From dancer to dancer, let’s be real. Audition season is the most emotionally stressful time of a young dancer’s life, and you’re sure to come out with some fresh emotional wounds, if not some re-opened ones. It’s not all doom and gloom, as I am a huge proponent of taking every experience as an opportunity for growth and becoming! Let’s chat about it.
When you enter an audition season, there are often big expectations, high stakes, and a lot of pressure, internally or externally. You may feel a huge desire and pressure to succeed, to just get SOMETHING, to prove that you can do it, and to rekindle some faith and passion you have for dance. That is all completely normal. However, this doesn’t do good things for our mind, body, or spirit. As a dancer, if you approach every audition with this fear-based motivation, you’ll likely find yourself giving desperate energy, feeling needy, and not dancing as your best self, but spending the better part of the audition looking at and comparing yourself to other dancers.
We all know the audition part is hard, but what’s more challenging to hold emotionally is the rejection. My advice would be as follows:
Expect rejection at some point.
It’s not a reflection of you as a dancer or a human. It’s not because you ‘weren’t good enough’ or ‘they didn’t like you’. Sure, maybe that was part of it unfortunately—it’s a very subjective career path—but more often than not, there are no available job opportunities, contracts are difficult to share due to visas, etc., and maybe their company is full, or their budget is restricted. This is reality, so I encourage you to use your logical brain, rather than the emotional one.
Detach from what you’re making rejection mean about you.
When we feel rejection, it initially hurts, but what hurts us more and lingers in our spirit is the story we attach to it, what we make it mean about us. For instance, if you have low self-esteem and you receive a piece of rejection, you may then use that as evidence to confirm a deep-seated belief that ‘you were never good enough anyway’. This is NOT true, but a self-imposed story. Replace the story with a more positive and encouraging one.
Improve your self-worth and self-value.
Look for all the areas in your life where you feel competent, worthy, and good, as a dancer and a human. Remind yourself of your little wins every day, remind yourself of your value outside of dance (like being a good friend or being generous and kind to others). When you feel positive outside of dance, it removes some of the sting.
Take care of yourself, physically, mentally, and emotionally.
It is likely you’ll have to sit with a fair few difficult emotions after negative feedback or rejection, so make sure you’re taking care of the human, not just the dancer. Go out for your favourite meal, have a bath and watch some Netflix, go for a walk with your bestie.
Remind yourself more than anything that if it wasn’t meant for you, you wouldn’t want it. Everyone’s journey in dance will look different, so the way you get to the destination will be different too. Your journey is character building; challenge breeds strength, and you need a lot of that to be a good dancer. Take care of yourself and good luck! 
Lucy Christodoulou
This article was featured in the Dance Australia Audition Insight Issue Apr/May/Jun 2025