Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Dancing: Part 2

Sorry for the long delay, but picking up where my last post left off… (The rest of this list reorganizes – and adds to – what I taught in my last class at Arlington in August 2010, but it also includes the same material and principles.)

6. Following through. For followers, this means following momentum to its end. Too many followers slow down or stop themselves before they should. Instead, followers should go as far as they can go in any direction, and let the leaders tell them when to change direction (see #7 below). For leaders, this means using your body to direct the follower. Leaders often get the follower started without directing her to where he wants her. Once she’s in motion, leaders, you need to point your body where you want her to end up. This creates a body lead through the pattern, and not just at the beginning.

7. Understand your responsibilities. I realize we’re starting to get a little abstract here, but dancing is more than just the physical. It seems to me that a lot of dancers forget what their responsibilities are in the dance. Leaders are primarily responsible for changes of direction; once you set the follow in motion, your job is to signal any changes, and to do so in a clear yet comfortable way. Followers are primarily responsible for themselves and their own movement; the leader should not be in charge of moving you, but rather he should be in charge of signaling where and how you should move yourself. Too often followers move themselves through the transitions and leaders force the followers through the middle of the patterns. This is the opposite of how it should be.

8. Understand your role. Similar to understanding your responsibilities is understanding your role. (You can think of it as your tasks vs. your approach to doing your tasks.) The leader’s role is to guide the follower and politely ask her to do something, or even just suggest ideas. The leader is the follower’s guide – her director, her point of reference, and her support – but not her commanding officer – her dictator and overlord. Followers should respect the leader’s role – his vision and intent – and respond affirmatively, but she can and should also actively participate by communicating effectively. Remember: dance is a conversation, so this should be a back and forth, but not talking over each other and not ignoring or interrupting what the other person is saying.

9. Musicality. Yeah, I know, I could write volumes on this subject, but I just want to emphasize one point here: dance is the physical expression of what we hear and feel. It’s all too easy to get lost in patterns as a leader, or stylings as a follower, but remember that there’s a difference between doing a dance and dancing. Doing a dance is putting a series of patterns and moves together, but has nothing to do with music, while dancing itself is moving to the music, regardless of the patterns. The trick is to take the movements of the dance and fit them to the music we’re hearing. Let the music be your guide whether you’re a leader or follower. Easier said than done, I know, but it’s the ultimate goal we’re all striving for.

10. Pay attention. I know this probably seems trite, but it needs to be explicitly stated. If everyone just paid more attention to their partners (yes, you have two – your dance partner and the music!) our dancing would be better overall. When leaders don’t pay attention to the follower, they end up using her and treating her as an object rather than a person. When followers ignore the leader they interrupt the dance and create unnecessary tension. And when both partners ignore the music they stop short of having an experience where they both share in the interpretation of what they hear. Most of you know how to drive, so you know what it’s like to pay attention to a lot of things at once (speedometer, radio, traffic, person in the car with you, checking your mirrors, etc.). Dancing is the same way: there’s a lot going on but you’ve gotta try and keep your eye out. Start by paying attention to your dance partner, and then try alternating that with paying attention to the music. It gets easier over time.

What about you? Do you agree with this list? What do you think is the single most important difference between good partner dancing and great partner dancing?

Top 10 Ways to Improve Your Dancing: Part 1

For my final two weeks of classes in Boston, I figured I would go all out and strike at the issues I see as most critical for dancers in our community. As an observer in the scene, I find the same problems persisting on the social and competitive floors, and as an instructor, I find myself repeatedly teaching the same things in private lessons and group classes: fundamentals that make the difference between poor execution and a higher quality of movement.

So I sat down, wrote a list of the top 10 problems I see with people’s dancing and then came up with 10 things that I believe make the difference between okay dancing and higher-level dancing. They aren’t mutually exclusive, and in fact there’s a lot of overlap. Not everyone has all of these issues, but most people have at least some. Here’s the first half of what I came up with (the second half will be my next post!):

1. Posture. This is a big one – bigger than most realize. Partner dancing is only successful with good communication, and good communication is only possible with good connection. Good connection is created by good movement, and good movement is only possible with good posture. Posture determines balance and stability as well as how one moves. Too often I see people leaning back or with arched backs, which means poor movement, poor connection, and thus poor partnership.”Good” posture is the vertical alignment that reduces strain on your body and positions it for efficient movement. In this case, that means standing tall and with forward pitch.

2. Frame. You all have felt bad frame: tight arms, jerky leads, follows who pull. I’m not sure how other teachers handle this subject, but my point is always that your arms don’t matter. Frame is not a prescribed shape of the arms or tension in the arms, shoulders, or elbows. Frame is in the back and torso – how you connect your arms to your core – and connection is created by movement of the centers, not through engaging the arms. Don’t worry about the arms; focusing on the arms unintentionally puts tension there. To establish good frame, all you have to do is stand tall and lengthen your neck. In doing that, you’ll engage all the right muscles – in the back – that you need to establish proper frame.

3. Basic hand hold. In open position, we connect through the hands. Somehow this becomes an awkward and difficult thing for people. Maybe it’s how we teach pistol grip, or the fact that we often fail to sufficiently address problems with hand holds as students progress (or as they hurt us on the social dance floor). Still, there it is: the thumb on the back of the follower’s hand, or the leader grabbing the follower around the wrist (what’s wrong with her hand?), or the follower who straightens her fingers, or worse, the follower whose grip is so tight the leader’s fingertips are white. I know this sounds like an oversimplification, but really, truly, you’re only holding hands. Seriously, just as if you were going to walk down the street together, you’re holding hands. The leader should offer his fingers for the follower (leader’s palm facing sideways, not up or down) and she should curl her fingers around it, both partners engaging their fingertips – and not their palms – to mold to each other. The connection here should be comfortable, solid, and flexible (meaning you can enter, exit, and change this connection with ease). No thumbs, no engaging the palms or wrists, no straight or stiff fingers.

4. Closed Position. I often remind students that nearly everything you need to know about your dance with someone you can tell in the first 4 beats of the music, and this is because you can tell a lot about someone’s abilities by how they connect and move in closed position. Maybe it’s because the dance is mostly in open, but there isn’t a lot of emphasis on connecting in closed, despite the fact that it involves a lot of the fundamentals of the dance itself. In any case, the primary point of connection in closed is where the leader’s right hand is on the follower’s back, since it is the closest point of contact to the center. The follower should not lean back into this, but should back up until she cannot back up any further. She should not reach for the leader’s shoulder (as so many do) but rather connect in the back first, and then casually lay her left arm along his right, letting the hand lay wherever is comfortable (often not the shoulder). Leaders should hold the follower’s shoulder blade, not with the fingertips but as if he was going to hug her. As noted above, there is no tension in the arm, just the connection of her shoulder blade in the hand. Both partners should settle away from one another, to fill out the space between them and get a better connection. I could go on and on here, but let’s leave it at that.

5. Moving from the center. I’ve written before about the need to move from the center first, and it is the most critical issue on this list, largely because this is at the root of all other issues. I see lots of followers moving forward feet first and leaders moving backwards shoulders first and both are dramatically affecting their balance, timing, and connection. I see leaders who move their arms instead of their centers, creating arm leads. I see followers who turn from their feet – and arms! – rather than with their centers, creating imbalance, instability, and poor timing. The ability to move from your center first into every step you take is critical to good dancing.

Rather than exhaust you further with the full list, I’ll save the other half for next time…. So stay tuned!

Words, words, words

Hi all – Sorry for the long silence, though as many of you already know, I recently relocated from Boston to the San Francisco Bay Area. This post is one I’ve been meaning to finish up, but my next one – as promised to my students in Boston – will discuss the material I presented in my last classes at Arlington. Appropriately enough, I’m posting this Tuesday night, when I would normally be teaching… I hope you enjoy this blog, and please share it with other dancers! Thanks, Eric

The role of a teacher is not simply to share information, but to ensure that the information is absorbed, processed, and acted upon in the right way. Teaching, then, is all about communication – conveying a message in the appropriate manner so that the audience not only receives the message but understands it as it was intended.

A big part of communications is picking the right language to package and transmit the message. Good teachers know that students are coming into class with a preexisting understanding of the world, with preassigned meanings to certain words or concepts. For instance, students have a preconceived notion of what good posture is, what the word “connection” means, and even what it means to dance. To effectively teach the student, you must first understand what the student knows – and how s/he knows it. This is difficult for experienced dancers, given that they have the curse of knowledge.

Nevertheless, teachers throw around words like “frame” and “posture” and “step” without ever clearly defining what these terms mean in dance. It is particularly important to define terms for which the students may already have a preconceived notion or definition. When you ask a beginner student what he thinks of when he hears the word “frame,” odds are he will think of something like a hard, stiff, outside border. Unfortunately, this is contrary to what the student is aiming to achieve in dance – relaxed, soft arms.

Even worse, I’ve seen great dancers and admired teachers use words like “pull” and “push” to describe how to lead. Not surprisingly, I see the leaders in class use their arms to pull and push their followers through patterns. It’s not what the teacher meant, but because he used the words “pull” and “push,” and because the students already had their own meaning of what those words meant, the students interpreted the teacher in their own way. The result? Arms leads and an uncomfortable follower.

The trouble is that in dance we use certain words or phrases that have a meaning outside of dance, and if the two conflict, it is up to the teacher to help the student understand the meaning in dance – and how it differs from the standard definition. This is critical to the student’s ability to succeed, since how we understand the dance determines what we set out to achieve.

What words or phrases did you struggle with while learning to dance? What terms does your instructor use now that you don’t fully understand? Teachers, how do you ensure that your students understand what you say the way you meant it? What terms do you think teachers should do a better job of explaining to ensure the student learns properly?

The Power of Music

It probably doesn’t come as any surprise, but (hang on to your hats!) music is important to dance. After all, dance is the expression of music through rhythmic, bodily movements. The whole idea behind musicality is trying to express the music as much and as accurately as possible.

In fact, dances are born and created in large part because of new forms of music. For instance, swing dancing itself took shape to a new musical form known as jazz, and mambo and cha-cha came about as musicians in the Caribbean began merging American jazz with Afro-Cuban rhythms. Throughout history, dancers have created new dance forms in response to new musical forms.

We sometimes forget, too, that dances change and evolve in response to music. This may be especially true of dances like West Coast Swing, which is danced to a wide range of musical genres and receives a constant flow of new music. If you watch videos of West Coast Swing dancing twenty or even ten years ago compared with today, you’ll certainly notice the difference in the music (perhaps with a bit of nostalgia, perhaps with fear) but you’ll also notice a difference in the dancing. This makes sense, of course: as the music changes, so should the dancing since, after all, the dancing should reflect the music.

Curiously, although dance is ultimately the physical expression of music, there are many forces operating in a social dance world that may have a greater influence on the dance than the music. For instance, how instructors teach the dance can have a significant impact on the dance – both how it’s done and our collective understanding of it. And, of course, as people with knowledge of different dances come into the community, they bring their knowledge of other dance forms with them. Certainly over the past few years the West Coast Swing community has seen Hustle, Hand Dancing, and Carolina Shag – among others – shape the dance. Moreover, dancers with a background in classical forms of dance or who have studied kinesiology (study of movement) and related fields also contribute to our collective understanding of the dance and of dancing as a whole. Particular individuals can also set new trends in patterns, stylings, or even the music we choose to dance to. These trendsetters may influence others either through social dancing or through choreography and competitive dancing. Competition itself can often drive changes in the social dance scene, as the winning dance will set the standard for what “good” dancing is (another discussion for another post… or two or ten!).

So just how much does the music really influence the dance? There are some in the community who are not happy with the current trend in music – the dance/urban/hip-hop genres of music that are predominated by heavy and repetitive rhythms. Some of them argue that the move away from faster, swung rhythms (found in a lot of blues and swing songs) and towards slower, “contemporary” music has led to the loss of the anchor in the dance, and that West Coast Swing has lost its “swing” element. Others argue that the loss of connection and related technique stems not from the music, but rather from a lack of proper instruction and from the misguided emulation of talented dancers by those less skilled. (Personally, I agree with the notion that the music certainly influences the dance, but I think in this particular argument I would side with the latter argument. Then again, I would argue that one can anchor at slow speeds and without a swung rhythm. But again, another post for another day…)

I have had the pleasure of speaking with a particular experienced and respected instructor about this topic, and he advised me to think about what music I play when teaching my students. Am I playing “contemporary” music with straight time or blues music with swung rhythms? Am I playing repetitive songs or songs with variation? Are they really slow, medium tempo, or fast? The idea is that the music we learn to dance to can greatly influence how we dance – as well as our understanding of what the dance is.

Ironically, in some way, the influence of the music is circular, since the dancers – sometimes a select set of trendsetters, instructors, and DJs – are choosing the music to which we dance. In the case of West Coast Swing, dancers are taking the music they hear on the radio that they like and then playing it at dances where they adapt the dance appropriately. So the influence of the music becomes a (sort of) chicken-and-the-egg type debate: does the music influence the dance, or do the dancers influence the dance by way of the music?

What do you think? Has the change in music been the main reason for the change in the dance? Have you witnessed any evidence that suggests the music has directly changed how we dance West Coast Swing? Or do you think social factors like instruction, trendsetters, competition, and the influences of other dances has driven the evolution of the dance? What kind of music do you hear in lessons and has that influenced your understanding of how to do this dance? Instructors, what kind of music do you play in lessons and why?

So how do I know if I’m hijacking?

In an earlier post, I put forth my definition of “hijacking” and explained why I think it’s a bad thing – disruptive, disrespectful, and just not nice. When we touched upon this subject in my classes last week, the followers understood that hijacking is a bad thing, but a question remained: how does a follower avoid hijacking? If the follower can – and is even expected to – participate in the dance, what is the difference between hijacking and playing or otherwise participating?

For me, it comes down to one thing: leader’s intent. What was the leader indicating at the time the follower interrupted? Which end of the slot was he sending you to and which way were you turning? To ignore the leader’s intent and change the nature of the pattern/movement is to hijack.

Think of the airplane hijacking analogy: If a pilot was headed southwest from New York towards Los Angeles, then redirecting the flight to London or even Boston would be hijacking. However, heading towards Los Angeles but “taking the scenic route” – a different and perhaps longer route that nevertheless heads in the same direction towards the same destination – would be playing.

Okay, so now you want to know what this means in practical terms. Let’s say you interrupt a tuck (left side pass or sugar) on count 3 or 4 of the pattern. By this point the leader has raised your hand to signal an outside or right turn, and his body should be signaling which end of the slot he wants you to head towards. You can interrupt, play, extend, etc., but hopefully you will respect the leader’s intent: you’ll still finish with an outside turn towards the suggested end of the slot. To me, to do an inside turn or go to the other end of the slot (other than the one he intended) is to hijack.

Of course, that sounds somewhat conservative (even to me, now that I reread it!). But there are three things to keep in mind here. One, when you agree to dance with someone, you agree to take on assigned roles: one of you will be the leader, the other the follower. And it is understood that the leader will do much of choreography and that the follower for the most part will follow his choreography. That said, the second thing to keep in mind is that a good leader should and will select choreography that invites or encourages a response or participation from the follower. In an ideal world, she, in turn, might do something that provokes a response, and the two partners spend the whole dance working off one another in what is truly a conversation or dialogue. (All of this conversation, naturally, would revolve around the music.) The third thing to keep in mind – and perhaps the most important thing – is that there are always exceptions to the rule.

I have danced with followers who have hijacked and I have danced with those who broke the rule of not hijacking. There is sometimes a fine line between hijacking and not not hijacking, and I’ll be the first to admit that leaders will vary greatly in their perception of what is or is not hijacking.

But being the intellectual nerd that I am, I’ve found that there are three criteria that make not not hijacking acceptable to me:

What she does must be musical (so that it makes sense, has purpose, and is clear to me);
What she does must be effectively communicated to me (so I am prepared and not lost); and
What she does must be really damn cool (in other words, worth it to interrupt what I was doing to do her thing).

Ideally, what she does also involves me or engages me in some way (other than asking me to catch her when she suddenly drops) but if she wants to take a moment to herself I really don’t have a problem with that as long as it meets the criteria above.(For the record, this isn’t impossible – a few advanced followers who are good communicators have not not hijacked while dancing with me.)

Again, I admit that hijacking and what is acceptable and what is not are subjective and vary from dancer to dancer. Maybe I’m really conservative in my viewpoint (though I believe there are others far more conservative than me), but I can say that I love a follower who participates and plays and dances when I’m leading. Honestly, I bore myself easily and I like the back-and-forth, having something to work with and play off of; it can be really stimulating and inspiring. That said, I do hate it when a follower repeatedly ignores what I lead to do whatever she wants. I think it’s fair to say that any dancer would agree with me when I say that I am not a tool to be used for one’s selfish means but a partner to be respected, acknowledged, and listened to.

In my classes I teach followers to push the envelope a little bit – to walk that fine line between hijacking and not hijacking. I do this mainly to teach followers the proper communications tools but also to encourage them to push the envelope a little bit (given that most followers don’t play at all or very little). However, I remind followers that there is a line, and for me, it is defined by leader’s intent.

How do you distinguish between hijacking and not hijacking? Followers, what guidelines do you use when following? Leaders, do you really care if she hijacks? Am I the crazy one here laying out rules or do you agree that there’s a limit to the follower’s playing? What is that limit? And teachers, what do you teach your students about playing and hijacking?