Warning: This article may pivot your fouetté back around and you may feel angry or highly triggered.
Just brace yourself and dive if you dare!

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Most highly successful athletes have one.
Every star swears by their life coach and how they can keep the grounds during rough times and keep track with directions.
It’s completely liberating receiving support.

In the entrepreneurial world, this is a norm already.
You can hardly spark amazing success without having someone to turn to when riding the highs and lows of the journey. Someone to keep you accountable and thriving when your emotional and spiritual growth feels rough.

Why is it that dancers and performers don’t have this yet?
Facing hardships alone, really isn’t easy.
I found they often they feel overwhelmed or lose focus: robotic running from audition to teaching position, invest all their money into photoshoots, rent, costumes and classes. And still end up with low scratching bank accounts.

I lived in London for nearly 8 years as a dance teacher, and some of my personal friends would often complain about the low points and desperation during their careers.
Being paid peanuts for high impact energy work, hours on end on sets or sniffy studios.
Doing acting jobs rather than dreamjobs, because the bills needed to be paid.
Accepting collaborations trading their talent over so-called exposure rather than straight £££.
And these were talented artists, working hard and “doing the right thing”.

Many a time did I converse with recently graduated musical college students and so-called expert performers alike and here’s what I noticed:
they still were trying to fit the “ideal” that was completely focused externally ( sub-consciously pleasing past teachers’ or other dance friends’ dreams rather than their own, trying to prove anyone wrong or how they could “make it anyway”, following the pre-cut-cookie-shape rather than their soul calling).
Do auditions until you drop.
Run the hunger marathon daily and end up as a number in the discarded crowd over and over.

I mean, the list is endless.

If you’re already getting the jobs and feel through and through amazing about your success, you may remember a time when you didn’t and it is important to acknowledge what exactly you changed to adapt to this hurdle.

If you don’t, you will get your intuition re-activated. Hold your tights!

The point is:
why is it that dancers don’t receive proper mentoring during their studies and overall support there after?
Why is this not a priority?

You are a human being with emotions and lessons before being a performer.

And I’m sorry to say, not even the best-meaning teachers will have time to invest in your emotional growth, as they are probably doing the same crazy run as everyone else in the industry.

Just scratching the surface of studies around how thoughts and emotions trigger actions and results should be enough to shake our booties in the right direction.

Possibly, our industry is still one of the lowest paid in the entertainment world maybe not because we are worthless and not deserving to be paid more (no, the excuse there’s no money for all is not valid, sorry!), but because we keep accepting this messed up treatment aka our boundaries are weak AF.

And maybe the reason why you wanted to dance or perform in the first place is out of alignment now: your integrity as a human being with a birthright to freedom and expansion, deserving to be valued and celebrated all the way is just not happening, because you’re not demanding it.
And that this is what is actually depleting your dancer’s heart!
The fact that the industry is ruthless and there’s not enough jobs to go around is just not enough to keep you running on the hamster wheel.

Maybe that toxic friendship or relationship is draining you and actually affecting you and your success so much more than you imagine.

Perhaps your injuries are a sign that you are subliminally sabotaging yourself and your career, because you’re actually afraid of being powerful.

Am I ruffling some feathers!?

I hope so!
And you may not agree or feel triggered or angry, which is fine, but just allow yourself to play with this idea.
You can always drop it after if it’s not your truth. I know you’re ready to have your mind challenged.

Dancers have brains that are highly sensitive and intuitive. We’re wired to constantly scan our external world (perform for an audience, project to be seen, adjust their technique in the mirror for hours on end, even when they’re resting their brains are still dancing). Truly a dancer’s mind is trained very differently to any other human: monitoring body, sound, feelings, projections, constantly scanning their inner and their external world 24/7,

Just stop for a second and chew on this.

Did you ever notice this?

Now let’s get back on track to our title:

what if you are simply to create a new paradigm with dance and your art?
what if the reason to dance is actually the ultimate connection to your divine essence and you simply forgot?
what if you could never fail?
what if if nobody would criticise you or reject you in any way?

what would you do?
do differently?

leaving this BLANK for you to stop and let the answer come to you.

Well….
THAT my dear is what you should actually be doing.

Stop wasting money on your next random training class or photo portfolio because everyone else is running that way.
Maybe you were born for wilder and bolder things?
Or maybe you desire to show up to yourself and the next generations of dancers to come, to step into your footprints, because nobody else dared to question this type of success-orientation (which may work for 1%) and you are among those to create their own revolution.

Maybe you want to create a platform and put dance on a pedestal where it has never been before? use the artform in completely reinvented ways?

I can assure you, so many others ACTUALLY want the same as you.

You’re never really alone with a desire, because the universe trusts you and many others with the same idea.
Your dream or idea was never actually yours, The universe just comes knocking at your door with it and it’s up to you to take it or leave it.

I know I’m speaking straight into your soul, and if you’re ready to have your feathers shimmied, you just KNOW that that’s what truly moves you. This was the actual reason why you were born a dancer, no mistakes ever.

It never really was about the money or the next paying job.
It actually is all about what you came here to shift in yourself and in the society we live in.

It never was even about being the next star’s backing dancer.
Maybe you’ve come here to reclaim the power dance has had for millions of years and we forgot:
To channel the divine into the body.
To create a blasting ecstatic revelation in your consciousness.
To create mass connection.

So…
when are you going to be bold and invest in yourself, believe in yourself and the this huge big “WHY?” you are here?
Have the right questions asked to you, so you drop the run for cover.
Get naked and dance like you were always meant to?
Drop the shame, second-guessing, doubt and fear and let your wisdom speak up louder.
Create space for those things that REALLY move you. And the world.

No teacher will ever give you this, because you are to find it within.

And that’s what mentors do: they ask the right questions to ruffle your feathers and flake off your fake masks and habits.
Not for them.
For you.

They have the ability to shift this, because they don’t care about the outcome, truly.

Work with someone who scares you a little.
Take that leap out of fear you’ll never be enough.
Trust is an internal motor:
the more you show up in the aligned path,
face your dark lions head on and drop the cage bars,
the more you realise how easy things come to you… and that’s where the magic happens.

Ease comes AFTER the dark.
After you’ve felt your fears through and through and let them dissolve in the process.
Acknowledge the beast, honour it, tame it and DANCE with it.

Trust will move right into your front door…
and so will the cash.

Elisabete Antunes