As partner dancers, we focus a lot on connection. I mean, a lot. It’s like we obsess over it. We constantly strive to connect with our partners. We aspire to have great connection. And we desperately want to dance with others who have great connection.
This, of course, is not surprising. Connection is critically important to a successful partner dance. We need to be able to feel our partners throughout the dance to spontaneously create, improvise, and express the music together. (more…)
In a previous post, I wrote about the importance of balancing your partner’s experience with your own in partner dancing. Because we’re partner dancers, it’s not enough to just think about ourselves. It’s important to be mindful of how our partner feels as much as we think about our own enjoyment. (At least, if you want people to enjoy dancing with you and ask you to dance…)
While sometimes people focus more on their own enjoyment, I find that a lot of the time things can go the other way: people can be overly concerned with what their partners want. They really want to please or even impress their partners, and they worry about boring them, displeasing them, or disappointing them. (more…)
I’ve had the privilege over the years to teach a lot of dancers and watch them grow in skills and abilities. In recent years, as I’ve worked with more new dancers, I’ve noticed there are some commonalities to the journeys of these students as they progress, particularly as competitors.
Each dancer is different, and there are always differences in how students grow based on their own experience, backgrounds, personalities, innate talents, and efforts. However, for the group that really gets hooked on the dance and gets involved in competitions, I’ve noticed a particular trend – a trend that some of my fellow dancers seem to notice too. (more…)
Over the past year there has been a strong effort to make West Coast Swing competitions gender neutral, meaning men can compete as followers and women can compete as leaders. This degendering of competitions has raised a lot of questions, caused many concerns, and stimulated plenty of debate about the purpose of competitions, the logistics of how we implement competitions, and even the definition of roles in the dance. To shed some more light on this subject, I asked a few different leaders of the degendering movement to share their perspectives and insights here on this blog. Be sure to read earlier posts by Kelly Casanova, Kim Sifter, Jonathyn Jackson, Faith Pangilinan, and Andy Bouman.
I started writing this post explaining why I competed as a follower in the Novice division at Boogie by the Bay last year when I have points as a leader in the All Star division. But that’s not what’s important to discuss. The reasons I competed as a follower were that I didn’t know how competent I was as a follower and I believe in following the system and earning your way up. The more important thing to discuss is why being proficient in one role does not automatically translate into equal proficiency in the other role.
I’ll say it again: Being good at one role does not automatically make you good at the other. The denial of this truth is what drives the current World Swing Dance Council rules (no longer guidelines) and serves as the basis for the contempt people have for what they perceive as “sandbaggers” – more advanced dancers dropping into the Novice division to compete in the other role.
(By the way, in my own experience, people who oppose more advanced dancers switching roles and competing in Novice aren’t other advanced dancers, or even Intermediate competitors. Neither are they the leaders I’ve drawn in contests, who are actually very kind and gracious. No, the only ones I’ve heard complain about me competing as a follower in Novice are other Novice followers, who didn’t feel it was fair to compete against me, and a few Novice leaders who are generally opposed to the idea. I’m not saying they can’t complain, but just pointing out that, at least in my experience, the complaints have come from a minor few.)
Jonathyn already did the math from Boogie by the Bay last year: of the 13 advanced dancers who competed in the Novice division in the opposite role, only five made finals, and only two placed. The judges clearly did not favor the advanced competitors because of their status in the traditional role, nor were they biased against them, as some of them did indeed make finals. Surely, if being an advanced dancer in one role equated to equal proficiency in the other, then all of those advanced dancers would have made finals over their Novice-level competitors. And yet they didn’t. There was disparity among those who switched roles, and not all of them were proficient in their nontraditional role. This contest was not a fluke but rather part of a pattern – a pattern that reflects reality.
Yes, advanced dancers generally have better body movement, better overall technique, better musicality, and a better understanding of the dance. So why then are so many advanced competitors not easily beating out lower-level competition when they switch roles?
Because being good at one role does not automatically make you good at the other.
But why? Why would a dancer who excels in one role not instantly excel in the other?
The answer is mindset.
Mindset does weird things to our bodies. I see it all the time: people walk into class with good posture, moving from their centers, balanced and relaxed, only to begin dancing and turn into a combination of Quasimodo and a newborn foal. The only difference? Their mindset. The mental focus on dancing makes them use their bodies differently. It’s not that they can’t move properly, but rather that their minds are directing them to move differently.
Similarly, a great dancer with a high quality of movement may lose that high quality when transitioning to another role. Think how many followers go to lead with a wide stance, hunched posture, even an arm lead. What about guys who learn to follow and hunch forward, tighten their arms, and don’t anchor properly? These are people who supposedly have better body movement, better partnership skills, and better musicality, yet they look just as inexperienced when they switch to another role. Why? Because leading and following are not the same. One is about moving yourself to communicate something and the other is about moving yourself in response to something. The fundamentals of body movement are the same for each role, but the mindset that’s required is different, and this in turn affects how we move in the dance.
The strong desire to communicate and the strong desire to be responsive make us do things that we know aren’t right. Followers learning to lead think it’s all about executing patterns and moving the follower, even if they don’t enjoy following pattern-driven leaders who force them around the dance floor. And leaders learning to follow will try to anticipate in an effort to be responsive, even if they don’t enjoy followers who anticipate and ignore their leads. We don’t want to dance with these kinds of partners, but when you step into their shoes, it’s a different matter entirely.
Anyone who has learned the other role knows that it’s a different experience. And because it’s a different experience, with a different mindset and a different application of skills, it requires effort to get good at it. When I started following, I just did it for fun, but then I started following so I could be a better teacher, and I quickly became aware of my flaws. It took a lot of focused practice to maintain my posture, to find my anchor, to correct my frame, and to make sure I was following properly. I’m still working on following more advanced and complicated leads, spins and turns, and developing my dance. These aren’t things that happened over night but rather over the last couple of years. And I’m sure it will take a few more years to get where I want to be with my following.
Few if any people can switch roles and instantly be successful at it. As with learning your primary role, you need instruction and regular, focused practice to reach a level of proficiency. Just doing it more does not make you good at it. It does not make you a better partner, it does not make you easier to dance with, and it does not make you more enjoyable to dance with. People who wish to learn the other role (and I encourage it, since it teaches you a lot about your primary role and the dance overall) should seek instruction on how to do the other role and then practice to improve.
If people are upset that I danced down to compete as a follower, because they think I’m better than Novice as a follower, that’s their right (and also flattering). I know it can be frustrating to compete against people who you feel are ready to advance to the next division. But to assume that any advanced dancer switching roles is automatically a threat to a Novice dancer is incorrect and not based on the facts. The bottom line is that leading and following are not the same. They require a different way of thinking which in turn directly impacts how we move our bodies. As a result, proficiency in one way of thinking and doing does not automatically translate to the other.
I sincerely hope the WSDC reconsiders its position on nontraditional roles, but in the meantime, we as a community should consider the evidence and accept the reality that advanced proficiency in one role does not mean advanced proficiency in the other. Then and only then can we start having honest conversations about how best to establish guidelines that are fair to all competitors, whether they compete in the traditional or nontraditional role.
Over the past year there has been a strong effort to make West Coast Swing competitions gender neutral, meaning men can compete as followers and women can compete as leaders. This degendering of competitions has raised a lot of questions, caused many concerns, and stimulated plenty of debate about the purpose of competitions, the logistics of how we implement competitions, and even the definition of roles in the dance. To shed some more light on this subject, I’ve asked a few different leaders of the degendering movement to share their perspectives and insights here on this blog. Each week I will post a different guest blog, and at the end of the series I will share my own thoughts on the issue. (Be sure to read earlier posts by Kelly Casanova, Kim Sifter, Jonathyn Jackson, and Faith Pangilinan.)
This week we feature an interview with the Co-Event Director of Boogie by the Bay, Andy Bouman. Andy grew up in Chicago but has lived in the San Francisco Bay area most of his adult life. He started ballroom dancing as a student at UC Berkeley in the late 1980’s, but after discovering West Coast Swing in 1990, he’s never looked back. Andy is a former president of The Next Generation Swing Dance Club in San Francisco and also was the Competition Director, MC, and Chief Judge at Next Gen dances for 11 years. Since 1999, Andy has been the Co-Event Director and Competition Director of Next Gen’s annual convention, Boogie by the Bay, a NASDE member event, as well as a judge at other swing dance events across the United States. But Andy’s first love is social dancing. He enjoys all forms of swing dancing, including Lindy Hop, and loves dancing to live music. He is honored to have received the first Social Dancer Award at Swingalicious, an annual dance event in San Francisco.
Why did Boogie by the Bay decide to offer degendered competitions? What led to the decision?
Actually, in the San Francisco Bay Area, we’ve had a history of degendered competitions for quite a while.
Back in 1997, when I first started running competitions for The Next Generation Swing Dance Club, the Next Gen board of directors adopted a policy that our local competitions would be open to anyone who wanted to sign up as a leader or follower. To signal this, we called our monthly competitions “Luck of the Draw” instead of “Jack & Jill.” Degendered competitions at our local dances have been the club’s official policy ever since.
Kelly Casanova also offered degendered competitions at her Swing Break weekend event in San Jose back in 1999 and 2000. I was a judge at that event and witnessed first-hand the Champions J&J finals where John Lindo drew Ramiro Gonzalez. (If you haven’t seen that dance, watch it now on YouTube.) However, Kelly was a bit ahead of her time, and received some harsh criticism (and threats of boycotts or worse) from some people who didn’t like the idea of degendered J&J competitions.
At Boogie by the Bay, we have offered degendered Strictly Swing competitions for many years. However, until last year, we kept the traditional gender restrictions for our Jack & Jill competitions at Boogie. Some Boogie committee members in the past were afraid that Boogie might get the same kind of backlash that Swing Break received if we opened up our J&J competitions. We also were told that the World Swing Dance Council (WSDC) would not award points for any of our finalists if we did not follow the WSDC gender restrictions.
Last year, we thought the time had finally come where we could degender our Jack & Jill competitions at Boogie by the Bay. The “Degendering West Coast Swing” group on Facebook had reopened the discussion, and many WCS dancers in the Bay Area were strongly supportive. We also checked again with WSDC, and were told that while people who danced a non-traditional role would not get WSDC points, there wouldn’t be any other penalty if we changed our rules.
In June of 2014, the Boogie committee and the Next Gen board both unanimously approved the change, and we announced it on the Boogie and Next Gen websites and on Facebook.
Around the same time, the petition in favor of degendering WCS competitions was posted on Facebook and gathered about 2,000 “signatures” in a matter of days, so we knew that there was quite a bit of support in the WCS community.
What were the challenges in offering degendered competitions at the event?
The biggest challenge was to figure out how to update our competition rules. We wanted to make our competitions as inclusive as possible, while recognizing that there are well-established levels of Jack & Jill competition in the WCS world.
Based on discussion on the “Degendering WCS” Facebook group, as well as extensive conversations with WCS competitors, we made the fundamental decision that leading and following would be recognized as two distinct sets of skills for our Jack & Jill competitions. So being an All-Star follower didn’t automatically make someone an All-Star leader, or vice versa.
We also decided that if people were at different competitive levels as a leader and follower, we would allow them the opportunity to enter our J&J competitions in both roles at those two different levels.
Since the WSDC didn’t track points for people who competed in non-traditional roles, we had to exercise some flexibility to determine the appropriate level of competition for those people at Boogie by the Bay. So we encouraged people to petition, and we considered “ghost points” from other events that have offered degendered competitions (such as Liberty Swing or Swingtacular).
We also decided to change our Strictly Swing rules, which previously had allowed partners to switch roles during their dance. Since we were allowing people to compete at different levels as a leader or follower, and potentially enter a second Strictly Swing division based on those two different levels, we didn’t think it would be fair to allow partners to sign up for a lower division and then switch during their dance to roles that would have put them in a higher division.
What sort of criticisms or backlash did you receive and how did you respond?
First of all, our overall attendance was up 5 percent from the previous year, and our J&J registrations were up more than 30 percent. So I don’t think we suffered a backlash from making the change. On the contrary, some people told us they chose to attend Boogie over other events to show their support.
We did receive some criticism from a few people who thought it was unfair that some competitors at Boogie who were Advanced or All-Stars in traditional roles made the finals in lower levels in non-traditional roles. However, there were others competing at lower levels in non-traditional roles who did not make the finals. For us, that proved that competitive success in one role doesn’t automatically transfer to the other role. [Editor’s note: See Jonathyn Jackson’s post for more details.]
What were the benefits for your event of offering gender-neutral competitions?
The most immediate benefit was the tremendous energy and excitement at our event. Not only was everyone very supportive of people competing in non-traditional roles, but the social dancing was more degendered than I’ve seen at almost any other large WCS event. Everyone felt welcome, and everyone was having fun. That’s what a weekend event should be all about.
Is there anything you would do differently next time?
We may tweak our rules a bit for this year, but overall we thought it went very well.
What are your thoughts on the current policies of NASDE and WSDC with respect to gender?
As many people already know, WSDC recently announced that it has changed its policies and will begin tracking J&J points for people placing in non-traditional roles beginning February 1st. I am disappointed that they will only record those points at the highest overall level achieved, instead of tracking leader and follower points separately. I’d like to see WSDC adopt more flexibility, so that events like Boogie by the Bay could allow people to compete in both roles in separate divisions and have those final placements count and be recorded by WSDC. But I think the change is a first step in the right direction, and I recognize that not all WSDC member events are on the same page, so the WSDC board is walking a difficult line.
NASDE is a bit different because the 12 member events have agreed to follow the same rules for Classic and Showcase in order to standardize the competitive circuit for routines. Boogie by the Bay is not allowed to unilaterally change its rules for those divisions and remain a NASDE member. It would require a vote of 8 member events out of 12 to remove the gender restrictions on Classic and Showcase couples, and I don’t see that happening right now. However, NASDE has agreed that individual events can follow their own rules for Strictly Swing competitions, which is why we have had degendered Strictly Swing at Boogie for many years.
What would you say to other event directors about offering degendered competitions?
I think this change is coming. It’s just a question of when. The West Coast Swing landscape has changed rapidly in the past few years. More and more, I’m seeing newer dancers learn both roles and dance both roles on the social dance floor. More and more dancers know people who excel in non-traditional roles, and they believe it is unjust that their friends can’t compete in their preferred role at some weekend events. So event directors will need to decide if they want to be out front on this trend or play catch-up.
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