our goal for them today, based on what the studio told us that they're working on and what they want to see them improve in. And these are the dancers that are here. And where's their potential? What can we pull from them and inspire them to do? And what is that next level we can help them understand that they are able to do? And then how do we get them closer to it by the end of our time together? Now, sometimes we have an hour and a half with these dancers, sometimes we have multiple days with these dancers. So checking out their potential and saying, okay, they have the potential. How do we cue them there? How do we get them to understand this? How do we build the belief in them? And how do we make sure that they see results? Now, these results can be that they leave and they're excited because they know a little bit more about their body. They have more body awareness. The results could be that they actually are seeing the crazy difference in their technique, right? They've locked something in that they've never felt before and it's repeatable. They've locked something in that they never felt before and it's lighting up light bulbs about what else is possible. And so we go in and we're like, wow, this dancer, even if it's their second time coming into their studio, we're like, this dancer, man, they have this, this, and this going for them. When we leave, we're giving the teachers and the studio owners a rundown. Hey, these were their holdups. This is where mentally I felt them kind of shut down. This is where physically I felt them lock up. This is the difference when we cued this. This is the potential for next time. This is where we can look, the trajectory of the process, right? What it could look like in the next couple of months if we think this, this, and this. Just looking at it differently and seeing their potential, seeing where they lit up, seeing where they got excited. And so it bothers me when I see people look at a dancer, whether or not it looks like they have clear, obvious potential, or whether, like in the example I gave earlier, that dancer was clearly, clearly a great dancer and clearly had the potential to be phenomenal. And so to see that perspective, and it makes me think, okay, are we like too immersed in this online mindset where we see something, we say something, we see this tiny mistake and we're willing to say, and the whole exercise should be thrown away. We see this tiny thing go wrong over here, and that dancer has no turnout, even though it's like 176 degrees versus 180. I think we really need to temper ourselves in like what our perspective is, and that what we feel is not necessarily the truth. Can we regroup? Can we revamp? And so I want to encourage us in that. Right now we're getting to recital season. We either just had our recital or we're leading up to it. We're at the pinnacle of the year where all of our hard work comes together, we see it all on stage, the families see it all on stage. And so we should be taking a moment of pride from where our dancers started at the beginning of the year, where they are now, how much work we as teachers have put into getting to this moment. And then as the summer comes, where can we reset? Where did we get off? Where do we start to feel negative? Where did we either share too much online that was maybe critical, or started to bring that into the classroom? And if we can reset, if we can get to this point where we have the tools, then our dancers are gonna feel that and they're gonna relax and they're gonna be more inspired. And also when they leave, their parents are gonna feel that. What we sow into our dancers in the studio reaps a harvest of technically and emotionally how they are in the studio, but also emotionally what they take home. And so, how can we nurture them to feel the potential, to feel the belief, to feel inspired in the studio because that's the energy that leads them home and is the energy that makes them want to come back. And so I just want to encourage us there that it is possible for us all to step into another level of just encouragement, belief, changing what we do just a little bit. And if you have only been able to plug into this podcast, awesome. But if you want to jump into the studio with us, we have free classes all the time. Follow us on Instagram, relative motion dance, and we will always be bringing up new free classes we have. If you've been taking our free classes and you want to get in person, get in the space with us, we have an awesome teacher training RM Live coming up in Orlando, July 17th through 19th. So in just a month. And then we also come into the studio. We do teacher certifications, we do dance intensives, and it's anything from a day to a week, sometimes just an hour and a half if you're close to our team. So look us up, see if any of those things fit for you. Maybe even just start with the free class and then build on from there. But we are so excited to have you in our community, and I will talk to you again 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, lead, 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.