Where Dancing Actually Develops: What Social Media Doesn’t Show

Today, much of the dance content we encounter online is instant, noticeable, and frequently curated. However, the journey leading to these moments is more gradual, uncertain, and seldom displayed. This piece explores the gap between what is observed and what is experienced, and where true understanding in dance emerges.

Social media isn’t where you begin to understand yourself as a dancer.

It can feel like it might be. There is so much to see. So much to take in. Moments that look clear, complete, and perfected. A section of choreography that worked. A performance that held together. A line that reads well to an audience.

Sometimes these moments have been filmed carefully or edited. Sometimes they have simply been caught at the right time. Either way, they can begin to read as though that is how dancing looks.

What you don’t see is everything around those moments.

The parts where it didn’t work. The physical demand. The time it takes for something to settle into your body. The days where nothing really changes, or sometimes even feels as though it is moving backwards. That side of dancing is less often shared.

Over time, it is easy to lose sight of that. Not in a dramatic way, but in how you begin to measure yourself. What you expect. What you feel you should look like by now. What starts to feel like enough, or not quite enough.

For younger dancers, and for those still finding their way, there isn’t always a clear way to place themselves within that. When what you see feels finished, and your own experience does not, it can begin to feel like the problem sits with you, rather than in the difference between what is shown and what is lived.

This doesn’t mean social media has no value. It can inspire. It can open up ideas. It can offer access to knowledge that was not always available, particularly when it comes from people who understand what they are sharing.

What you are seeing is often an outcome, or a moment taken from the end of a process, even when it is being explained or demonstrated.

It is not the place where understanding is formed.

The real work, the real dancing, and the process of understanding yourself is still happening elsewhere.

In the studio. In repetition. In the time it takes to understand something properly. In the frustration of knowing what you should be doing but not being there yet. In staying with something long enough for it to begin to make sense in your own body.

It is slower than what you see online, and not always easy to recognise while you are in it.

But it is real.

And it is where a dancer comes to understand what they are doing, what they are feeling and thinking, and where they are.

That is where you start to find yourself.

This sits within a wider body of work that continues to explore how dancers develop, how they are guided, and what shapes their understanding over time.