#87: You Have to Show Love Before the Heartbreak

Have you ever watched a duet or emotional contemporary routine that had beautiful technique and strong partnering… but somehow still didn’t fully connect?

In today’s episode, Brittany breaks down one of the biggest storytelling mistakes dancers make in love story routines — only showing the heartbreak without ever showing the love first.

From duets and trios to emotional solos, Brittany explains why audiences need moments of joy, connection, trust, or comfort in order to truly feel the heartbreak later in the dance. Without it, routines can start to feel confusing, one-dimensional, or emotionally disconnected — even when the choreography is strong.

Inside this episode:
• Why “angry the whole dance” doesn’t work
• The difference between a love story and a horror story
• How one small smile can completely change a performance
• Why emotional contrast creates stronger storytelling
• How dancers can portray relationships without needing real-life experience

If you want to improve your facials, storytelling, and emotional connection on stage, grab Brittany’s FREE 5-Day Facials Challenge here:

Free Facials Challenge

Confidence looks good on you.

Transcript

Ep87_love story smile

Brittany Noltimier (00:00)

as I'm on the road seeing competition after competition and thousands of dances, I see this done wrong so many times and it's such a simple fix can't afford to make this mistake

Have you ever done a duo trio or a dance with a love interest where you are trying to tell the story but maybe we feel like there just has to be chemistry, chemistry to make it feel real? Well today we're gonna talk about just what you have to do in order to make these love stories land to make them

look real to make your audience actually connect to them, your age, So if you wanna be performing to a contemporary song or you're doing a duet with that love interest,

but it's also a little bit awkward and you're not exactly sure what to do then this is the episode for you. Hello there and welcome back to Dance Colleges and Careers. I'm your host, Brittany Noltimier and this is the podcast where we talk about all things dance, colleges and careers. My specialty is helping dancers just like you improve their facial expressions so they can finally feel confident and not awkward on stage.

with their facials, their storytelling, and really connecting with the audience.

Today, I just wanna get straight to the point with love stories because as I'm on the road seeing competition after competition and thousands of dances, I see this done wrong so many times and it's such a simple fix that you can't afford to make this mistake

This can really pertain to if you're doing a duet with a male female routine and it's strictly about a love story, or maybe it's a trio with two ladies and a male and it's a love triangle.

That is really what I'm talking about today, but this can be relatable in many other songs because a lot of songs are about love, even if we're trying to make them about like candy bars or about friendship, deep down, many songs are about love and those relationships we build with either a love interest or a friendship or a parent child. And so this is the main thing that I always, almost always see missing.

And here's the secret to telling a love story.

You have to show the love before you show the heartbreak.

If we are dancing and we have these hugs and we have these moments together, but we are only ever giving this expression of frustration and not ever a hug where it feels like I'm happy you're in my arms again, then it's anger, anger, anger, anger, anger. And that just builds to anger. Okay? But when we have those moments of love,

then the anger actually makes more sense because it shows that first we have this trust, we have built this.

And the reason for the frustration comes through the routine, this routine I saw this weekend is an amazing duet, male-female duet, and it was so connected. It was so strong. The lifts were perfect. The connection was perfect. But as we're peeling the layers, the one thing I never saw

was any joy, okay? So while this routine was exceptional, it would have been, it just would have been next level with a smile here or there. There was never a smile. And so it just makes you think that these two characters hate each other the whole time. But the thing is, you don't make a dance only about hate, right? You don't make a story only about hate.

There has to be some type of connection. There has to be some reason why we were together, why we have this love, why we want to bring that love back or why we're, why we feel that we were abused or mistrusted by this person. And that makes us angry, upset, and want to walk away at the end of the routine. But if we only show that hate, that push away,

That's the most physical way you can show this is that push away, right? You push away and you go dance by yourself, but then the choreography usually comes back to a hug, comes back to an embrace, comes back to partnership before you are only fighting. If you're only fighting, especially in a love interest story, then it almost makes the audience feel uncomfortable,

a hero. So who's the hero in the routine? Even if you're going through a breakup and that's what this is about and you're showing this breakup, this frustration between these two, in a breakup, there was happiness at one time.

if we only see the hate and breakup, nobody's rooting for you or nobody's rooting for you to get back together or for you to win. There's just like, yes, yeah, girlfriend, you gotta walk away. He's no good for you because you're only ever fighting because that's what we only hear about. Think about that, if you are.

If you are in a relationship or in a friendship where you go home and you only talk to your mom about how horrible they are, how mean they are to you, then one day you decide they're your best friend, your mom's like, mm, I don't think so because I remember in the bad days. I remember when they were not treating you the best and you deserve better. And it's hard for our loved ones to ever look past that really because you came home with all the bad stories.

So even in this routine, in this dance, when you're trying to show this relationship, if you only show the negative side, if you only show the frustration, the eyebrows furrowed, the sadness, the push away from each other, when you go for the embrace and your face is still mad, then it's confusing and no one's rooting for you to get together or for the relationship to work. They're saying, yeah.

Kick him out of there, get rid of him or vice versa. Yeah, get rid of that girl. She's no good for you, right?

And so this is really very, very, very, very simple, but almost always gets lost.

You have to show love before the heartbreak. So if in case you're like, but we have to start mad at each other. ⁓ right. Okay. So when that happens, let's say the song starts and we're mad at each other. And then the song goes back to moments when it's like, I remember the time when we used to love each other and you come in for that embrace. And then we do our partnering when we're touching each other. When we're not shoving each other away, we have to have some moments of joy, happiness, or else it seems.

weird and inappropriate,

if you're only ever pushing someone away and so angry and so much like, this isn't right, this is bad, you are a bad person, you're a villain, then you're kind of in a horror movie rather than in a love story. Does that make sense? Horror movie, you're only trying to escape the bad person. Love story,

you have moments of love, you have moments where they hurt you, but it's not only them hurting you or else you would not go back for the love, right? And that's why people love love songs and why people can relate to routines about love so much because it's that coming back to it, coming back to comfort, coming back to love, coming back to those moments of joy.

If it's only bad, only scary, absolutely no level of comfort, then you're only trying to escape. You're only trying to get out of there. And then the choreography at the end of the routine is probably either that you ran off stage and you escaped or that you were captured,

It's actually so simple. And so when we are dancing about love, we don't have to have had our first kiss. We don't have to be in love to dance about love. We just have to understand how relationships work. You just have to understand a little bit about human behavior. If there's a person in your life who's only ever mean to you

and never feels good to be around, you might always try to be getting away from them, trying to escape from this person. But if there's someone in your life who maybe gives you a compliment and then maybe you said something and you feel really embarrassed about it because you're worried about how they think, but then you want to hang out with them. See, that's something that has different levels of emotions that would give you something to dance about. See the difference?

when you're dancing about love, when you're dancing about relationships, you don't have to be in love. You don't even have to be dancing about your current love. Okay, because then things get a little bit weird and vulnerable too. And maybe you don't want to be sharing that with the world. I don't blame you. Right? That's why we're actors, we're performers. We understand human emotions. We understand what the song is about.

It doesn't mean that we have to show everything personal that we're feeling or in our relationships.

It just means that we have to smile if we like something and frown when we don't. This is what I work on in my facial training,

So my absolute favorite thing to do is coach dancers on how to use their expression, how to tell their stories, and mostly that it doesn't have to be that hard. You don't have to wait until college before it finally gets a little bit easier and less embarrassing.

All that you need to walk away with today is that if you have a song that's about frustration and anger, is that at least one time in there, you probably need to find a moment to smile or else your audience is lost and we really won't connect with you. So if you feel like your song is not happy, it's a bad love story, we don't end up together.

you still have to find that moment of memory, of connection, or else it won't work, it won't land. Now, I know some of you, even after listening to this, you're like, no, not my song, it is only about this, I can't ever have a smile, and honestly, that is true sometimes, but mostly, if you're thinking that, I want you to send that to me. Send me this specific song where you feel that way so that I can decipher and...

decode it and see if we agree or if there's other layers of this song that we should kind of dive into. So if you are trying to improve your facial expressions, if you are trying to feel more confident in the studio on stage, I invite you to take my free facials challenge. It is a five day challenge, totally free. You just need to go to my link in the bio.

and click on that challenge, you can get started right away.

Throughout the process, it allows you to ask me any questions. And quite honestly, I wanna hear from you. I wanna hear what we're struggling with, maybe what's still a little bit uncomfortable

Because it's my passion to help you get over that and start to rock it out and feel more confident in the studio.

the main message of the story today friends is if you have a very serious piece, if you can find one moment in there to have a smile, a moment of remembering something better than right now, you will have a stronger performance level, a more mature performance quality than if you are only angry for the whole three minutes.

I encourage you to go out and try it. Try something new today because confidence looks good on you.

Thank you so much for watching Dance Colleges and Careers. I'm Brittany and I will catch you in next week's episode.

Until then, be brave, tell your story, and own the stage.

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