We often see stress begin to impact dancer mental health in teenage dancers. And for good reason. Teenagers are more stressed now than they have been in the past. For many reasons. The American Psychological Association reports that 81 percent of Gen Z teens (ages 13–17) experienced more intense stress during the pandemic. And, according to the 2022 Stress in America report, more than two-thirds of parents of teens said they felt their children would have benefited from mental health treatment since the pandemic started.

A 2022 poll on teen stress by Navigate 360 showed that 58 percent of teens are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about their own mental and emotional health. But also this survey showed that young folks want to learn more about how to cope with their stress and 57 percent of adolescents polled said they would like to take short courses at school on stress management skills.

That's a lot of stressed dancers.

For any potentially stressful event in the future (audition, performance, competition), you can help alleviate some of your dancers’ stress by getting specific about what they can expect. In an audition situation, you might walk them through, step by step, what to expect in the audition room. Even if there are multiple scenarios, the more a dancer feels that they know about an unknown situation, the more comfortable they will feel. And the more they will take away from the experience. 

Lynne Reder, professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences says, “Working memory capacity is not a fixed quantity but interacts with the familiarity of the elements that need to be processed. If everything is very familiar, it is easy to comprehend and build new knowledge. If all of the components are unfamiliar, the task becomes very difficult or impossible.” The more familiar the environment, the more chance we give our students to learn. 

So, how do we create familiarity in situations with unfamiliar variables? Walk students through what they might do in different scenarios. You can ask questions like, “What will you do if you forget your choreography?” ‘What will you do if you fall onstage?” “How will you react if you are cut from an audition?” “What will you do if you don’t place at competition?”  

These kinds of questions can help them work through and practice what they might do when faced with a perceived threat, but also can make these scenarios a bit more familiar because they have already walked through them. 

When dancers experience a more intense stress response, for instance, forgetting a routine onstage and running off, they don’t often see or hear clearly because their bodies are in “run from a threat” mode. This can be difficult when we want to help them regain a more calm state. Here is one way to help dancers in the moment when they are experiencing a stress response. 

It starts with encouraging dancers to focus on the present. The 5–4–3–2–1 exercise below is a widely-accepted coping technique for anxiety and it’s an easy one to incorporate when you’re with a dancer in a stressful situation.

Here’s how you can try it. First, try to calm your breathing. Find a comfortable place to sit and relax as much as possible. Then, one by one, focus on the following things:

The University of Rochester Medical Center’s website says, “This five-step exercise can be very helpful during periods of anxiety or panic by helping to ground you in the present when your mind is bouncing around between various anxious thoughts.” Bringing dancers’ attention to the sensory aspects of their surroundings can take away that fear that can get in the way of performing, learning, and (most importantly) having fun.