learning

Mind Over Matter: Walk This Way

This is the first in a series of blog posts called “Mind Over Matter” that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.
 
As any of my students can tell you, I often say that dance is half mental. Well, I’m not sure if it’s actually half, but I do believe that the mental aspect of the dance is as important – if not more important – than the physical aspect.

I think one of the most basic illustrations of this idea is how difficult it can be for students to master some of the fundamentals of movement. I have yet to encounter someone who walks into class leading with their feet, or leaning back, or walking from her hips. Even when asked to walk backwards, while they may lead with the feet, most people rarely lean backwards while doing so. So why is it that when dancing, people often have so many problems with posture and movement?

I often feel that my job as a dance instructor is to remind people how to walk. After all, my students already know how to walk – to move from their centers with good posture. They don’t need to learn anything new; their bodies already know the basic mechanics of the dance. And let’s be honest: there’s no dance closer to walking than West Coast Swing.

What then prevents the student from successful dancing? I would argue that the mind gets in the way of the body doing what it already knows. Because students have expectations of what dancing should look and feel like, they make changes to their body mechanics in an effort to achieve certain physical feelings, or they make changes to how they move because they are distracted by a partner or the music. The mind, in short, interferes with and overrides what the body does automatically, distracting it and redirecting it in ways that it often doesn’t even realize.

How important do you think the mind is in learning to dance? What experiences have you had with conflicts between brain and body? Have you been able to use your mind to help you improve your dancing? Teachers, how do you tackle this challenge and what has been most successful for your students?

Round and round

People just can’t get enough of turns. Guys lead ’em all the time (some more than they should) and ladies are fixated on them – learning them, working on them, mastering the really difficult ones (like the ubiquitous yet frequently unnecessary one-footed skater spin).

With so much turning going on, and so many spins and turns classes, and so many private lessons dedicated to the subject, it’s a wonder that so few people really excel at turns – either following them or leading them. Sure, there are plenty of naturally gifted dancers, or those who somehow get it right, or those who have years of classical training under their belts. But there are lots of people who don’t have these advantages and still struggle to follow or lead turns comfortably and satisfactorily.

In pretty much every spins and turns class I’ve seen, I’ve watched as the instructor explained in great detail where to put your feet, how to turn on the ball of your foot, and how to execute the timing of your footwork. The thing is, we don’t turn from our feet. We turn from the same place we always do: our centers. And so teachers make lots of corrections – to your posture, to your arms, to your hips, to your shoulders, to your knees, etc. And then we as teachers expect you to make all of these corrections, even as we pull your brains in half a dozen different directions. Doesn’t that sound easy?

It’s not that your footwork isn’t important. It is. Along with all the other corrections any good teacher will make. It’s just that focusing on the center can in and of itself fix a lot of the other problems that dancers have with their turns: incorrect posture, being off balance, tension in the arms and shoulders, not traveling down the slot, slowing down during turns, and many more.

So how do you focus on your center when doing turns? Thinking about the preparation, execution, and finishing of turns in this dance, I would suggest three key pieces of advice:

  1. Move your center down the slot to make sure your weight is forward over your feet and to establish linear momentum that will carry you down the slot while you turn.
  2. Turn your belly button around during the turn to ensure you’re turning from your core and maintaining your momentum through the turn.
  3. Take your center back at the end of the turn to fix any misalignment of your posture, secure your center over your foot, and prepare to anchor.

Spotting your leader will also help (I suggest a soft spot as opposed to the whiplash-inducing hard spot), as will prepping with the center (reaching the sternum forward to expand the ribs in a way that moves your arms outward). Both of these techniques amplify the movement of the center through the rotation.

The center should also be the focus for leaders. At the start of the pattern, leaders should provide a clear linear body lead down the slot before leading any turns or rotation. The prep should then be led from the center, and while the turn will be executed using the arms, the arms should gently guide and shape the follower’s movement rather than changing or disrupting it. In short, the leader should do the least necessary with the arms, always guiding the follower down the slot with his center, and always paying attention – to her feet, to her balance, and to her timing for multiple turns.

What do you think of focusing on the center instead of other areas for improving turns? What issues do you face with your own turns and how might focusing on the center improve them? How were you taught to turn or to lead turns? Teachers, what is your approach to teaching turns? What techniques or exercises have you found most effective for your students?

You wanna know the Big Secret?
What’s the difference between an average dancer and a really good dancer? If both do the same patterns and movements, why does one look smooth and graceful and the other less so?

Sure, one is more technically proficient than the other, and one makes nicer lines than the other, but if you ask me, the difference is really rooted in one particular aspect of technique: moving from the center.

In the past, I have often tackled multiple aspects of technique that I believe make for better dancing, but I have found that each of these can draw the student’s mind in a different direction, making it more difficult to achieve any significant progress in one’s overall dancing. It’s like moving one part of a Rubik’s cube, only to discover that you now have to move even more pieces into place. However, in recent years I’ve found that getting the student to focus on the center produces much faster results and tends to improve many different aspects at once.

Earlier this week, I taught a class designed to enhance the students’ connection by working on moving from the center. We looked at how to improve body lead and follow at the beginning, middle, and end of basic patterns. At the beginning of the pattern, we focused on both partners moving from the center first. For leaders, this means moving the center before the hand, moving backwards from the center. For followers, we worked on moving the center forward before the foot. In the middle of patterns, we looked at continuing the motion initiated at the beginning of the pattern. For leaders, this translates to pointing your center where you want the follower to end up, and for followers, it means continuing down the slot, keeping your center ahead of your feet, and making sure your center is following your hand. And at the end of the pattern, we looked at moving backwards into extension, where both partners move their centers back while maintaining correct posture.

The idea is simple; the execution is not. Of course, nearly all students walk into class with the right technique. And so, as I often say, it is our job as teachers to remind the students how to walk, that dancing is really just “walking… with style” – and no dance more so than West Coast Swing.

What do you think about moving from the center being the root of so many issues? What problems does this not fix? How have you improved your ability to move from the center and what have the results been? Teachers, how do you work on this with your students?

What is "better dancing"?

Lately I’ve been thinking more about what to teach in order to help my students become better dancers. This, of course, leads to the question: What does “better dancing” mean?

If we think about what “dancing” or “partner dancing” means, I think we can all agree that we want to be someone that everyone enjoys dancing with – someone with whom people feel good dancing, with whom people want to dance again and again. Sure, there’s a lot involved in that – partnership, musicality, technique – but it is a good North Star towards which we can orient our learning. (And also a goal that is both noble and, in some ways, measurable.)

In our effort to become “better dancers” we set lots of different goals for ourselves. It’s good to have goals, both immediate and long-term. In fact, it’s not only good, but I would argue it’s necessary if you want to improve. After all, if you’re not working at getting better, then you’re just doing more of the same, which is only maintaining the status quo. If you want to change something, you have to actively do something about it.

But equally important is knowing what to do to reach our goals, and what to do is wholly dependent on what your goal is. If you know what you’re aiming for, then you can set some concrete long-term goals and determine some specific and immediate steps to get you there.

Sometimes we set broader, long-term goals, like “be really musical” or “be a champion dancer” or, sometimes, “dance like [so-and-so].” Sometimes we work on more specific and immediate goals (which are often suggested by our instructors), like “stand up straighter” or “relax my arm” or “practice this footwork variation.”

Yet I sometimes find that there is a disconnect between our immediate focus and our ultimate goal. As a teacher, I ask students in private lessons what their ultimate goals are, because I believe that should inform the more specific “homework” I give them. For every goal there are certain steps I would recommend to getting there. So if you want to be a better dancer, you should first think about what that means to you.

So, what do you think it means to be a “better dancer”? What are your goals and how do you plan on getting there? What are you working on now and how will that get you towards your goals?

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?