why you should start packing sunglasses in your dance bag (Elizabeth from Motiv8 Dance Movement)
a note from the interviewer, Prisha:
all i can say is that packing sunglasses in your dance bag is ICONIC.
it was so fun talking to elizabeth and learning more about how she thinks about dance and confidence as a whole, because i genuinely think confidence is SO important for dancers.
honestly, i don’t think i would’ve started posting about DanceVibes or even started building danZING if i didn’t have the confidence that dance has given me.
so this conversation really resonated with me, and i’m SO excited for you guys to hear it.
The Work Behind the Few Minutes on Stage
One of the biggest misconceptions about dancers, Elizabeth says, is that people do not always understand how much work happens before a performance.
“People don't realize, like, how much work actually goes into dance,” she says. “They see us perform for, like, a few minutes, but they don't see, like, the hard work that goes into it and the rehearsals, the conditioning, the stretching, and all the details that goes into it.”
That work does not disappear just because the audience cannot see it. Sometimes, she says, dancers are tired and still have to show up and give their all. The performance may be short, but the preparation behind it is not.
That is also why the idea that dance is not a sport bothers her. The strength, stamina, repetition, precision, and conditioning are all part of what makes dance physically demanding. The stage is where the work becomes visible, not where the work begins.
Why Dance Friends Can Be Your Biggest Inspiration
When Elizabeth was asked what she is currently obsessed with in the dance world, she did not name a celebrity artist or choreographer. Her answer was more personal: her friends.
“My friends are such good posters and they do so much good in creating, so I really love watching their videos and they inspire me,” she says.
That answer says something important about the way she sees dance. The people around you do not have to be competition in the most negative sense of the word. They can also be the people who make you want to create, try something new, and keep growing.
Dance can feel competitive, especially when dancers are auditioning, competing, or waiting for a limited number of spots. But Elizabeth points to another side of the experience: having “amazing dance friends” you can learn and grow from every day.
The studio is not only a place to be evaluated. It can also be a place to be inspired.
How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other Dancers
For new competitive dancers, Elizabeth’s first piece of advice is direct: “I would say don't compare yourself to other dancers.”
She is also honest about how difficult that advice can be to follow. She started dancing later than some of the dancers around her, and she says she used to compare herself “all the time,” especially because she dances with older girls.
So what changed?
Elizabeth started shifting her focus away from how perfect she thought she should be and toward her own improvement. Instead of asking why she did not have the same trick as somebody else, she began asking whether her own trick was better than it had been the day before.
That is a small change in wording, but it can create a much healthier way to train. Comparing yourself to a dancer with a completely different history, age, or amount of training does not give you a fair measurement. Looking back at your own work gives you information you can actually use.
Her advice is practical: listen to your teachers, take their corrections, and keep practicing. You are going to mess up—“like everybody”—and that is okay. The goal is not to make every mistake disappear before you begin. The goal is to keep learning through them.
“Everyone learns something at a different pace,” Elizabeth says. “Just have fun and enjoy the experience.”
Elizabeth’s Unsettling Solo and the Story Behind It
This season, Elizabeth is preparing a solo to “Human,” a piece she describes as creepy and mysterious. It is a different kind of performance from what she has done before, and she has been working especially on her facial expressions and on getting inside the character.
She does not want the solo to feel simply scary. She wants it to feel unsettling, with moments that are strong and powerful. That distinction gives the piece a more specific point of view: the goal is not just to look creepy, but to make the audience feel that something is not quite right.
She is also excited to compete it.
For Elizabeth, the solo is not only a sequence of steps to perform accurately. The character and the story are central. In a group dance, the storytelling is shared across multiple dancers. In a solo, one person has to carry the entire world of the piece.
Getting Into Character: Pretending to Be Human
The most memorable part of Elizabeth’s solo concept is the idea at its center: she is an alien pretending to be human.
“My dance teacher told me is I'm trying—I'm, like, an alien type, and I'm pretending to be human,” Elizabeth explains.
That gives her a specific way to approach the choreography. She is trying to adapt to what humans do and fit in like humans. She is not supposed to look completely comfortable right away. She has to discover the world as she moves through it.
Her teacher suggested practicing moments of nervousness—those beats where the character thinks, “Whoa, I don't know what I'm doing,” followed by moments when she starts getting the hang of it.
That is a useful way to think about performance quality. “Getting into character” does not have to mean inventing a complicated backstory that never reaches the audience. It can mean choosing a clear situation and letting that situation affect the way you look, react, pause, and move.
For Elizabeth’s solo, the situation is wonderfully strange: an alien learning how to act human. The facial expressions and transitions can then support that idea instead of feeling like extra performance layered on top of the choreography.
Advice for Dancers Performing Their First Solo
Elizabeth’s advice for dancers who are nervous about a first solo is not to obsess over perfection.
“Definitely it's to have fun,” she says. “Don't stress over doing the perfect leg or doing a really good jump or a trick or all that.”
That does not mean preparation is unimportant. It means preparation should lead to performance, not prevent it. A dancer can spend so much time worrying about whether every technical moment will be perfect that they forget to communicate anything.
Elizabeth encourages soloists to focus on enjoying the experience, leaving it all onstage, and having the best time they can. She describes being onstage and having these opportunities as a privilege.
Stress is normal. It does not mean a dancer is unprepared or incapable. But, in her view, fun matters more than letting stress take over the performance.
A solo gives one dancer the entire stage, but it also gives that dancer room to make the audience feel something. The goal is not only to prove that you can execute the hardest moment. It is to commit to the whole experience.
A Dance Day That Starts at School and Ends at the Studio
Elizabeth’s typical dance day starts early. She goes to school, comes home, eats something, gets ready, and then heads to the studio for several hours.
At the studio, she may be learning choreography, training, and taking different classes. She is also spending time with her friends. Then she goes home late and starts the process again the next day.
It is a full schedule, and she is tired by the end of it. But that tiredness does not cancel out the joy she gets from dancing.
“I feel like it's—I'm so tired, but dance is, like, the best part of my day,” she says. “So I'm, like, happy that I get to do it.”
That balance is one of the most honest parts of her description. Dance can take a lot out of you and still be the thing you most look forward to. The long hours are not enjoyable because they are easy. They are enjoyable because they are filled with training, music, friends, rehearsals, and a sense of doing something that matters to you.
Why the Hardest Days Can Still Be the Best Days
To someone outside dance, spending several hours at a studio after school may sound exhausting—or even boring. Elizabeth has heard people react that way when she tells them how much she trains.
Her answer is simple: “No, like, I love it.”
The appeal is difficult to explain to someone who has never been part of that environment. It is the shared experience of rehearsing, learning, getting tired, and picking one another up. It is eating dinner on the car ride home. It is being with people who understand why you would choose to spend so much of your day in a studio.
There is a particular kind of joy in a demanding routine when the routine is connected to something you care about. For Elizabeth, the hours are not just hours. They are part of the life she wants to be living.
Using Video to Track Progress and Fix Mistakes
Elizabeth documents her dance training mostly through video. She films herself working on new skills or new choreography and looks back to see how much she has improved.
That gives her two ways to use the same recording. First, she can compare where she is now with where she started. Second, she can slow the video down and identify exactly what went wrong and how to fix it.
“I also love using videos because I get to slow it down and look at what I messed up on specifically and how to fix it,” she says.
For dancers, video can be an especially useful training tool because memory is not always precise. You may feel like you hit a position, finished a movement, or stayed on the music, but the recording can show you what actually happened. It can also show improvement that is hard to notice day to day.
Elizabeth also enjoys posting her training because she loves making content and bringing people along the way. Sharing the process does not have to mean pretending every practice video is perfect. It can mean allowing people to see the work behind the final performance.
Getting Comfortable With Watching Yourself Dance
Watching yourself dance can be uncomfortable. Even dancers who are confident in the studio may cringe when they see a video of themselves.
Elizabeth does not try to pretend that feeling never happens. Instead, she uses it as a reason to look more closely.
“If I don't like it, I'm like, ‘Well, I'm gonna fix it,’” she says. “If I don't like something, I'm not gonna be like, ‘Oh, well.’ Like, I'm gonna fix it.”
She also points out that everybody finds something they do not like in their own videos. “Nobody's perfect.”
That mindset turns self-consciousness into a training decision. Rather than labeling the entire video as embarrassing and deleting it, she asks what specifically needs to become cleaner. Is it a line, a transition, a facial expression, a timing issue, or a trick that needs more work?
The point is not to watch yourself harshly. It is to watch yourself honestly enough to keep improving.
The Five Pairs of Sunglasses in Elizabeth’s Dance Bag
Every dancer seems to have one strange item in their bag, and Elizabeth’s answer is hard to beat: five pairs of sunglasses.
She does not need even one pair for a specific routine. They are simply there. Scattered around her dance bag. Waiting for a future moment when they might become important.
“Maybe one day I'll, like, need to save the world or something,” she says.
It is a funny detail, but it also feels very true to the reality of dance bags. They collect random objects because dancers are always preparing for the possibility that something unexpected will happen. A costume issue, an accessory, a last-minute idea, or—apparently—the need to save the world.
Elizabeth’s philosophy is essentially: do not take them out. You never know.
The Dream Dance App Elizabeth Would Build
If Elizabeth could create a tool specifically for dancers, she would want one place where dancers could upload a video of themselves dancing, a piece of choreography, or a trick and receive feedback.
She imagines being able to ask questions such as, “How do I do this?” or “What is this?” and get an answer. She would also want the platform to store videos in organized folders.
For example, she could create a folder for her solo, “Human,” and keep every related video there. Then, when she wanted to review the solo, she could open the folder and look through the progress from one recording to the next.
The idea solves a very real dancer problem: a phone full of videos that are difficult to organize. Training clips, choreography videos, rehearsal footage, and performance takes can quickly disappear into a camera roll.
A tool that combined feedback with organized progress tracking would help dancers do two things Elizabeth already values: learn from mistakes and see how far they have come.
Love Yourself, Love Dancing, and Remember Your Why
At the end of the conversation, Elizabeth offered a short piece of advice that brings all the other topics together:
“To love yourself, like, love dancing and always remember your why.”
That reminder matters because competition season can make dance feel like a constant measurement. A dancer may start thinking about scores, tricks, placements, comparisons, corrections, or the next goal and lose track of the original reason they wanted to dance.
Remembering your why does not make the hard work disappear. It gives the hard work meaning. It can help you return to the studio after a discouraging day, keep perspective when someone else is ahead, and enjoy the stage instead of letting nerves take over.
For Elizabeth, the answer is not to stop caring about improvement. It is to improve without losing the love that brought you there.