The In-Between Feels Weird
You're not a beginner anymore. You can make it through a Graham contraction without your thighs screaming, and you finally understand what "find your center" actually means. But advanced class? That's where people seem to float across the floor while you're still figuring out how to land a jump without sounding like a dropped textbook.
I've been there. Standing in the back corner, watching someone execute a spiral that looks like liquid honey, wondering if I should just stick to barre work forever. Here's the truth nobody puts on studio posters: intermediate is where most dancers quit. Not because they can't improve, but because the improvement stops feeling linear. One week you nail a phrase; the next, your body forgets how to pivot.
So let's talk about what actually moves the needle during this messy, beautiful middle phase.
Stop Apologizing with Your Shoulders
Watch an intermediate dancer improvise, and you'll notice the apology before the movement even starts. The shoulders creep up. The gaze drops to the floor. There's this half-shuffle, half-step that says, "I'm not sure I should be doing this."
Your body believes what you tell it. I spent two years taking up less space than I deserved during improv sessions, and my teacher finally stopped me mid-note. "You're dancing like you're waiting for permission," she said. "The floor already gave it to you."
Now, every time I feel that shoulder creep happening, I push my sternum forward an extra inch. Not aggressively—just enough to remind myself I belong in the room. Try it. Your lines will lengthen immediately, and more importantly, your choices will get bolder.
Steal from the Wrong Places
Everyone tells you to study Bausch or Forsythe. Fine, do that. But also watch how a tired barista slides a coffee cup across a counter. Notice how your elderly neighbor bends to pick up her newspaper. The best contemporary dancers I know have a secret: they mine movement from everywhere except dance.
Last month, I watched my nephew throw a tantrum in a grocery store. His body went from rigid to floppy to somehow both at once, and I thought—that's the emotional architecture I've been trying to build in my solo for weeks. I went home and practiced collapsing and resisting gravity in the same phrase. It felt fresh because it wasn't borrowed from another choreographer. It was human behavior, translated.
Keep a notes app on your phone. Write down three non-dance movements you observe each week. A dog shaking off water. Someone checking their reflection in a car window. You'll build a vocabulary that's authentically yours, not a watered-down version of someone else's.
Find the Person Who'll Hurt Your Feelings
Praise feels good. It also keeps you exactly where you are. Intermediate dancers need at least one mentor, peer, or even brutally honest friend who'll say, "Your floorwork looks like you're afraid of the floor," or "You're marking the emotional moments."
It stings for about ten minutes. Then it liberates you.
I drove home crying after a workshop once because a guest teacher told me I "performed with my face instead of my whole body." Harsh? Maybe. But she was right. I'd developed a habit of arching an eyebrow or parting my lips whenever I didn't know what to do physically, and it had become a crutch. That comment changed how I rehearsed for months.
If everyone in your circle is telling you "great job," expand your circle.
The Boring Days Matter Most
Intermediate dancers often think breakthroughs happen in grand moments—the perfect performance, the masterclass that changes everything. In reality, it's the Tuesday when you don't feel like going to the studio but you go anyway. It's the Wednesday where you practice the same transition forty times because it still looks clunky.
There's a spiral I couldn't execute cleanly for almost a year. Not because it was physically impossible, but because I kept rushing the preparation. Every day for three weeks, I did nothing but the five counts leading into it. No music, no audience, just the mechanical boringness of getting my weight shifted correctly. On day twenty-two, it finally clicked.
The plateau is the work. Everyone wants to skip to the part where they're great. Intermediate level is precisely that skipping-to part, and there's no shortcut through it.
When the Music Stops, Keep Going
One of the most revealing exercises I've done was improvise to silence for twenty minutes straight. No metronome, no melody, no excuse to lean on rhythm. Just breath and choice.
Contemporary dance trains you to be musical, which is valuable until it becomes a dependency. Can you still be interesting when there's no beat to carry you? Can you build and release tension using only your inhale? The first time I tried this, I panicked at minute four. By minute twelve, I'd found a pacing I'd never accessed before.
Try it once a week. Put a timer on your phone. No skipping tracks, no narrative pressure. Just see what your body wants to do when nobody's driving.
Your Body Is Not the Problem
Intermediate dancers start cataloging limitations. My hips are too tight. My arms are too short. I don't have the right feet. I said all of this myself until I saw a dancer with a prosthetic leg perform a solo that made the entire theater hold its breath.
The body you have is the instrument you play. Not the one you ordered, not the one your favorite dancer got. Yours. Contemporary dance, at its core, is about saying something true in the body you inhabit right now. Tight hips can create delicious resistance. Shorter arms force you to travel more intelligently.
Work with your architecture, not against it. The sooner you stop mourning the dancer you aren't, the faster you'll become the one only you can be.
Keep Showing Up Like It's Non-Negotiable
There's a reason this sounds like a cliché: because the people who make it past intermediate are the ones who treated their practice like brushing teeth. Not romantic, not inspired, just required.
I don't always love dancing. Some weeks I actively resent how much effort it takes to feel mediocre. But I keep a calendar appointment with myself, and I honor it like I'd honor a meeting with someone I respect. That consistency has carried me through every doubt, every comparison spiral, every class where I left feeling worse than when I arrived.
The dancers you admire aren't necessarily more talented. They're just still here. And if you're reading this, struggling through the weird, wobbly middle—so are you. Keep that appointment. The studio will meet you there.
