I grew up learning how to tap and jazz dance. I studied for years and experienced many falls. When I fell I felt like an idiot, my teachers always told me to keep going and to act like it didn’t happen. As I am older now that is the advice I will give to younger girls who have similar experiences. When a person falls on stage it is inherently embarrassing and normal to feel like an idiot; but the best thing to do is to ignore it and keep going like it didn’t happen. It really isn’t the fact that you made a mistake its how you recover from it.

Dancing for me was so exciting. I always had nervous jitters, but the good kind of jitters that made your tummy fill with butterflies. The experience of getting up in front of people scared me, but once i got up there it let me be a person that only my audience saw. But along with the good stuff, comes some hard falls, literally. I remember a time when I completely fell off the stage. It was terrible! I was up on stage with my team, doing a routine I don't remember now. We came to a move that involved dancing toward the edge of the stage. Apparently I had come too close to the edge, lost my balance and fell. It wasn’t a long fall, only about 6 inches. I was able to get back on the platform and continue the performance.

I learned through all my falls that it could always be worse. Even though I was crying from embarrassment, my tights a little torn and my knees a little scraped, I could’ve fallen and really gotten hurt that day, I could’ve fallen and broken something. Of course it all feels much worse than it is at the time. But really you have to think about it like “I’ve already fallen, its over now” and focus on your next move so you don’t fall again.


My advice to girls who happen to fall while dancing in front of audiences would have to be, first off don’t worry about it when its already over. If you play it off well enough they won’t even know it happened. You have a multitude of people dancing beside you, if one person messes up its not a big deal. Another thing to remember is the people watching you don’t know your routine, you can play it off like thats what you were supposed to do. And you were the only one who did it because you got picked to be the center focus at that point.

After your performance is over and done with, people will probably only remember the good things about it. So don’t beat yourself up over something that you can’t change. You have other people with you so it will be easy to pick back up where you left off. It might be the first time you’ve fallen, it might be the fifteenth time you’ve fallen, either way someone before you has done it and someone after you will most likely do it again. It all comes back to how you handle it, if you act like its not a big deal, then it won’t be.