First, the mirror here is an analogy. Looking in a mirror while you're dancing isn't wrong, and it isn't even rude as long as your partner knows you're practicing and sees the dance as such. But it's inefficient and will throw your dancing off. It'll change where your head weight is, possibly affect where your frame is at, and you'll have to abandon it if you're spotting anyway. Plus, watching yourself *directly* flat from the side or front isn't as good as a slight angle. You can get this if you have full unbroken mirrors on two perpendicular walls, but it's still not as good as a video. Or a video of the mirrored dance space! So take videos.
Everyone hates seeing themselves dance, at first at least. There are exceptions, but I think they're too scarce to mention. Even most people who are really, really self obsessed have insecurities and are surprised when the way they look doesn't match the images in their head.
You can think of this disconnect as residual self-image, matrix style; a simpler comparison is hearing yourself speak--your voice sounds different in your own head, etc. The good news here is that, similar to hearing yourself talk, you can somewhat inoculate yourself to all that self-loathing.
The more you see yourself dance, the more you'll be able to connect the sensations in your body to what's actually happening.
The number surprised me when I finished putting this together--this is every single video I have of myself dancing in the past ~6 months. Practices, socials, comps, no matter how short.
Now, given our penchant for all kinds of unhealthy attitudes toward our bodies/expression/ability to replicate someone else's visual/delay in picking up techniques, etc.... We can still look at our dance videos in a pretty nonconstructive way even when we're used to seeing ourselves.
The process is simple, though not easy.
1. Where are we at
What are you looking at and how are you feeling? You have to accept and legitimize your feelings. Whether you think you're ugly, slow, weak, broken, or any other negative word; and whether you feel sad, angry, embarrassed, or something else checking in on this is important. It isn't really possible to just go "I should stop hating myself, it's bad!" Because now you're going to guilt yourself out anytime you have that reflexive reaction anyway... and the negative spiral grows and grows.
If it helps, look up a feelings wheel and try to pinpoint where exactly you're at. I'm no mental health professional; but if the emotion is very negative and you can feel it in your body, you could try to work through it. Get yourself some positive sensory input (scents and sounds you enjoy, warmth, a weighted blanket, candy, what have you). Focus on feeling the physical sensation of the emotion, bring your attention and awareness to it as you breathe in, and envision yourself breathing it out as you exhale. Picture it as sludge or toxic gasses or something. If you're unfamiliar with doing anything along these lines it will feel very silly BUT it's important to be able to full on face whatever emotions you've got so you can move on to the next step. And if watching your videos doesn't bring those emotions up, it's worth processing how you feel about not making finals or whatever else has you thinking illogically :)
2. Be honest
Be objective. Like, really objective. If your free arm looks 'floppy', what exactly is the difference between where you're at and where you want to be? Is it that you're not projecting from your center, your upper back isn't active, you don't like your wrist or elbow angle, something else?
3. The next step
If you can tell the difference between your point A and your desired point Z, you now have some potentially constructive observations to use in your practice. The key here is not to bang your head against the wall and attempt to shoot straight for point Z, if I think "I should articulate my feet better" watch Emeline, try to do the exact same thing without knowing what's going on there, and then get frustrated, that isn't particularly useful. So--what is your point B? If you have a limp free arm, just keeping both sides of your back engaged even when you have only one connecting arm could be a solid step B.
4. Think positive
There's a reason I didn't put finding positive things as your step two. Trying to directly supplant negative feelings and observations with positive ones is
a pain in the ass and likely won't work so we have to tackle the self-loathing (which is acceptable to feel!) head on, first. If you've ever head a friend, downcast after watching a comp video, try to force an affirmation as an initial response... you might've heard it sound pretty hollow. It's difficult
at best to try and replace negative with positive.
Anyhow, step 4 is looking at positive things. Now that you're in a better place to do it. So, look for these and be just as specific as you were with what you didn't like. It could be how your foot turned out going into one single turn, a facial expression, looking more relaxed than normal in a starter step, *literally anything, you can find stuff, trust me.*
Do what you have to do with these. Make yourself a little highlights reel. Snip 3 second clips of a video or a single move slowed down to one-quarter speed in youtube. You deserve to see your successes, especially all together!
If it's one count of one move that's heading in the direction you want it to, that's something to build off of.
5. A potential destination
This certainly isn't necessary for everyone, but if you can combine a bit of the dance neutrality feeling and a generally positive future outlook, it could go like this. Being able to watch a video, be proud of your efforts, and think "that's acceptable... I love that!... that's a good effort but I'm still struggling... hate that and it was better last week, I'll have to compare..." to me is a very, very solid mental state to reside.
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