Loving Your Ugly Baby: Giving and Receiving Criticism in Fusion Belly Dance
My boring day job is as a content developer for a software company. By content developer I don’t mean putting my phone on a tripod in Turks and Caicos and performing a TikTok dance for my 2.3 million followers (812,000 on Insta!). By content developer I mean instructional designer, and for the first two years of my employment my sole responsibility was maintaining and updating a 512-slide PowerPoint deck according to painfully precise specifications, formatting, and compliance standards. This PowerPoint was intended to provide the knowledge necessary to run our software and ultimately keep businesses functioning during natural and manmade disasters according to the standards of their government or industry. Every single time my stupid PowerPoint deck needed a refresh, I’d apply the changes, rewrite some sections, and then I’d share the file to a team of individuals whose sole responsibility was to rip my work to shreds.
The first time I went through that process, I considered quitting the job. The comments were brutal (someone anonymously even wrote “Are we SURE she’s an instructional designer? I’m not impressed”). I was a failure, a fraud, and I didn’t deserve this job or the trust of my boss, who went to bat for me with the Terrifying QA Elders and convinced them I knew what I was doing.
After a few more rounds of this uniquely torturous experience, I started figuring out what this team wanted and what they were actually saying in the brusque feedback they left in the margins of the slides. Eventually, I managed to pass a round of QA with no criticism, just a curt signoff of approval and a tacit acceptance of me as a peer and an honest-to-god instructional designer who knew what she was doing (sort of).
These days, the QA and feedback rounds attached to my work don’t faze me at all, but I jokingly refer to the process as “ugly baby time”. Turning in a massive project feels monumental sometimes, and having coworkers squint at it and pick it apart really does feel like showing off a newborn to friends and having someone clear their throat and say “Well…it’s awfully alert?”
Dance is a whole other bag, though, I think because of the unique situation where it doesn’t happen that often, and because our emotions and creative expression are tied into the creation process. Whether you receive comments on a performance, a choreography you wrote, how you taught a class, or even how you look in a costume, giving and receiving feedback is an artform in itself.
Because fusion belly dance lives in that gray area where we’re charged to constantly balance honoring the past and inventing something new makes criticism in this art form uniquely charged, and uniquely necessary. I truly believe the metacognition of HOW we give and receive feedback is just as important as offering the opinions, and we need to practice it more.
Why Criticism Feels Weirder with Fusion
Fusion doesn't always have the luxury of having a clearly defined rubric of what should be considered good or bad. When a dancer decides to blend their FCBD training with Stygian fusion combos and throws it all out there to some Combichrist, who gets to say it "works?” Everyone and no one, which means criticism can feel either completely subjective or completely weaponized, depending on the day.
The cultural sensitivity layer compounds this. Fusion belly dance draws from traditions with living communities, including Middle Eastern, South Asian, and North African forms, and the question of how you incorporate those elements matters enormously. Criticism in this space can address aesthetics, yes, but it can also address ethics. Collapsing those two categories, or refusing to distinguish them, is where a lot of conversations go sideways.
Giving Criticism Well
The first rule: know what you're critiquing. Are you addressing technique: alignment, isolations, musicality? Artistic vision: cohesion, intention, emotional impact? Or cultural practice: the relationship between the fused elements and their origins? Each requires a different lens and a different set of expectations. Mixing them without awareness produces feedback that's confusing at best and harmful at worst.
Be specific. "That felt off" is an observation about your nervous system and preferences. "Your isolations in the first chorus were amazing, but when you repeated it the second time they were a little less sharp" is a gift. Passing vague discomfort to another artist burdens them with decoding it; delivering precision is your job.
Get consent first. Many dancers, especially those newer to performing, aren't in a feedback-ready headspace after a show or an intensive. A quick "would you want notes on that?" costs you nothing and protects a lot. NEVER offer feedback if you aren’t the teacher of the class (unless the teacher has asked for it and everyone is on board).
Finally, and this is harder, examine your authority. Are you critiquing technique you have genuine expertise in? Are you treating an artistic choice as a mistake because it diverges from your taste? Are you centering cultural concerns, or does that framing serve as a proxy for something else? Honest answers to these questions sharpen both your feedback and your integrity.
When in doubt, give a sandwich. Even the most confident and successful dancer has a hard time only hearing the negatives. A tried and true method for giving constructive feedback is to sandwich criticism between two positive comments. It softens the blow for the recipient, and it sets the tone that we’re all approaching the feedback with compassion and love.
Receiving Criticism Well
Receiving well is its own skill, and it starts before anyone opens their mouth. Build a mental container for feedback that sits separate from your identity as a dancer. Your knee shimmy vs. an oblique shimmy does not define you. Forgetting your own choreography does not mean you are a failure at life (something I’ve had to repeat like a mantra in many a green room). Separating craft from self doesn't mean caring less; it means you can care more without the criticism hitting like an assault.
When feedback hits badly, pause before responding. The impulse to explain or defend almost always comes from discomfort, not clarity. Try "thank you, I'll think about that" as a first response to anything that stings. You can evaluate it later when you're not feeling so many feels.
Discernment matters too. Not all criticism deserves equal weight.
Consider the source: does this person have relevant expertise or genuine investment in your growth?
Consider the framing: does this address your work, or does it feel personal?
Consider the pattern: if three trusted mentors flag the same thing, that's a signal. If one audience member hates your music choice, that's noise.
And sometimes criticism is simply wrong, or right but not for you, or right for the dancer you were six months ago. You're allowed to let it go.
The Practice Underneath the Practice
Fusion dance at its best is a love letter to our dance form, our audience, and ourselves. Criticism, when honest and carefully offered, belongs in that exchange. It's how we lift one another up, how we stay true to our own stated intentions, and how we keep the art form alive and vibrant.
Ultimately, building the trust with your dance community and being open to honest conversations about technique, performance, and how we walk through the dance world can only improve our connection and our practice.
I hope you will feel comfortable enough to share your ugly babies with our dark fusion world, and we’ll make sure to love them and root for them, (even if they do have an uncommonly pointy head.)
If you're interested in a safe, supportive environment where you can grow as a dancer with compassionate feedback and lots of love, check out this video from a graduate of our Stygian Certification Program!
Ready to dive in and take your dance practice to new levels? Click the link below to learn more about Stygian Certification and join our crew of amazing learners and dancers who support one another as we grow!
