Pretty soon it can come to be such an automatic feeling that a quick glance at another person in class can cause a chain reaction of negative self-evaluation. Even between the best of dancer friends, comparisons may be made about what each has in her life. If a dancer unconsciously fears that she may never get what she truly wants and needs, she may consciously feel competitive and envious of other dancers. It can feel very shameful to have feelings of envy, competition and longing for fulfillment. They will feel less by comparison and they will feel what is missing in their own lives.
Girls start dance training sometimes as early as three years old.
Unless they were fortunate enough to have a teacher who validated their natural, uninhibited creative expression at that age, they usually have had the experience of dance training which teaches them to be silent and do as they are told. Later on, an authoritarian pedagogical approach will further transmit to a dancer that they can never perform well enough or be good enough. A teacher capitalizing on that insecurity produces dancers whose only sense of achievement comes from how they are doing in relation to others. Many teachers will argue that this is the way dance has always been taught and that the method produces excellent technical dancers. Yes, it often does.