#68: 3 Most Misunderstood Dance Competition Mistakes

What you think is helping… might be what’s holding you back.

Clean technique? Check. Power tricks? Check. But still not placing? You might be making one of these 3 super common—but wildly misunderstood—competition mistakes.

In this episode, Brittany breaks down the real reasons dancers get stuck, why “more classes” isn’t the answer, and what to do if you want judges to actually remember your solo.

🎯 Topics include:

• Why over-cleaning might be holding you back
• The difference between power and purpose in your dancing
• How to train smarter (not just harder)
• What we actually work on inside Fame Academy

📝 Download the free worksheet:
 👉 brittanynoltimier.com/68

💛 Join the Fame Academy Waitlist:
 👉 https://portal.cfpatheater.com/fame-academy

Transcript

Brittany Noltimier (00:00)

Your super clean solo could be the reason why you're not placing where you want or even winning.

Clean doesn't necessarily mean impactful. It's clean. That's really important.

And today I'm breaking down the three most misunderstood mistakes dancers make at competition.

and how to fix them. hello, and welcome back to Dance Colleges and Careers. I'm your host, Brittany Noltimier and this is the podcast where we talk about all things dance, colleges, careers, and of course, that competition as well. Today, we are talking about the three most misunderstood competition mistakes and how you can fix them. What you think is helping really might be what's holding you back.

It's insane that I'm even talking about this because we work all season long to try to be perfect, to try to clean, clean, clean. And I just came back from Nationals. It's summertime now and it's a very interesting time because now we're tired of running our solos. We're tired of doing the dances from last season. We're ready to move on, but yet we still need to practice. We still need to bring our best foot forward in these routines

So this first mistake might be kind of frustrating and it is mistake number one, over cleaning without intention. Yeah. So this is when we over clean it so much that we dancers try to be perfect and it causes us to look a little bit robotic. Have you ever experienced that?

Sometimes we just keep cleaning, cleaning, cleaning, trying to be perfect at every little thing, that it can start to take away from where we started. The choreographer's original intent of style, character, and reason behind the dance. We get so caught up in the competition side of things, which is very important, but that is what can take us...

out of the running for that top position because in the end you still need to make your audience feel something. You still need to stand out from everybody else. Your age doing very similar dance steps, tricks, everything that we're working on because that is, that's how it works. We work on specific skills. Once we achieve those, then we work on the next ones. And that's awesome. That's what it's supposed to be. So how can you

Perfect your routine without it looking robotic. is where it can be super duper clean, but starts to become more empty because it is all about the precision, about the exactness of the movement on the music. But then sometimes the things that really suffer are the personality and connection to the song.

that artistry.

want to share a story with you from when I worked at Disney World. So I did a show in Magic Kingdom, Orlando, Florida, called The Totally Tomorrowland Christmas, and it rocked. It rocked. Sometimes as dancers, we can be in roles where it's a lot of step touching or background dancing to the singers or just filling the stage to make the pictures beautiful. And that's awesome. But this show was created for the dancers. We danced our faces off and

We got to do many different styles. I'm just so fortunate to have gotten to do that show. So I did it back in 2018. And it's interesting because by that time the show had already been out seven or eight years. I don't remember. It went up to do 10 or 11 years.

was so clean. It was so clean that the year I came in, the choreographer decided to make some changes because she felt that in no longer, and this is the wonderful Miss Cindy, she felt that it no longer like had that, you know, joy of Christmas, the style of the jive. It was getting a little bit too robotic almost. And that wasn't wrong. They were doing exactly what they were taught, but she wanted to liven it up because

It had been at the park for several years and now she wanted a little bit more fun in the style back, which made some of the dancers extremely uncomfortable because they were so used to the precision and exactness at Disney World because that is what they expect from you, which I praise. I'm so grateful for. I'm so grateful for that in my training that they expected perfection because that gives you purpose. They reminded me

how important everything we do is on stage and for a new audience every single time. So even when you start to get tired, it doesn't matter. we still have fun on stage, of course, but there is no room for error. And that mentality totally made me up everything I do. know, when things started to get fun and comfortable,

That wasn't when I was doing my best work. I was when Disney taught me how important everything we do is

And that even though it's dancing or I hate to say this, but even though we're just dancing, my bosses or Disney world or our audiences expect perfection from us. No mistakes. Everything is on video. Right. And I just grew a lot with that mentality, but I loved coming in that year when she wanted to bring back the style of the jive that had a lot more.

bounce and energy through the body and she wanted us to become more individuals rather than robotic Disney matching dancers. So I just think that's kind of cool because Disney meant to be the same every day. There's thousands of people who see you perform the same show every day and it should look exactly the same to them.

It's not about this person on stage, it's about the show, it's about telling the story. And you fit into that story with this life, with this character. And I just really loved that I got to see that switch, even though it made some people a little bit uncomfortable, you know, because nobody likes change,

she informed us that it was to bring out a little bit more life and style in that Christmas show and bring more joy to everybody who saw it. And so I'm just really excited to have gotten to be a part of

So even at Disney World, where it was perfect and it's supposed to be perfect, she tried to get us out of that shell to become ourselves again, rather than just robots or the exact precision Disney machines that we could have been. So even in that professional Disney setting, it's still really important. So in your competition piece, when you start to get so familiar and parts of it start making you feel like a robot, or maybe you even go through the routine and you weren't even

like paying attention, you know it like the back of your hand,

That's when we can really make that mistake number one of over cleaning without intention.

so in the Fame Academy that gets started in October, we help you shape your style, your piece, how you learn, so that it's captivating every time. Let's move on to mistake number two. Relying on tricks or technique. This sounds hysterical. You're like,

I train every single day to have these tricks, to have this technique. What are you talking about? It's a mistake to rely on them. So you You can have  flawless technique, but if you don't have presence or musicality... this is musicality and stage presence. If you don't have a story, if your technique is not connecting to the music, then it will still lie flat. You can turn eight times.

But if there's no musicality behind the turn, it's like, why are we even doing it? Okay. So if you are a great turner and you're going, ba ba ba ba ba ba, make sure that you're using your musicality. Yeah. If you have these exquisite tricks, make sure that the landing hits on an accent in the music. Make sure that it's there very specifically so that it doesn't feel awkward to the audience and not almost like, okay, that was cool. They're strong. That's nice.

But, but the musicality creates that connection that you'll feel with the music you want to bring your audience in, you want to lay it out easy for them. You don't want them to go, wow, that looks hard. You want to, for the untrained eye, you want them to go.

Wow, this is really beautiful. Everything is cohesive, makes sense, and that's where your musicality ties your tricks don't match the music or tell a story, they'll fall flat.

even if you are exquisitely trained, that's awesome. You'll place, you'll be up there. But if your tricks are like random or just over the top of the music, not worrying about the accents, not worrying about the dynamics in the music, it's just gonna feel awkward. It's gonna feel like you're competing with the music rather than your choreography is in harmony with your music.

Yes, yes. Okay, so mistake number three is thinking that more classes will equal more results. We talked a lot about this in episode number 67. So if you wanna go more in depth on this, check out number 67, and that's where I teach you how to take a stronger class.

So just because you're busy doesn't mean that you're getting better. Just because you spend every day at the dance studio doesn't mean that you're getting better on stage. You might be there helping with little kids classes and just kind of standing around. If you're helping with little kids classes, learning through that, learning as an educator, learning from a different point of view, then absolutely it will help you get better. But if you're helping little kids classes like this, just waiting for it to be over or waiting for

the money you might get a reimbursement from that, then that's not going to help you personally on the stage. So just because you're busy does not mean you're going to grow more. So you grow by taking class with intention and just by doing everything with when you get your feedback from the judges,

Listen to it with an open mind. Listen to it with better intention rather than just needing to hear the, good job, you're such a good dancer. Listen to the overall, what they want you to do. where did they see your potential? And try to take that big picture with you to grow in everything you do.

So this is when we need to work smarter, not harder.

So I grew up in a small town where I took all the dance classes. We would travel and go to workshops and intensives wherever I could outside of town. like traveling from North Dakota was really difficult, took a long time. wished that back then somebody would have given me a clearer roadmap on how to work smarter, not harder. And quite honestly, I think one of the ways that actually

did work for me was after going to some ballet intensives because being engulfed in ballet every single day and all these classes that you usually are like, but I'd rather be in jazz and musical theater that taught me how to get more out of my classes, how to work smarter in class.

Even if the rest of the class is maybe not working very hard, maybe they don't pick up the combinations or they perform it just very sloppily. Cause yeah, I could relate to that. you, but I cared a lot. It was the unpopular thing to do, but I cared a lot. And I took the lessons that I learned at my ballet intensives, brought it back to my studio so that all these extra things I learned, I was able to do a lot of self-teaching. So I wasn't only learning technique at

inside ballet class or inside those specific ballet intensives. took those. I took those lessons and figured out how to bring it back home and dig deep for all the ballet technique in all of my classes, not just while standing at the bar.

Cause when you do that, you have a lot of wasted time. If you're not thinking about your ballet technique in jazz class, then what are you doing? You're going to be falling over and flopping around a lot. So that is one of the ways where I at a younger age learned how to work smarter because the intensiveness of these lessons were always going on in my brain. So if even if the teacher didn't say rib cage in, I could do the checklist and remind myself rib cage in and

all the way down. I do know there was a time in my, my sister Bambi, she came back from college and she was watching me in dance class.

I remember I was trying to flatten the front of my hips so much that I was overdoing it and actually kind of hurting the front of my hips and my friend next to me being, cause I'd be like, ⁓ and she'd be like, what? Just stop, you don't have to do it that much. I'm like, no, I do, I'm working hard.

learned later was overdoing it because I was excited my sister was there watching,

I was excited. My sister was there to watch me and I was overdoing it and overcompensating. ⁓ but I, I just really took my feedback to heart and I knew that I had been working with a sway back for so long and I was, it was a technical correction. was really working on, which is why I'm so intense about helping you fix your sway back as well. because it took me a lot longer to master that and just strengthen those lower abs.

So I'm here for you. you have a sway back, wanna, would love to help you catch that younger than I was when I finally was able to help support those lower abs.

So mistake number three, thinking more classes equals better results. We have proved that to be wrong. So running your solo 100 more times won't fix it if you're not making changes. Running your solo 100 times will work if you are not strong enough or if you don't have the stamina yet to get through your piece. So that's why we can't just mark our dance all the time. We actually have to

be strong enough to do the choreography the choreographer has given us. If you can't do that, you gotta keep doing your piece. And that happens a lot in the fall. That's why we run it so much. You can't just learn it and be like, yeah, I'll do that on stage. No, you have to learn it, get conditioned for your piece, and then We do this outside homework that we do in the fame academy. Yes, we absolutely do it. And even if you follow along with so many other things, can latch onto some of those assignments.

The way we talk about musicality, stage presence, the formulas you can use so that you don't have to feel awkward in class and on stage with your facials and you can finally start performing to your full potential.

So remember, people remember you by the way you make them feel. Okay, so technique is the foundation, but if you don't make your audience feel something, what's the point?

Thank you so much for being here today on this episode of Dance Colleges and Careers.

got a free download for you guys. Just go to brittanynoltimier.com/68 and you can grab this free worksheet to help you see what's holding you back at competition. So make sure you go grab that at brittanynoltimier.com/68

absolutely love these chats with you and I can't wait to see where you go from here. So be brave, tell your story and own the stage.