I have always been my harshest critic. As dancers, I feel like we all think the things that go wrong onstage are somehow magnified to the millionth degree in the eyes of the audience. After shows I often ask friends or family in the audience questions like, “did you see me slip when I was running?” or “did you notice that I did the wrong the head?” To my surprise, their answer is almost always “no,” and regardless of whether or not they say it just to make me feel better, when I actually stop and think about it, the tiny, one-second mistakes are not important as the bigger picture. No matter how earth shattering the micro-details seem to me in my quest for perfection, what I have to ask myself is, what is the audience going to remember at the end of the night? The girl who rolled down off her pointe shoe in her arabesque? Or an overall beautiful and entertaining show? I would certainly like to think that the correct answer is the second one. What happens on stage happens; you can’t go back and fix it so worrying about it after the fact does no good. I have to remember that stressing over every detail in the end is mostly just a source of frustration. Instead I should focus on dancing from my heart and not holding anything back when I perform.

- Emma Yasick, Brandywine Ballet dancer & blogger