Enter the Contest Hall and speak to the clerk at the central reception desk to register for a Super Contest Show. She’ll ask you to choose from one of five categories: Coolness, Beauty, Cuteness, Cleverness, or Toughness. Make sure to choose a category that suits the conditions of the Pokémon you wish to enter (see the sidebar for more details). Next, you’ll select an available rank out of the full rank list that’s ordered from easiest to hardest: Normal Rank, Great Rank, Ultra Rank, and Master Rank. But before you can shoot for superstardom, you’ll need to start at Normal Rank and work your way up to unlock more difficult challenges.

You’ll also be asked to choose a Pokémon, its Contest Move (selected from its known moves, all of which provide some form of benefit to your performance), and the Ball Capsule assigned to its Poké Ball. Finally, you’ll choose a style for your own Trainer to wear. You’ll be given a snazzy new outfit when you first enter the Contest Hall, but you can also change into any outfit you’ve purchased from Metronome Style Shop in Veilstone City. The style you choose is purely cosmetic and has no effect on scoring, so feel free to dress up however you like!

The main event of any Super Contest Show is a rhythm game called the Dance Evaluation. Each time one of the Poké Ball–shaped notes that flow from the right side of your Nintendo Switch system’s screen overlaps with the line on the screen’s lower-left side, you’ll need to tap the A Button. For extended notes, you’ll need to hold down the A Button until the note ends. Once during each contest show, you can fire off your chosen Contest Move by pressing the X Button. Try to time this for when other entrants are performing their own moves so that you can create a Move Chain that nets more points for everyone involved. Using a Contest Move will temporarily clear the notes from the screen, so you can also use your move as a sort of panic button for when you’ve lost the rhythm or need a quick breather.

The bad news is there’s not much we can do here to help you ace the Dance Evaluation. You’ll simply have to learn the music. Each category has a different song, which will be the same across each rank—practice timing your button presses for a higher score. The good news is that there’s plenty of prep you can do to improve your scores in the Visual Evaluation and Move Evaluation.