never limit yourself (Madison from Motiv8 Dance Movement)

a note from the interviewer, Prisha:

after this convo with madison, all i can say is that she KNOWS what’s up. everything she said about dancer mindset and genuinely believing you can do something is SO important, and i’m really glad we got to talk about it. because honestly, that’s a huge part of what helped me launch DanceVibes and danZING. if i didn’t believe in myself enough to take the leap, none of it would’ve happened. so if you’re a dancer who needs a reminder to believe in yourself and go for it, i genuinely think this episode is for you.

a note from Madison:

My teacher had told me, “You’re getting your standing back tuck today whether you think you are or not,” and I remember thinking, You’re crazy.

I am terrified of acro. I stay away from going backward. I stay away from going forward. I see people doing triple back tucks on Instagram and TikTok and think, Okay, that’s not for me.

But the first time I tried my standing back tuck, I told myself, “If I land it, I land it. If I land on my face, I land on my face. I have arms to catch me.”

I did not land on my feet.

I landed on my hands.

And I didn’t die.

Honestly, I came out of it so proud of myself. I hadn’t done the trick, but I had pushed through the fear and risked it. I had spent so much time telling myself, I’m never going to get this, and for once, I stopped saying that.

That has been my mindset lately: take the opportunities, take the risks, and soak up every moment I have in the studio.

Because dancing is so much more mental than people realize.

Non-dancers see us go into a studio, dance, and eventually walk onto a stage. They don’t see the months of rehearsals before that stage. They don’t see the mental blocks between a trick and a movement you can’t hit. They don’t see how many times you can stand there knowing your body is capable of something, but your mind is the thing stopping you.

I’ve gone through so many mental blocks. Sometimes I can’t hit a movement I’ve done before. Sometimes I can do five turns, and sometimes I can barely do two. That’s just how it is.

Right now, if I had to describe my dance life in three words, I would say turbulent, unexpected, and loving.

Turbulent because I finish school at 2:20, do homework, and then go straight to dance at 5:00 until 9:00. Then I wake up the next day and repeat it.

Unexpected because I’m doing so many styles and moving in ways I don’t usually move. I’ve been really interested in movement lately—how to make it more intricate, how to be sharper, how to actually think about the way I’m moving instead of just doing the steps.

And loving because I’m trying to find my love for dance again.

I’m a perfectionist. It’s not just something I deal with in dance. It’s basically my whole personality. Even in school, if I make one mistake, I can immediately feel myself getting blocked.

With dance, I used to think every single thing had to be perfect. I had to hit every move. I had to look perfect onstage. I had to make sure nobody could find anything wrong with me.

But sometimes, when you’re so focused on doing everything perfectly, you lose the reason you started dancing in the first place.

So I’ve been reminding myself that I’ve been dancing for ten years and dancing competitively for five. I know what I’m doing. I also know that some days are going to be better than others.

You have to understand that your body is your body. You have to become one with it. Some days, your body is going to let you do five turns. Some days, it’s only going to let you do two. That doesn’t mean you failed.

It means you listen.

I learned that even more after getting injured last year. I sprained two tendons and was competing a month later. I remember asking myself, Why am I not hitting these triples that I used to do perfectly? I had been able to do five turns, and suddenly I could barely do a triple.

When I watched my first performance after the injury, I thought, I look terrible. I look awful.

But I also felt proud of myself. I had gone through this huge setback and still performed to the fullest ability my body had at that moment.

That’s what I wish more dancers understood about coming back from an injury. You can’t always go full force immediately. I thought I would be able to jump right back into everything, no problem. That is not what happened.

It felt like I had missed an entire season, even though I hadn’t.

I actually injured myself in the middle of a production, and the next day I still did three dances. Dancers are constantly told to push through things, so sometimes we forget that being injured means we are injured.

You have to be able to say, “I can’t go full force right now, but I can take baby steps toward becoming the dancer I was.”

With physical therapy and training, your body can get back there. Maybe even better.

Dancers are athletes. We put our bodies through so much, but we don’t always get treated like athletes. We’re expected to keep going. Sometimes other athletes can get an injection and go back into a game. We don’t get that. We feel the setback, and we have to work our way back through it.

That’s why this season feels so exciting to me. It’s my first season with Motivate Dance Movement, and I’m excited for our first competition—to finally see these dances onstage and get those jitters out.

There’s really nothing like dancing onstage. You can’t explain it unless you’ve experienced it. The stage lights are usually blinding you, but somehow that makes it even more fun. Everyone is in makeup and costumes, and suddenly the dance feels completely different from how it felt in rehearsal.

I’m trying not to rush through this season. Competition can feel so far away at first—five months, then four months, then three—and suddenly it’s only a few weeks away. It can be daunting when you think too far ahead.

So right now, I’m trying to be present. I’m trying to make memories and enjoy the rehearsals instead of only thinking about the final score.

When I was younger, I used to get anxious waiting for competition season. I would think, What if I forget this? What if I make a mistake? What if something goes wrong?

I’ve gotten better at telling myself, “It’s okay. If I mess up, I mess up. There’s always the next one.”

There are only three judges sitting there, and you don’t know what any of them are thinking. You don’t know what styles they like. You can barely see them through the stage lights. One judge might love jazz, another might love musical theater, and another might love lyrical. You can’t dance to please every possible opinion.

At the end of the day, it really is an opinion.

I used to get offstage with a high gold and think, I danced my best. Eventually, I started bringing that mindset into every dance. The high gold became a platinum. The platinum became a placement. That placement eventually led to my first first-overall.

Not because I suddenly became perfect. I just started focusing on doing my best instead of trying to control what three people thought of me.

That doesn’t mean critiques aren’t useful. I want to know what I can improve. But if I gave everything I had, I can listen to the critique and think, Okay. You gave me feedback. Whatever. Brush it off.

I don’t want to leave a rehearsal thinking, I could have given more.

I want to leave knowing, That was the best I could have danced today.

That’s also why I keep a little duck in my dance bag.

A dance teacher gave it to me, and now I take it everywhere. Competitions, rehearsals, anywhere I feel nervous—it comes with me. I don’t really know why it helps, but it calms me down. It’s like my good-luck charm.

Backstage, I can be the most anxious person. I’ll be fidgeting with my costume, and then I’ll put my duck next to my water bottle and think, The duck’s with me. I got this.

Every dancer needs something like that.

I also wish there were an app that focused more on dancers’ mindsets. There’s an app called 8Counts coming out that looks amazing, and I’m excited for it because it will help with tricks and movement. But I would love to see something that helps dancers with the mental side of everything.

Because the mental side is everything.

Onstage, I remind myself that most of the people watching don’t understand what dancers do. They see a step and a reach. They don’t see the flow, the sharpness, the emotion, or everything it took to make that step look easy.

So I tell myself, They’re going to judge me anyway. I might as well do this because I love it.

I’ve been in studios that didn’t have the best environment, and that mindset has helped me. Don’t hold back because someone might judge you. Don’t come out of rehearsal thinking, I could have done more.

Rehearsal is where you’re allowed to mess up.

I’ve fallen on my butt out of turns more times than I can count. Once, I was doing a round-off into a jump to prepare for a round-off back tuck, and I landed flat on my back in front of everybody.

I do not like round-offs into tricks. Other people will say, “I love round-off back tucks,” and I’m thinking, You like running into a trick? I feel like I have too much force when I do that.

But when you fall in rehearsal, you have to laugh it out. That’s what rehearsal is for.

Dancers are always told, “Rehearsals are where you mess up. The stage is where you need to be good.” But sometimes we hear that so much that we still feel like we’re not allowed to mess up anywhere.

We think, I have to be perfect. I can’t mess up. I don’t know who’s watching me.

But do they really care that you messed up?

No.

A judge might tell you that you didn’t point your foot or that you bent your knee. That feedback can help, but it doesn’t define the entire performance. If I gave everything I had, I can hear the critique, learn from it, and keep going.

The biggest thing I’m still learning is that my words can either be my strongest ally or my biggest setback.

Don’t compare yourself to other dancers. Everybody is on their own journey. Trust the process.

You are good enough.

It doesn’t matter if you just started dancing or if you’ve been dancing for more than ten years. You are good enough to be in that dance room, that audition, or that competition.

You really are.