technique

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!

Level of difficulty

I never thought I’d say this, but figure skating as peaked my interest. The recent win of Evan Lysacek, the 24-year-old figure skater from Illinois, over reigning champion Yevgeny Plushenko, 27-year-old Russian who came out of retirement for these Olympic Games, has stirred a lot of buzz – not only because it’s the first time an American has taken the gold since Brian Boitano in 1988, but because it raised questions about how skating is judged.

For those of you who missed it, Lysacek performed brilliantly – no earth-shattering figures but it was nearly flawless. Plushenko nailed the quadruple toe loop – the new challenging figure all the best skaters are daring to try – but he had some errors on the jumps that followed. Both men received the exact same scores for artistry; Lysacek pulled in two more points for technical performance.

Some of you know that much of this has to do with math and the new scoring system (jumps performed in the latter half of the long program received 10% more points) but the bigger argument has centered around remarks made by Plushenko after the competition. Plushenko and his coach have both commented that male skaters who did not attempt the quad are basically wimps. “If the Olympic champion doesn’t know how to jump a quad, I don’t know,” Plushenko said. “Now it’s not men’s figure skating. It’s dancing. Maybe figure skating needs a new name.”

The insinuation is that figure skating is about technical difficulty – pushing the envelope with respect to skill, not choreography and artistry. So who gave the better performance: Plushenko with his less perfect but more challenging routine or Lysacek with his cleaner, less difficult routine?

We see this drama play out frequently in the dance world. Sometimes the couple pulling out the big moves and getting cheers wins, and other times the simpler, smoother couple gets top placement. Depends on the judges, depends on the dancers, and depends on how much “bad” technique will be tolerated in exchange for difficulty and showmanship.

Dancing – especially competitive dancing – can be as much about showmanship and level of difficulty as it is about mastery of fundamental technique and partnership. To what extent should the former be valued over the latter? How much are we willing to sacrifice fundamentals for the “wow” factor? What separates great showmanship from “flash and trash”? And how might the factors we reward in competitive dancing be shifting what we see on the social dance floor?

The mystery of frame

(Hi all – Apologies for the silence these past few weeks. My day job was eating up a lot of my time and I had to put this aside. However, I am now back and will post new entries more frequently, at least once or twice a week. Thanks for reading and responding! – Eric)

How many times have you heard an instructor use the word “frame” in a dance class? No doubt, plenty of times.

And how many times have you been told to “maintain your frame” or “don’t break frame” by an instructor? We all have at some time or another.

Now how many times have you heard a dance instructor actually give a definition of the word “frame” in a dance class? Think carefully. My guess is, for most of you, the answer is: never.

Think about what “frame” means to you, then post your best definitions here on this blog. What is the definition you know? What is the definition you use to dance? What is the definition of frame you use to teach? Share your answers here!

A whole other animal entirely…

I’ve been (and remain) a firm believer that good dancing is grounded in good technique and good partnership. When I’ve taught students, training them to be better dancers, I’ve always emphasized these two points. And when it came time to helping these students compete, I still emphasized good technique and good partnership skills, striving to create a clean, comfortable dance with any and every partner.

That works fine for the lower levels of competition – newcomer and novice – but it isn’t always cutting it at – or even required for – higher levels. These days, showmanship and musical interpretation (extreme forms of which are known as “flash and trash”) is getting rewarded more and more in competition. While I agree that these two elements are some of the marks of better competitors and, yes, better dancers overall, we are treading in dangerous waters when we start rewarding these elements in lieu of good technique and partnership, rather than in addition to good technique and partnership.

I now find myself asking students in private lessons if they wish to be better social dancers or better competitive dancers, as their answers will dictate not my suggestions, but the priority for those suggestions. For instance, students can get away with minor problems in posture or not fully anchoring in competition if they can demonstrate advanced musicality. Would I still recommend fixing one’s posture and anchor? You bet, but it’s not as much of a priority if the changes are minor and winning is the goal. (Of course, I make all of this transparent to the student so they understand what should be priority and why.) For me as a teacher, I will always put the emphasis on being a better social dancer, but to be a better teacher, I also need to consider the wishes of my student, right? (Another topic for another blog post!)

Admittedly, even as a judge, I will place a couple with great musicality but less than perfect technique over a couple with great technique but little or no musicality. This is, after all, dancing, which by definition is the physical representation of music. Dancing is not the same as moving, and not even the same as lead-follow. Musical interpretation counts for something. Yet I will happily place a really clean couple that is really connected with great partnership over the sloppy, musical couple. Maybe I’m the odd man out, but that’s what I value most.

Every now and then, I get to see truly great dancing rewarded: a clean, smooth dance that is musical and that is focused on the partnership – not the audience. At the Mahoneys’ New Year’s Dancin’ Eve this year, some of the first place couples were the crowd-pleasers, but often the second and third place couples were the cleanest dancers with the best partnerships. Nice to see that getting rewarded from time to time (especially as I am admittedly not a flashy dancer, even though I’d like to know how to be…)

Competition is a beast unto itself. As more people compete, and the skill level of each division gets higher, the importance of showmanship and musicality over technique and partnership not only increases but is seeping into the lower divisions. How do you all feel about this? Do you see good social dancing and good competitive dancing as one and the same? What makes them different and why? What are you doing to be good at one or the other (or both)? What do you want to be rewarded in competition and what do you think should be rewarded? And teachers, how do you navigate this world of social and competitive dancing?