What I’m learning about performance anxiety in dancers: Some early findings from my PhD
If you’ve ever stood backstage with your heart pounding and your stomach in knots, you’ll know that performance anxiety is no small issue for dancers. Whether you’re a student stepping onto a small stage for the first time or a seasoned professional preparing for a major performance, nerves can derail even the most rehearsed piece.
As part of my PhD, I’ve been exploring this complex experience - what influences performance anxiety, how dancers cope with it, and what role attention and psychological adaptability might play in managing it. I’m still in the analysis process, and none of these findings are final or peer-reviewed just yet. But I’ve reached a point where I feel it’s worth sharing some initial observations. Not only because the data is fascinating, but because it might spark useful conversations with dancers, teachers, and other researchers along the way.
Here’s what I’ve found so far.
The survey: 1,000+ dancers
To start with, I was lucky to get a robust sample: 1,012 dancers from a wide range of backgrounds took part in an online survey. They reported on:
Their years of experience
How many hours they spend dancing and teaching each week
How often they perform
Their levels of performance anxiety
Their cognitive flexibility (how easily they shift attention or thinking)
Their tendencies toward rumination, reflection, and social comparison
How they direct their attentional focus - internally or externally, in both class and on stage
It was a big dataset to work with, and the analysis is ongoing. But a few patterns have started to emerge.
A key player: Cognitive flexibility
One of the clearest early findings is that cognitive flexibility - that is, the ability to switch attention or thinking strategies in response to different demands - appears to be linked with lower performance anxiety.
This aligns with what we know about psychological adaptability: people who can shift gears mentally are often better at regulating emotions, dealing with pressure, and refocusing when things go wrong. For dancers, this might mean being able to shift attention from “How do I look?” to “What’s the timing of this next step?” or from “That went wrong” to “What do I need to do next?”
But that’s just the start.
Attentional focus matters, but context is key
Another important set of findings concerns where dancers direct their attention. I asked dancers to rate how often they focus internally (on their own body, technique, or sensations) and externally (on music, space, other dancers, or audience) - and to do so separately for class and for performance.
Interestingly, attentional focus in class behaved differently from attentional focus on stage.
Internal focus on stage (e.g., thinking about how your body feels) was strongly associated with higher performance anxiety.
External focus on stage, surprisingly, did not seem to significantly reduce performance anxiety in this sample.
In contrast, both internal and external focus in class were found to play a mediating role between cognitive flexibility and performance anxiety.
In other words, cognitively flexible dancers tended to use more of both internal and external focus in class - and this attentional style was linked with more performance anxiety overall. That’s counterintuitive, and it took me a while to make sense of it.
What might be happening in class
Class is a training ground, and it demands constant self-monitoring. It’s not surprising that flexible thinkers would direct their attention in multiple directions - tracking their technique internally while also responding to cues, space, music, or feedback from others, externally.
But this high attentional engagement, while useful for learning, might also bring heightened self-consciousness - especially in an environment where dancers are evaluated (or self-evaluating) regularly. So the increased internal and external focus may increase vulnerability to anxiety in class settings, even while it supports skill development.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that using different attentional strategies is bad - just that it might come at an emotional cost in certain contexts.
The curious case of internal focus on stage
Perhaps most intriguing is what I found about internal focus on stage.
In one of the mediation models, cognitive flexibility was positively related to internal focus on stage - which is surprising, because internal focus was also positively related to performance anxiety. And yet, cognitive flexibility overall was negatively associated with performance anxiety. That means that in this model, cognitively flexible dancers were more likely to use internal focus, which then increased performance anxiety - but they also had lower performance anxiety overall.
This pattern is what’s known as a suppression effect in statistical modelling. It suggests that cognitively flexible dancers might be engaging in more internal monitoring on stage (perhaps out of habit from class), but also possess other strategies or traits that counterbalance its negative impact. This finding deserves more digging, but for now, it complicates the idea that internal focus is always bad, or that flexible thinkers simply avoid it.
What didn’t mediate? External focus on stage
Perhaps most surprising of all, external focus on stage - which is often held up as the gold standard for reducing performance anxiety - did not mediate the relationship between cognitive flexibility and performance anxiety. In this sample, even though many dancers reported using external focus on stage, it didn’t seem to explain why flexible thinkers experienced less performance anxiety.
That’s not to say external focus has no value. It’s just that, in this dataset, it wasn’t the key mechanism driving the link between cognitive flexibility and performance anxiety reduction.
So what does this mean for dance educators?
If you’re a dance teacher or choreographer, you might be wondering: “OK, what should I do with this?”
Here are a few early reflections - again, based on preliminary data:
Encourage flexible thinking, not just “positive” thinking. Helping dancers practise switching between different attentional or cognitive strategies (e.g., refocusing when distracted, adjusting mental routines mid-performance) may help them regulate performance anxiety more effectively than trying to stick with one mindset.
Watch out for over-monitoring in class. Cognitively flexible dancers may engage deeply in class by attending to both internal and external cues - but this might increase their performance anxiety if not managed well. Encourage periodic moments of external focus to reduce internal over-analysis.
Be cautious with internal focus on stage. While internal focus is necessary for technique, using it too much during performance seems linked with higher performance anxiety. Training dancers to shift focus outward once they’re performing may help reduce stress - but again, it depends on the individual.
Don’t assume external focus is always the fix. External focus alone didn’t explain the link between cognitive flexibility and performance anxiety reduction. It may help some dancers, but it’s not a silver bullet - and may need to be combined with broader strategies that enhance adaptability and self-regulation.
Next steps
There’s still a lot to unpack here. These are just initial findings, and I’ll be continuing the analysis and hopefully working towards publishing this research in an academic journal down the line. In the meantime, I’ll be sharing more insights, asking more questions, and learning from the responses I get - whether from researchers, educators, or dancers themselves.
If you’re interested in chatting more about any of this, or you have ideas for how these findings could inform training or pedagogy, I’d love to hear from you. You can always get in touch - and thanks for reading.
