Editor’s Note: The following essay is one of five winning submissions selected for the 2026 Showstopper Day Essay Contest. In her essay, “More Than a Score,” Mikaiya Dougherty responds to the prompt, “What was your biggest dance moment of the last year? Why?” Mikaiya explores what it feels like to know and lose your purpose and the journey to finding it again.
I’ve spent more time in the studio than I have anywhere else. The studio is my home. But there was a moment this season where the studio didn’t feel like much of a home anymore, where something I’d loved for as long as I could remember started to feel uncertain.
It all started with my solo. I love my solo, all of it, but it is certainly challenging. Knowing how hard it would be to pull off, I started to doubt my own abilities. Really, I had no reason to, but I still did, so that’s how I went into competing.
Stepping onstage for the first time, I was feeling so unready for it. I was so scared of the outcome, but I still danced my heart out. I remember stepping off stage, adrenaline still rushing, thinking, that was it. I had never danced it like that before. For the first time, I didn’t doubt myself. I was ready for awards. I was ready to hear it confirmed. So I waited. And waited, and when my category was finally called… Nothing.
After all that, I started to question everything. Why am I doing this? What’s the point?
The point wasn’t trophies or scores. It wasn’t even validation from others. The point was dance, and my love for it. And that’s when it hit me, it wasn’t theirs to judge. This is mine, and you can never take that away from me. Alongside this realization I also understood that this wasn’t my last performance. I had the opportunity to dance again. And this time I’m going to do it for me, and my need to live and breathe this beautiful art form, and nothing else.
Going into the next performance, I had no reason to doubt. I knew that whatever happened, I would have danced this for me, and that would be enough. And doing that, I did end up getting a high placement and all sorts of awards and validation. But it wasn’t about that anymore. All I cared about was the fact that I did this for me. I’m going to keep doing it for me as long as I possibly can.
It was more than a score, it was mine.
Honestly, I should have seen this coming at the beginning of the season. My solo is about fighting for something I loved, through doubt, through exhaustion, through every moment I felt like I wasn’t enough. And somewhere along the way I realized that this wasn’t just choreography, this was real, and finally, once I came to terms with that, that’s when I found myself and my passion again.
Sometimes, I still want to say I can’t do it because it’s easier. Instead I constantly choose to work for it. I have to, because there is nowhere else where I’ll ever be seen, heard, and completely understood other than in every moment where I decide to dance for myself.
And I won’t search for validation anymore, I’ll only search for myself.
And when I fully decided that this was mine, that was my biggest dance moment, not because of a score, but because for the first time I took my dancing back. I stopped searching for validation and started searching for myself. And man, what a moment, what a feeling that is.
