Saturday, July 28, 2018

A Little Advice for Dance Leads

I've been teaching social dance for about six years now. Over the years, I've given a lot of dance advice to both leads and follows. This post is specifically for leads, but I'll do another one for follows later.

I often say that the ladies don't care how many moves you have. We really don't. I watch guys dancing sometimes, and I can tell they are trying to "impress" a follow who is either very attractive or a very good dancer (or both!) by throwing their whole repertoire of moves at her. But here's the thing: Follows aren't just dancers. We're people. So we don't just love the moves, we like the conversation. And there are two parts to this. One, the dance itself is a conversation. Two, sometimes, we like actual conversation. As in, talking to other people.

I'll start with the second part of that statement. For leads who are really brand new beginners, it can be challenging to talk and dance at the same time. We get that. It's easy to lose the beat once you let your focus go, and that's ok. But once you get sort of comfortable and are able to do a basic step and talk at the same time, it is really nice if you can talk to your follow while dancing. "Where are you from? Do you come here often?" Are some nice, simple and general conversation starters. If you like the person, you can say nice things like, "Wow, you are a really good dancer," or "You have such a great smile!" But you know, keep an eye out for cues that you might be making her uncomfortable and be ready to shift to benign topics of conversation like traffic and weather.

Ok, on to the second part of the conversation. The dance itself is a conversation between two people, and between the music and the dancers. The dancers don't even have to speak a word of the same verbal language to be able to communicate ideas and emotions through dance. Meanwhile, the song is communicating things through rhythms, words, pauses, breaks and syncopations that you can choose to listen to or ignore. So as a follow, I like it when my lead is actually working with me like an instrument in expressing a conversational idea suggested by the music through the dance. It's like we're collaborating together to create a poem. We're conversing together to make something happen, with purpose, and that's awesome.

Where this conversation all goes wrong is when leads begin to throw all their moves at the follow without a discernible rhyme or reason. Think about it this way: a poet uses words within a structure to convey meaning to an audience. Without that structure or meaning, you might as well be reading words off a GRE prep-course vocabulary list. It's meaningless and possibly overwhelming. The dance equivalent is a lead who just throws out one move after another after another, of increasing complexity, without any particular intention or connection to the music, the mood, or the follow. As the follow, what is usually happening on my end is that my hair is getting totally messed up and after 30 seconds or so, it has all come out of its pins and hairspray and I can't even see anymore. I'm getting really dizzy because this generally involves me spinning about 1,000 times. Often, there are blinding spotlights or strobe lights going on, so it's quite disorienting, and I have a hard time finding my partner as I come out of turns. Sometimes a wardrobe malfunction occurs (like a broken zipper or strap), which can be catastrophic. As a general rule, any dance that requires an immediate visit to the ladies room to adjust my clothing/hair/makeup is not a dance I will want to repeat. And by the way, guys, the girls talk in the powder room. If I'm in there re-pinning my hair, and asking for a safety pin to fix my dress, the other 10 girls in the restroom are going to know why and who.

Everyone is different, and I can't speak for all the follows out there. Also, it's important to remember that performances are one thing. Social dancing is quite another. But one of the instructors I like the best frequently offers this simple advice: "Guys, the less you do, the better it is for her." It's great advice. Not to be boring, not at all. But to make sure that whatever you do has a reason within the conversation. Just like a poet would never randomly throw out some big words because he thought they made him sound smart--whatever moves you do should make sense, with the follow, with the music, with the mood. Or in other words, keep it simple.

A Haiku For Confusing Dancers
Juxtapose
Frotnight Oblong Hence
Otherworldly

Big words. But they make no sense. Likewise, you may have lots of $500 moves*, but you don't need to throw them all into one 3-minute dance. Maybe use one per song. Focus on a great basic. Make your partner feel secure. Talk to the lady, if possible. If not, smile and nod encouragingly. Listen to the music, feel the music, and communicate what you hear in the music to her.

* A $500 move is what I call a the one move you retain from a weekend dance conference. You pay $500 for the conference. You go to workshops and dances all weekend. You get informational overload. You forget 98% of what you learned, but you do remember that one really cool move taught by international dancing superstar so-and-so. That one move you retained, therefore, cost you $500. These moves are generally fairly flashy and nice in a performance or choreography, or with your regular partner who knows what to expect, but quite difficult to lead successfully in a social dancing situation with a stranger.