The real competition at a dance audition is your own nerves. Everyone else is fighting theirs too.

Nerves feel like a private defect, which is what makes them so loud. You are in a room of people who look composed, so you assume the shaking is yours alone, when every one of them is managing the same thing behind a different face. The contest you imagine between you and them is mostly running inside each of you separately.

So treat nerves as part of the work rather than a sign you are unready. Rehearse the entrance, the breathing, the first eight counts until they run without you. And be kind to whoever is next to you, because they need it as much as you do.