Choose Your Own Adventure

When we learn patterns, we learn them from start to finish. We’re shown the beginning, the middle, and the end and how they flow together. We learn them with a set rhythm, a set timing, a set progression.

And that’s the problem. Patterns are taught as whole units with a prescribed beginning, middle, and end. Once a leader starts, he moves towards the end that he was taught follows the beginning. And followers in the same class also develop the same expectation, which is only reinforced when the leader does as he was taught. In this way, both leaders and followers become what we call “pattern dancers.”

And so we usually know the end when we get started. As a result, we lose a sense of spontaneity and we take away creative opportunities – opportunities to engage with our partners and to respond to the music. If both partners know the set pattern, it’s all too easy to disengage from your partner and just go through the motions. After all, you don’t need their guidance or assistance because you already know the end of the story. And of course set patterns may or may not fit the music well, but if the partners aren’t open to new endings, then they each take away the chance to adapt to what they’re hearing.

I don’t often teach patterns anymore, but when I do, I try to teach at least two or three similar “patterns” but each with some unique variation. (Think of whip variations.) It helps the leaders to disconnect beginnings from ends and see that each is an element that can be pieced together in different ways. It also tests their ability to lead – both in terms of thinking on their feet as well as seeing the options and executing clearly. For followers, they are programmed to pay attention, expect the unexpected, to not know the ending, and therefore to be open to more possibilities. This makes them stronger followers and better partners.

For me, much of the joy of West Coast Swing is in the spontaneous creation between the partners with the music, but to have this we need to break down patterns into elements of movement and to be open to piecing them together in different ways. That way together we get to choose our own adventure as we go along.

How have you been taught patterns and how has it affected your dancing? Do you notice pattern dancers while you’re dancing, either in yourself or your partners? Teachers, do you pay attention to how the way you teach patterns affects your students’ dancing? Do you have methods to help avoid training them to become pattern dancers?

Navigating a crowded floor

We’ve all been there. All too often. The couple that keeps intruding on our slot. The guy who leads his follower right into us. The woman whose arm styling means a whack to the head. The floor that’s too crowded.

It never ceases to amaze me that some people just don’t learn how to dance on a crowded floor. At the same time, how often do we teach people how to dance on a crowded floor? Let’s face it: the dance class is an idyllic environment compared to the social dance floor, where people tend to have enough room and they are hyper-aware of themselves and those around them under the watchful eye of a teacher.

Every now and then I get around to teaching a class on floorcraft – the art of dance floor navigation and etiquette. Here are ten tips for successful dancing on a crowded floor:

Look around you. Seems obvious enough, but we tend to get focused on what we’re doing and lose sight of how what we’re doing fits into the space around us. Leaders in particular should look to where they are sending their followers, before sending them there.
Narrow the slot. Pretty obvious here too. If there’s less space on the floor, then occupy less space.
Use the slot you have. Leaders, if you don’t have room for a full slot, consider dancing with half a slot, think about what you can do in closed position, or maybe use a change of places to keep the flow of your patterns.
Keep things simple. Not only are simpler moves less risky to execute successfully, but it’s also easier to interrupt a simpler move to make course corrections. This goes for leaders and followers.
Learn to abort smoothly. If someone moves into your slot as you’re executing a move, find a way to gracefully change the ending. Cutoffs and moving into closed position are great options for leaders, while bending the slot and pattern extensions are helpful tools for followers. (Remember: Communicate kindly to your partner.)
Protect your partner. If your partner is going to get hit or is going to collide with someone they can’t see, let them know. A simple squeeze of the hand is usually effective.
Adjust your frame. Your body is yours to control, so if you have less space, adjust your frame so it’s shorter (but not tighter). Leaders, think about the timing of your anchor and how much counterbalance you provide, and followers think about keeping a closer relationship between your center and hand.
Consider moving your slot. If the space at either end of your slot is too cramped, think about shifting your slot to open space left or right (assuming you’re not moving into someone else’s slot).
Be sure to finish. Remember that good communication depends on good connection, and good connection comes from good movement. If we don’t finish patterns by moving our centers into or away from our partners, we won’t create extension or compression, and we’ll have a harder time communicating in an environment where communication is even more important.
Apologize. We’re both responsible for a successful dance, so take responsibility when something goes awry. (You’d be surprised how often people don’t acknowledge collisions and other accidents or check in with their partners.)

The joy of partner dancing is that we get to share in the experience with someone else. So let’s all do our part to make sure everyone has a good time.

What do you all do to adjust to crowded floors? What are some of the biggest dangers you’ve encountered? Teachers, how do you prepare your students and teach them floorcraft?

A phrase by any other name…

Oftentimes when we are taught musicality and phrasing, we are taught, appropriately, to mark the phrase change. The biggest accent is on the one of a new phrase and we strive to reflect that in our dancing.

But there’s another part to phrasing: the fact that phrases are different. A verse is different from the chorus, and the chorus from a pre-chorus, and all of the above from the intro. Phrases differ in their chord progressions, their melodies, and their lyrical rhythms, but the difference most notable for dancing is the energy level, indicated by the volume and complexity – and sometimes emotion or expressiveness – of the music. If we are to really phrase our dancing with the music, we should dance each of these phrases differently.

Phrasing our dance means thinking about how the energy and feel of our dancing matches the energy and feel of the song. This is reflected in our choice of patterns and styling, the complexity of our movements, the size and pace of our dancing, and the overall dynamic we create with our partner. As the song changes, so should our dance.

And if we do dance these phrases differently, we create a dynamic and growing dance, riding the rollercoaster of energy that good songs have. If we don’t, we miss an opportunity to be musical, to create variation in our dance, and to engage our partners on a different level.

How much do you pay attention to making one phrase feel different from another in your dancing? How much do you just focus on the phrase change? Have you ever been taught how to phrase in the way described above? Teachers, do you work with your students on this level of musicality, either hearing the music in this way or how to dance to it in this way?

Moving beyond rhythm

As I work with my students on musical interpretation, I often have them focus on articulating the lyrics of a song. But every time I do this, at least one student points out the difficulty of hearing the melody, adding that they naturally turn to the rhythm.

The rhythm is often dominant in the music we dance to, in part because it has a driving beat that lends itself to swing, but also in part because much of the music we dance to today is increasingly rhythm-heavy. This makes the rhythm easy to hear, but the problem with letting it drive our dancing is that the rhythm of a song is inherently flat. Sure, a good beat often compels us to dance, but the primary purpose of a rhythm section in a band is to keep time, and to that end it is deliberately repetitive and monotonous. If we let the timing of the song be our only guide, we might as well dance to a metronome or someone clapping.

Not only does dancing to the rhythm or timing of a song create flat, monotonous dancing, but flat, monotonous dancing in turn creates a weak foundation for partnership. As humans, when we receive the same stimulus over and over, we start to tune it out. It becomes white noise that fades into the background. The same thing happens with monotonous partner dancing: the repetitive feel of it leads both partners to tune out and detach from one another.

So how do you keep the dance interesting and engaging? A good place to start is by connecting with the variable part of the song: the melody.

The melody is where the variation is. Whereas the rhythm chugs along at a steady pace, the melody ebbs and flows with changes in both rhythm and energy. The melody is also the emotional heart of a song. Whereas rhythm provides the beat and groove for a song, melody expresses the feeling and soul of a song. Whether it’s a voice or an instrument, connecting with the melody not only helps you mix things up but it also gives you emotions to incorporate into your dancing. And dancing that captures emotions is certainly more interesting and engaging.

So learn to hear the melody and learn to connect and stay connected with it in your dancing. You’ll be more likely to have an exciting dance and to create an engaging partnership.

What is easiest for you to hear in a song? Where does your ear naturally go when listening while dancing? How does the genre of music affect what you hear? Teachers, what do you have your students focus on? How do you teach your students to hear different parts of the song?

Mind Over Matter: Don’t not do that…

This is the second in a series of blog posts called “Mind Over Matter” that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

In my first post in this series, I discussed the amazing influence of the mind over the body, particularly in how the mind can interrupt what we might otherwise do well.

An important element that affects the way we dance is the way we learn to dance. In recent months I’ve been thinking more and more about how the way this dance is taught in our community is often detrimental to our mastery of it. Our bodies know how to do some things naturally and yet the way we talk about the dance sets up a mental frame of reference that gets in the way of that.

One key component to this mental paradigm is our focus on what not to do. We all know this line of thinking. We’re told to not do something that we’re doing wrong, and the focus is on undoing a bad habit. A prime example is tight arms, the solution to which is to relax them.

There are a two main problems with this method of instruction. The first is that when the mind is focused on a particular body part, we tend to engage that part most. Think about exercising. If you’ve done any weight training or yoga or Pilates, you know that where you concentrate is where you will work the hardest. This is especially true of compound exercises, where more than one muscle group is engaged. The muscle you think about while exercising is the muscle you will engage the most. It’s not because you’re doing anything to consciously engage that muscle more. Rather, it’s a subconscious reaction to where your mind is focused. So when you think about relaxing tight arms, you are actually more likely to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it.

Another problem is that knowing what not to do doesn’t always tell you what to do. If I said, of all numbers from 1 to 100, don’t pick 56, that’s helpful to a point, but it doesn’t tell you which of the other 99 numbers to choose. Likewise, telling you to relax your arms is somewhat helpful, but in essence, it’s the same thing as saying “don’t be tight” – it doesn’t tell you what you should be doing differently in a constructive way.

I’ve found that good teachers will redirect your attention to solutions that help you develop new habits, rather than simply telling you to not do something. And good students ask their teachers for constructive problems, trying to understand, “If not 56, then which number is it?”

What habits have you tried to overcome with the instruction of “don’t do that” and did it work? Was there some other helpful instruction that allowed you to undo your bad habit? Teachers, do you provide constructive advice that helps your students develop new habits to replace the old bad ones? How do you communicate that advice to your students? Post your responses below!