Most Embarrassing Dance Moments

As dancers, I think we have all had a few cringe worthy embarrassing dance moments...you know the ones that you constantly obsess about even though it’s been years since they happened. As I was writing this, I had a few laughs (and a lot of cringes!) thinking back on my dance career this far. I’ve definitely had my fair share of those embarrassing moments but here’s two that I think you’ll definitely appreciate, dancer or not.

1. Let’s start with World of Dance. I think I have to start with this particular moment just because of the circumstances. So it’s week three of the competition and we find out that we have JLo as our mentor. How pumped are we that we get the opportunity to meet with her in private and get a personal “coaching” lesson with her??!! The moment finally comes. We run in the room and are chatting about our dance with her. We run it through a few times to show her and as she’s giving us pointers and tips, I look down and my foot is not only bleeding, it’s GUSHING blood all over the floor. So I raise my hand (like a dummy) in the middle of her talking and go, “Um, excuse me sorry. My foot is bleeding all over the floor.” THEY STOPPED THE CAMERAS AND FILMING. All of the crew is walking around cleaning up all of the puddles of blood all over the floor. Tabitha Dumo is crouched down cleaning the blood off of my foot. Next thing you know, nobody can find a bandaid. JLo goes, “We can’t find a bandaid? What kind of show are we running here?” Jokingly, but also felt a little passive aggressive. LOL. Finally, someone found a bandaid and we continued filming after what felt like 3 years. Totally funny now, but in the moment I was thinking, of course I had to waste JLo’s time. (I had to see the medic 6 other times on the show. No exaggeration, I literally, started counting. Every time you had even a little bit of blood sprout to the surface, you had to see them. I was bleeding every other day because the same scabs on my feet kept ripping back open. Good times.) But yep, here I am with this once and a lifetime moment, and instead of us really being able to soak it in, I have everyone obsessing about my bloody foot. Way to go, Chlo.

2. The second one I LOVE telling because it is just so funny looking back on it. We were super new to competing and it was our very first time at the dance convention, Jump. My older sister, Madeline, and I were super young at the time so I guess it’s a little bit forgivable. :) So on a Saturday, we both auditioned for a scholarship to come back to the convention for a discount in the future. We both ended up getting a callback to come back and dance again the next morning. The funny part is, we didn’t know it was a callback, we thought we had ALREADY won. So we rolled up in our sweatpants and jackets, messy hair, just having rolled out of bed, not knowing we had to dance again. As we’re walking in, all of the girls have fake eyelashes on, cute outfits, slicked hair, and they are stretched and ready to go. We had to dance of course, and my mom goes, “Chloe, all of these girls are going to go out there and do a bunch of tricks and tumbling. Whatever you do, DON’T try to do any. Stick with what you do well.” So next thing you know, I’m going out there to dance and I had the instinct to do a cartwheel. A CARTWHEEL. It was probably horrendous too. Needless to say, I didn’t listen to my mom, she was right (as always), and I didn’t get a scholarship. Best part of the story is I look over at my mom and she is literally trying to cover the name of our studio on her sweatpants. LOL. Guess I didn’t just embarrass myself, looks like I embarrassed her too. HA HA.

There are plenty of other stories I could tell. Me forgetting combos in front of massive groups of people (junior combos included), Madeline getting called out to do a combo by herself and me thinking the teacher said both of us and I went out there too, bad dances, bad costumes, crying, fails, I could go on forever.

I think what’s most important is that nobody is perfect. When you’ve been dancing for so long, things are bound to go wrong and that’s just life. Some stories still haunt me to this day but I guess I just have to laugh them off. So I have to know...what are your most embarrassing dance stories? Please tell me you have some that are just as cringy as mine! ;)