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…)
Words matter. The language we use to teach and talk about West Coast Swing influences the way we understand it and the way we dance it. This series will look at some of the terms we use in our community, with the aim of clarifying them for greater understanding and learning.
Before I learned West Coast Swing, I was dancing other partner dances – Lindy Hop and the competitive ballroom dances (both Standard and Latin). There were lots of times when my teachers would give me feedback and instruction about my frame. They told me to mind my frame, keep my frame, don’t break my frame, tighten up my frame, and other such things. And I would struggle to meet their demands, not knowing exactly what I was supposed to be doing but having enough of an idea to at least try. (more…)
In last week’s post, I outlined a hierarchy of needs for West Coast Swing. The idea of the hierarchy is that competency at higher tiers is dependent on first developing competencies in the lower tiers.
The hierarchy provides a framework for understanding the sequence of skills required to achieve a musical partnered dance. It also provides us with a useful way to look at expectations and evaluations of competitive dancing. (more…)
Words matter. The language we use to teach and talk about West Coast Swing influences the way we understand it and the way we dance it. This series will look at some of the terms we use in our community, with the aim of clarifying them for greater understanding and learning.
How we transfer our weight in dancing is everything. It affects our balance, our aesthetic, our timing, and our connection. And the more control we have over our weight transfers, the more we can do as dancers. After all, dance is movement, and movement is dependent on how we hold ourselves and transfer our weight through space. (more…)
It’s been my experience – as a teacher and just as an observer – that most dancers don’t have a truly accurate sense of their own abilities. A lot of people think they are either better than they are or worse than they are. And, not surprisingly, the truth is usually somewhere in between. (more…)
nakedbasics.com 