Your costume fits perfectly. You have memorized every arabesque and pirouette in your routine. In practice, you have performed this dance flawlessly. So, why do your knees shake and your palms sweat as you wait to take the stage?

Nervousness before a performance is something that most dancers experience, not to mention many athletes, public speakers, and even professionals like teachers and chief executive officers. Even the most experienced and well-prepared dancers can feel nervous before a performance.

Beat pre-performance butterflies with the right preparation.

Causes of Performance Jitters

When you feel nervous before going onstage, your body is reacting to the mental and physical stress of performing. All dancers understand that practice and performance cause physical stress—an hour of performance takes a lot of energy! But the mental stress of performing may be more difficult for a young dancer to understand and manage. When you perform, you are trying to beat your own expectations for your performance as well as the expectations of others. Even if you are alone on-stage, you are competing.

Competition in performance causes mental stress. And this stress causes your body to release adrenaline. Adrenaline is a hormone that makes you more alert and makes your body get ready to use energy. But, it can also make you feel like running away from a performance.

The Pros and Cons of Stress

Professionals in sports psychology actually agree that some amount of stress is good. This is because adrenaline can improve your performance. In fact, if you experience no stress at all, you might perform poorly because your body won’t be ready to use its energy.

Most dancers who challenge themselves won’t be lacking in adrenaline, though. Instead, most dancers will experience too much stress. This can decrease your fine motor skills and make it hard to concentrate.

Quit Your Worrying

When you’ve spent months preparing for a performance, it’s natural to worry about how well you’ll do and what the audience and your instructors will think of you. But this worry can turn into anxiety.

Anxiety, according to some psychologists, is caused when you worry about things you cannot control. This will cause you to think negatively and focus on things that might go wrong.

The first way to reduce stress is to reduce anxiety. And to reduce anxiety, you must not imagine yourself failing. You have to imagine yourself doing well!

Tips to Stop Stress

Dancers and other athletes learn to control anxiety and manage stress through practice. Sports psychologists, athletes, and even public speakers have discovered the following tricks for reducing anxiety and stress before a performance.

To reduce stress before a performance:

• Be prepared. Although you’ve practiced for months, there are other ways to prepare yourself. Get a good sleep on the night before a performance. Make sure that your tights, dance shoes, and anything else you’ll need are ready.
• Be early. If possible arrive at the performance space early. Explore the stage before the audience and other dancers arrive.
• Be focused. Stop worrying about personal problems like your math exam or the fight you had with your best friend. Focus on how much you love dancing.
• Be healthy. Pay attention to what you eat before dancing. Don’t have caffeinated drinks like soda and coffee for several hours before a performance. Not only can these cause stress, but if they make your muscles shaky, you’ll begin worrying about how well you can perform.
• Be positive. Imagine yourself dancing. Close your eyes and see yourself completing each move in your routine, finishing perfectly.
• Be calm. Find a quiet place, close your eyes, and breathe deeply.

As you gain more experience as a dancer, you’ll learn how to manage stress. Before your next performance, remember the tips in this article, and you’ll stop anxiety before it takes over.

With each performance, you’ll get better at managing nervousness. With practice, you’ll even learn how to use stress in a good way. Eventually, you’ll find that the “butterflies” you usually feel in your stomach before performing are no longer such pests.

How do you manage stress before a performance?

Do you stress out? Do you have any tips for managing nervousness?

Image Sources:

• gretchen robinette on Flickr