How do dance festivals and competitions work?

Dancers perform in sections organised by age, style and routine type: solos, duets, trios, quartets and groups. An adjudicator watches each section, then gives feedback and awards placings. Some adjudicators speak on stage after each dance; nearly all provide a report card with written feedback and a score to keep.

How sections are grouped depends on the competition's size. A large festival might run "9-10 yrs Tap Solo" as its own section, while a smaller one might combine ages or place modern, lyrical and tap together under a wider category such as cabaret. Both are normal.

The atmosphere at the festivals we attend is friendly and supportive. Dancers from different schools chat, warm up together and cheer each other on between sections. It is a lovely day out as much as it is a competition.

We take group routines, solos, duets, trios and quartets to competitions, and dancers can take part in any mix of these.

Group routines depend on who opts in. If a routine normally has 12 dancers and only 6 opt in for a particular competition, it may not be viable to enter, so we sometimes cannot confirm which groups are going ahead until opt-ins are received. Thank you for bearing with us while that comes together.

Solos, duets, trios and quartets are usually set and rehearsed in private lessons, then practised in the dancers' own time, with studio hire available for extra rehearsal. Routine details and music are managed through our student systems and the Comp Team portal.

Group rehearsals are organised by us where needed. Often that means an extra 30 minutes before or after a dancer's normal class, and Friday evenings have regularly been used for competition groups. Arrangements vary with the competition, the routines entered, and teacher, room and dancer availability.

For costumes, dancers often already have what they need if the routine has come from a JL show. If your child joins a routine later, we will let you know what extra costume information is needed. Before competition day, check you have the correct costume, accessories, tights, shoes and hair requirements.

Entries go through JL Dance. Most competitions take entries from dance schools rather than from individual parents, so we submit the entries, communicate with the competition and receive the invoice.

Once entries have been submitted, competitions usually still charge for them even if a dancer later withdraws. In that situation we have to pass the entry cost on to the family, because the school cannot absorb it. So the honest guidance is: opt in when your child is keen and you are confident about the commitment, and if you are unsure, talk to us first. We would much rather answer questions before entries go in.

This is the single most important thing for a new competition family to understand. A competition cannot build its running order until every school's entries are in, so nobody knows which day or time a section will fall until the schedule is published.

A festival might run across 8 days. Your child may only dance on 1 or 2 of them, but until the running order comes out, families need to be available across the full range. Once the schedule is published, it is set by the competition, and we cannot ask for sections to be moved around personal clashes. It is one running order across many schools and hundreds of entries.

The best support on the day is helping your child feel prepared, calm and proud of their effort. Dancers cannot control who else is in their section, what the adjudicator prefers or what place they receive. They can control their preparation, their attitude and their performance, so that is where the praise belongs.

A successful competition day might mean remembering the choreography, performing with confidence, handling nerves well, improving on last time, or coming away with feedback worth working on. Medals are lovely when they come, and they sit on top of all that, not instead of it.