Monday, September 30, 2013

The paradigm of leading and following

Lately I've been working with my students on dancing in closed position to work on improving their lead/follow, body movement, and musicality. Despite the fact that I had the partners dancing nearly body-to-body, center-to-center, nevertheless, without fail, many if not most of the leaders would try to use their arms to move the follower, and many of the followers would try to guess where the leader was going.

In my view, this behavior is symptomatic of the general paradigm by which we often dance: the leader moves the follower, and the follower goes where the leader wants her to go.

Think about that for a moment.

The leader moves the follower. He is responsible for moving her from one place to another. Not the follower herself, but the leader does the moving. And the follower goes where the leader wants her to go. Where he wants her to go. The priority is on what the leader wants. And so the leader spends his time focused on moving the follower, and the follower spends her time focused on what the leader wants. And this was playing out in class, where the students were dancing in closed position.

The challenge is to shift our thinking about the role of the partners and the dynamic between them. Leaders should be focused on moving not their partners but their own bodies, and letting the follower respond (aka "body lead"). And followers shouldn't be trying to read his mind but rather focus on moving themselves in response to what they feel from the leader (aka "following").

This is a subtle distinction, but watch how many people have a hard time doing it. Because after months or even years of living with the current paradigm, we so easily slip into what we already know and do. The new paradigm isn't impossible or even too difficult. It just takes commitment, the right training, and lots of mindful effort. But man, think of how great partner dancing could be if we did change the paradigm...

Pay attention to the dynamic you set up in your own dancing, and watch others when you get the chance. Which paradigm are you dancing and seeing? What happens when you try dancing the new one? Teachers, how is your teaching - both the content and the manner - shaping your students' understanding of the role of the partners and the dynamic between them?

Saturday, September 14, 2013

The Joy of Blues Dancing

I've written before about how closed position creates more intimacy between the partners, and how it allows the partners to feel out one another together with the music.

Blues dancing is danced to slow blues - the kind that just begs for intimacy - and as such, it is danced primarily in closed position (depending on how much swing you mix into it). Learning blues dancing is a great way for all swing dancers to develop useful skills, such as leading and following, body movements, and musical interpretation.

Because the dance is in closed, blue dancing is a great way to understand leading and following. In closed position, the leader need only focus on the movement of his own body, and let the follower move with him. As a follower, she can learn to surrender to his lead and go with what she feels. With the centers close together, this dance is very much about dancing center to center.

Since the music is slower and in closed position, there is more time to explore body movement, rather than utilize patterns and footwork. With the partners' bodies closer together, it is easier to communicate subtle movements, and it affords us the opportunity to really explore the music with different parts of our bodies.

Finally, because the music is slower, and because we're in closed position, it allows us both the time and the freedom to focus on the music. Without the need to worry about leading and following patterns, we can get down to the fundamentals of movement to music.

Better body leads and follows, more body movements over patterns and footwork, and time to explore the music with your partner. Doesn't that sound like a great recipe for amazing partner dancing?

Have you tried blues dancing? If so, how has it affected your understanding of swing dancing? Teachers, have you thought about using blues dancing to help your students focus on the fundamentals of swing dancing?


Monday, July 29, 2013

Where's your head at?

As many of you know, I switched my teaching awhile ago from patterns to concepts around techniques, partnership, and musical interpretation. But as I work on these other things with students, I realized that outside of class and on the social dance floor, students are used to grounding their dance in patterns, and their mindset is very different under these circumstances. 

The way we teach the dance orients students to think of executing the minutiae of patterns, and in doing so, they lose the forest for the trees. We forget about the fundamentals of lead and follow, the mechanics of the dance, musical interpretation, and even body mechanics and partnership. The challenge then is to be able to execute movements while maintaining (if not elevating) your quality of movement, and that means not letting yourself get lost in the details. 

This month I taught whip variations of increasing complexity, with three goals in mind: (1) improve technique related to whips; (2) improve understanding of lead/follow and the mechanics of WCS; and (3) train students to maintain the first two while executing patterns through proper mindset. 

The challenge wasn't easy, and I confess that not all of my experimentation worked, especially as we moved away from the basic whip to new variations. I noticed that how I taught - where I put emphasis and what words I used - affected the students, but also many of them have been trained as pattern dancers and are learning to form new mindsets and behaviors. Where they were most successful was when I was able to pull them up out of the details to the bigger and more universal concepts of the mechanics of the slot and lead/follow. But then, the trick is to keep them at that level over time...

How often do you get lost in the details of patterns? How do you see your dance as movements and not moves? Where does your mind gravitate while dancing and how does it affect your quality movement? Teachers, how do you instruct your students so they stay focused on concepts and techniques without succumbing to the details and repetition of patterns?

Sunday, July 7, 2013

The Choreographer

When I was first learning to dance, I took a lindy hop workshop with a great teacher from Ithaca named Bill Borgida. I don't remember what he taught in the workshop, but something he said stuck with me: "Count Basie is my choreographer." Count Basie is of course the great swing band leader, and his point was that the music was telling him what to do.

We often think of the leader as the choreographer in the dance, or at least the lead choreographer. He is responsible in many ways for setting the tone and directing much of the dance. But ideally what he choreographs is not born solely out of his knowledge of patterns, but rather his inspiration from the music. 

Putting the leader in touch with the music has many benefits. Not only does it create a more musical dance, but it makes his choices clearer to the follower, who can hear what he's trying to choreograph. This should also make it easier for the follower to engage and add some choreography of her own, knowing that she is on the same page as the leader, both of them connected by the music. It should also be a bit of a relief for the leader, who can let the music guide his leading rather than having to come up with moves on his own.

Who do you think of as the choreographer in the dance? Who is it now and is that how you want it to be? Teachers, how do you help your students to understand choreography and its relationship with the music?

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Mind Over Matter: Attitude and mindset

This is the fifth in a series of blog posts called "Mind Over Matter" that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

In the last posts in this series, I discussed the importance of self-awareness for learning and improving. Having knowledge of your body, how it moves, and the corresponding effects of that movement is what helps us work towards our dance goals.

At the same time, it is important to maintain the right mindset when assessing or analyzing our own movements. When working with students, or sometimes even just dancing with them, I noticed they'll suddenly make a face of disapproval. When I ask what the matter is, I get a response along the lines of, "Oh, I messed up" or "I did that wrong." My partner is chastising herself for doing something other than what she wanted or meant to do.

The problem with this self-reprimanding approach is that it infringes upon our own progress. Our attitude and state of mind are directly associated with our ability to learn. This has been examined with respect to students in other countries who are studying English. One study of students in northern Malaysia found that attitude was significantly correlated with performance in English classes (motivation, however, was not a significant factor in performance). In fact, the more positive their attitude, the better their grades. A similar study also found that attitude was positively correlated with learning English, and even revealed that anxiety significantly and negatively affects learning. So not only does a positive attitude help, but stress and anxiety hinder one's learning.

Carol Dweck, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, studies people's self-conceptions (mindsets) and how they affect their behavior, their achievement, and their success. In her book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, she describes two different mindsets: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. In the former, people believe that their traits and characteristics are fixed, and failures and incompetence are reflections of their deficiencies. In the growth mindset, however, people believe they can develop their traits through passion, education, and persistence, and they see failures as opportunities to learn and grow. They also pursue learning for its own sake, rather than seeking achievement to prove their skill and worth.

When we chastise ourselves for mistakes, we are adopting a negative attitude, and when we get negative about improving, we run the risk of reinforcing a fixed mindset - especially if we focus on our ingrained habits.

The trick is to adopt the growth mindset. To do this, we should first observe our movements objectively, without judgment. Recognize what you did as if it were matter of fact, rather than classifying it as good or bad, right or wrong. Then accept that whatever you observed can be done differently the next time - that the way you've done it in the past is not reflective of who you are or what you are capable of. After all, the truth is that while we may not learn as quickly as we would like, we can in fact learn and improve, with the right combination of motivation, instruction, and perseverance - and mindset.

A negative attitude and a fixed mindset can quickly become a self-fulfilling prophesy, whereas a positive attitude and a growth mindset can accelerate our learning. So stay positive, remember that you have the capacity to grow and improve, and enjoy the process of learning.

When you observe your own dancing, are you positive, negative, or objective? What do you do to stay positive about your progress and adopt a better mindset? Teachers, how do you talk to your students in a way that reinforces a growth mindset?

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Mind Over Matter: Know thyself

This is the fourth in a series of blog posts called "Mind Over Matter" that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

In the last two posts in this series, I discussed the challenges of focusing on what not to do and trying to focus on too many things.

Of course, any instruction is ineffective if the student is not in tune with his or her own body. If you can't tell if or when you're doing something right, how can you consistently maintain or practice it?

Self-awareness is vital to self-improvement. Self-awareness informs us when we're doing something wrong, helps us work towards developing a new habit, and hopefully helps us distinguish between the two. Feedback from your partner can be helpful and informative, but it can also be misleading, and it may not help to fix problems. Knowledge of yourself and your own movement provides a different kind of independent feedback that allows for self-correction.

Self-awareness is tied to being present or being in tune with what your body is doing and how it feels. Even if you can't identify what exactly is happening, recognizing how different positions or movements feel is important for making adjustments. And, as with any physical movement, self-awareness requires practice to improve and become more comfortable with it. 

Of course, self-awareness can be a very internally-focused endeavor in a dance that involves a lot of external activities: leading and following, floorcraft, the music, etc. Finding the right balance between internal and external focus can feel schizophrenic. This is why I often suggest students practice self-awareness when practicing by themselves or in class, where the external distractions are limited.

How aware are you of your own movements when you dance? How has this changed over time? What has helped to improve your self-awareness? Teachers, how do you help your students become more self-aware?

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Take a little out

Last week's post explored the concept of pattern extensions as a way of adapting patterns to fit the music. 

Similarly, pattern compaction - the process of linking two patterns by replacing the anchor step with a rock-and-go - can also be used to help fit patterns to the music. For instance, compaction can help get to the end of a pattern to fit the phrase of a song, rather than hitting the phrase change in the middle of a pattern. Compaction can also create a rushed feeling that fits well to the build up of a song before a phrase change or break. 

The trick to successful pattern compaction is creating the spring action of the rock-and-go. Though you remove the anchor step - the triple that ends patterns - there should still be an anchor - the extension that results from changing direction. The leader will still slow down and change the direction of his own body, causing the follower to reach the end of the slot before being redirected down the slot again. The only difference is that in a rock-and-go this now happens in one beat and one step (the first step of the rock-and-go) rather than over two beats and three steps, as in an anchor step. Getting this stretch right is what facilitates a smooth and easy change of direction. 

Too often leaders aren't clear on the anchor, sometimes even pulling the follower out of her anchor step. In some ways, learning pattern compaction can help leaders improve their anchors by learning the difference between an anchor step and a rock-and-go, while also teaching followers to seek the stretch at the end of the slot. 

Have you learned pattern compaction? How do you use it in your dancing? Has it had any impact on how you execute your anchor steps? Teachers, do you teach pattern compaction? If so, how do you help students to get that spring action on the rock-and-go?

Saturday, May 11, 2013

Give a little more

As I noted in an earlier post, there are a lot of pattern dancers out there - people who know the beginning, middle, and end of what's next before it even begins. They don't necessarily connect with the music or adapt their patterns to fit what they're hearing.

This is where pattern extensions come in. A pattern extension is when a dancer adds an even number of beats to a movement to either delay its conclusion or delay the start of the next movement. They generally fall into three buckets or types:
  • Repeated movements, where the partners' positions relative to one another are kept the same but they keep moving;
  • Stopping, where the partners hold still for a period of time; and
  • Continuous movement, where the partners add movements in a fluid way to keep moving and delay the end of the pattern.
Aside from executing them clearly and comfortably, the trick, of course, is to use these pattern extensions where the music calls for them. Repeated movements (e.g. continuous whip, walks, side-to-side grooving, etc.) are best applied where - you guessed it - the music repeats, either lyrically or rhythmically. They are also useful where the music slows down and you want to slow down your dance as well. Stopping is most appropriate when the music stops or drops off in a significant way, either during breaks or as a transition to a lower energy part of the song. And continuous movement is useful to lengthen patterns where the song builds up, so that you keep moving and building while the song does the same. And I often use repeated movements and continuous movements for phrasing, particularly to extend a pattern to end on 1 of a new phrase, rather than ending during the build up to a phrase change.

We often learn pattern extensions by learning patterns or amalgamations that have extensions in them, but learning to view these tools separately and apply them where relevant is a valuable skill to have - for both leaders and followers. Leaders can use them to adjust their patterns to the music, while followers can use them to appropriately interrupt patterns to fit them to the music.

How have you learned pattern extensions? How do you think about them and use them? Teachers, do you teach your students about pattern extensions, and if so, how?

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Mind Over Matter: Staying focused

This is the third in a series of blog posts called "Mind Over Matter" that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

The previous post in this series looked at the danger of focusing on what not to do. Another common problem with the way we're taught is that we're often given too many things to focus on.

Focus is a critical skill needed for advancing our dancing. It's how we train our bodies to develop new habits that replace the old ones. By focusing on continually and consistently doing something new, we learn to retrain our bodies, building muscle memory and a higher skill level that makes the new behavior become a habit - something we don't need to focus on any longer. However, without focusing on new behaviors, we're bound to continue repeating our old ones.

At the same time, the human brain can only focus on one thing at a time, and multitasking has negative effects on our ability to pay attention, control memories, and switch between tasks. So how can we make progress on any one thing when we're trying to work on several at once? How do we focus when there are half a dozen priorities?

It's hard enough to focus at all, given all the distractions while we're dancing. It's too easy to just revert to our usual dancing and not focus on anything. So imagine the challenge when we're given a laundry list of things to work on.

Learning to focus is important for progress, as is knowing what to focus on. Getting to the root cause of our problems and finding the right solution is sometimes difficult but makes learning and improving so much easier. And a good solution is something that addresses root causes while being easy for the mind to focus on. After all, if we can't focus on it, then we can't do it consistently enough to make it into a habit.

How do you stay focused on building new skills? How does staying focused affect your dancing? How do you prioritize what you work on? And teachers, how much do you consider your students' ability to focus when giving feedback or things for them to work on?

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Detachable feet

Last week I wrote about how we become pattern dancers and the effects that has on our relationship to our partner and to the music. Just as we tend to get locked into patterns, we also get locked into specific rhythm patterns with our feet.

A rhythm pattern is a specific sequence of doubles and triples that forms the foundation for patterns. For example, the rhythm pattern for a six-count pattern is double-triple-triple. These rhythms are fundamental to our dance and are closely tied to the execution of patterns.

However, we spend so much time working on rhythm patterns that we can have difficulty breaking out of them. When we attempt syncopations or a change of rhythm with our feet it can be disruptive to our movement and to our partnership. Our bodies become highly dependent on our feet, sometimes to the point that we are moving from our feet instead of our centers. This isn't entirely surprising, given the strong emphasis on when and where to put your feet in dance classes. After all, how we talk about the dance influences where we focus our dancing.

Learning to decouple footwork from movement frees us up to be musical with our feet without interrupting the flow of the dance. It allows us to take advantage of our feet as instruments of expression, particularly when the partnership demands attention of our bodies and a continuity of movement. Besides, being able to separate our footwork from our movement is indicative of a higher level of dancing, where the center drives the body and we don't need to be mentally focused on our feet.

Do you find that you have to focus on your feet when breaking out of a standard rhythm pattern? Are you able to let your feet play without disrupting your movement or the partnership? What have you learned about footwork and rhythms that has made things easier or more difficult for you? Teachers, how do you talk about footwork in your classes and how do you help your students get comfortable with their footwork?

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Choose Your Own Adventure

When we learn patterns, we learn them from start to finish. We're shown the beginning, the middle, and the end and how they flow together. We learn them with a set rhythm, a set timing, a set progression.

And that's the problem. Patterns are taught as whole units with a prescribed beginning, middle, and end. Once a leader starts, he moves towards the end that he was taught follows the beginning. And followers in the same class also develop the same expectation, which is only reinforced when the leader does as he was taught. In this way, both leaders and followers become what we call "pattern dancers."

And so we usually know the end when we get started. As a result, we lose a sense of spontaneity and we take away creative opportunities - opportunities to engage with our partners and to respond to the music. If both partners know the set pattern, it's all too easy to disengage from your partner and just go through the motions. After all, you don't need their guidance or assistance because you already know the end of the story. And of course set patterns may or may not fit the music well, but if the partners aren't open to new endings, then they each take away the chance to adapt to what they're hearing.

I don't often teach patterns anymore, but when I do, I try to teach at least two or three similar "patterns" but each with some unique variation. (Think of whip variations.) It helps the leaders to disconnect beginnings from ends and see that each is an element that can be pieced together in different ways. It also tests their ability to lead - both in terms of thinking on their feet as well as seeing the options and executing clearly. For followers, they are programmed to pay attention, expect the unexpected, to not know the ending, and therefore to be open to more possibilities. This makes them stronger followers and better partners.

For me, much of the joy of West Coast Swing is in the spontaneous creation between the partners with the music, but to have this we need to break down patterns into elements of movement and to be open to piecing them together in different ways. That way together we get to choose our own adventure as we go along.

How have you been taught patterns and how has it affected your dancing? Do you notice pattern dancers while you're dancing, either in yourself or your partners? Teachers, do you pay attention to how the way you teach patterns affects your students' dancing? Do you have methods to help avoid training them to become pattern dancers?



Saturday, April 13, 2013

Navigating a crowded floor

We've all been there. All too often. The couple that keeps intruding on our slot. The guy who leads his follower right into us. The woman whose arm styling means a whack to the head. The floor that's too crowded.

It never ceases to amaze me that some people just don't learn how to dance on a crowded floor. At the same time, how often do we teach people how to dance on a crowded floor? Let's face it: the dance class is an idyllic environment compared to the social dance floor, where people tend to have enough room and they are hyper-aware of themselves and those around them under the watchful eye of a teacher.

Every now and then I get around to teaching a class on floorcraft - the art of dance floor navigation and etiquette. Here are ten tips for successful dancing on a crowded floor:
  1. Look around you. Seems obvious enough, but we tend to get focused on what we're doing and lose sight of how what we're doing fits into the space around us. Leaders in particular should look to where they are sending their followers, before sending them there.
  2. Narrow the slot. Pretty obvious here too. If there's less space on the floor, then occupy less space.
  3. Use the slot you have. Leaders, if you don't have room for a full slot, consider dancing with half a slot, think about what you can do in closed position, or maybe use a change of places to keep the flow of your patterns.
  4. Keep things simple. Not only are simpler moves less risky to execute successfully, but it's also easier to interrupt a simpler move to make course corrections. This goes for leaders and followers.
  5. Learn to abort smoothly. If someone moves into your slot as you're executing a move, find a way to gracefully change the ending. Cutoffs and moving into closed position are great options for leaders, while bending the slot and pattern extensions are helpful tools for followers. (Remember: Communicate kindly to your partner.)
  6. Protect your partner. If your partner is going to get hit or is going to collide with someone they can't see, let them know. A simple squeeze of the hand is usually effective.
  7. Adjust your frame. Your body is yours to control, so if you have less space, adjust your frame so it's shorter (but not tighter). Leaders, think about the timing of your anchor and how much counterbalance you provide, and followers think about keeping a closer relationship between your center and hand.
  8. Consider moving your slot. If the space at either end of your slot is too cramped, think about shifting your slot to open space left or right (assuming you're not moving into someone else's slot).
  9. Be sure to finish. Remember that good communication depends on good connection, and good connection comes from good movement. If we don't finish patterns by moving our centers into or away from our partners, we won't create extension or compression, and we'll have a harder time communicating in an environment where communication is even more important.
  10. Apologize. We're both responsible for a successful dance, so take responsibility when something goes awry. (You'd be surprised how often people don't acknowledge collisions and other accidents or check in with their partners.)
The joy of partner dancing is that we get to share in the experience with someone else. So let's all do our part to make sure everyone has a good time.

What do you all do to adjust to crowded floors? What are some of the biggest dangers you've encountered? Teachers, how do you prepare your students and teach them floorcraft?

Saturday, April 6, 2013

A phrase by any other name...

Oftentimes when we are taught musicality and phrasing, we are taught, appropriately, to mark the phrase change. The biggest accent is on the one of a new phrase and we strive to reflect that in our dancing.

But there's another part to phrasing: the fact that phrases are different. A verse is different from the chorus, and the chorus from a pre-chorus, and all of the above from the intro. Phrases differ in their chord progressions, their melodies, and their lyrical rhythms, but the difference most notable for dancing is the energy level, indicated by the volume and complexity - and sometimes emotion or expressiveness - of the music. If we are to really phrase our dancing with the music, we should dance each of these phrases differently.

Phrasing our dance means thinking about how the energy and feel of our dancing matches the energy and feel of the song. This is reflected in our choice of patterns and styling, the complexity of our movements, the size and pace of our dancing, and the overall dynamic we create with our partner. As the song changes, so should our dance.

And if we do dance these phrases differently, we create a dynamic and growing dance, riding the rollercoaster of energy that good songs have. If we don't, we miss an opportunity to be musical, to create variation in our dance, and to engage our partners on a different level.

How much do you pay attention to making one phrase feel different from another in your dancing? How much do you just focus on the phrase change? Have you ever been taught how to phrase in the way described above? Teachers, do you work with your students on this level of musicality, either hearing the music in this way or how to dance to it in this way?

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Moving beyond rhythm

As I work with my students on musical interpretation, I often have them focus on articulating the lyrics of a song. But every time I do this, at least one student points out the difficulty of hearing the melody, adding that they naturally turn to the rhythm.

The rhythm is often dominant in the music we dance to, in part because it has a driving beat that lends itself to swing, but also in part because much of the music we dance to today is increasingly rhythm-heavy. This makes the rhythm easy to hear, but the problem with letting it drive our dancing is that the rhythm of a song is inherently flat. Sure, a good beat often compels us to dance, but the primary purpose of a rhythm section in a band is to keep time, and to that end it is deliberately repetitive and monotonous. If we let the timing of the song be our only guide, we might as well dance to a metronome or someone clapping.

Not only does dancing to the rhythm or timing of a song create flat, monotonous dancing, but flat, monotonous dancing in turn creates a weak foundation for partnership. As humans, when we receive the same stimulus over and over, we start to tune it out. It becomes white noise that fades into the background. The same thing happens with monotonous partner dancing: the repetitive feel of it leads both partners to tune out and detach from one another.

So how do you keep the dance interesting and engaging? A good place to start is by connecting with the variable part of the song: the melody.

The melody is where the variation is. Whereas the rhythm chugs along at a steady pace, the melody ebbs and flows with changes in both rhythm and energy. The melody is also the emotional heart of a song. Whereas rhythm provides the beat and groove for a song, melody expresses the feeling and soul of a song. Whether it's a voice or an instrument, connecting with the melody not only helps you mix things up but it also gives you emotions to incorporate into your dancing. And dancing that captures emotions is certainly more interesting and engaging.

So learn to hear the melody and learn to connect and stay connected with it in your dancing. You'll be more likely to have an exciting dance and to create an engaging partnership.

What is easiest for you to hear in a song? Where does your ear naturally go when listening while dancing? How does the genre of music affect what you hear? Teachers, what do you have your students focus on? How do you teach your students to hear different parts of the song?

Saturday, March 23, 2013

Mind Over Matter: Don't not do that...

This is the second in a series of blog posts called "Mind Over Matter" that explore the importance and relevance of the psychological aspects of dancing.

In my first post in this series, I discussed the amazing influence of the mind over the body, particularly in how the mind can interrupt what we might otherwise do well.

An important element that affects the way we dance is the way we learn to dance. In recent months I've been thinking more and more about how the way this dance is taught in our community is often detrimental to our mastery of it. Our bodies know how to do some things naturally and yet the way we talk about the dance sets up a mental frame of reference that gets in the way of that. 

One key component to this mental paradigm is our focus on what not to do. We all know this line of thinking. We're told to not do something that we're doing wrong, and the focus is on undoing a bad habit. A prime example is tight arms, the solution to which is to relax them.

There are a two main problems with this method of instruction. The first is that when the mind is focused on a particular body part, we tend to engage that part most. Think about exercising. If you've done any weight training or yoga or Pilates, you know that where you concentrate is where you will work the hardest. This is especially true of compound exercises, where more than one muscle group is engaged. The muscle you think about while exercising is the muscle you will engage the most. It's not because you're doing anything to consciously engage that muscle more. Rather, it's a subconscious reaction to where your mind is focused. So when you think about relaxing tight arms, you are actually more likely to perpetuate the problem rather than solve it.


Another problem is that knowing what not to do doesn't always tell you what to do. If I said, of all numbers from 1 to 100, don't pick 56, that's helpful to a point, but it doesn't tell you which of the other 99 numbers to choose. Likewise, telling you to relax your arms is somewhat helpful, but in essence, it's the same thing as saying "don't be tight" - it doesn't tell you what you should be doing differently in a constructive way.

I've found that good teachers will redirect your attention to solutions that help you develop new habits, rather than simply telling you to not do something. And good students ask their teachers for constructive problems, trying to understand, "If not 56, then which number is it?"

What habits have you tried to overcome with the instruction of "don't do that" and did it work? Was there some other helpful instruction that allowed you to undo your bad habit? Teachers, do you provide constructive advice that helps your students develop new habits to replace the old bad ones? How do you communicate that advice to your students? Post your responses below!


Thursday, March 14, 2013

Leading and following naturally

My apologies for the long silence, but as many of you know, my life has gone through a lot of change over the last few months. I'm happy to say that I'm back online and I've got a backlog of posts awaiting your reading and feedback! - Eric

Anyone who has ever walked somewhere with someone else already knows how to lead and follow. And if you've ever walked down the street holding someone's hand, then you know how to lead and follow... while holding someone's hand.

If you've done this you know how to move in a way that guides the other person and in a way that responds to another person - without forcing them, without manhandling them, without hanging onto them. You already know how to move yourself in a way that communicates with someone else without using words.

It's my belief that the reason so many people struggle with lead and follow is because we as dance teachers give them all sorts of information that distracts from what they already know. We focus you on how to hold hands, how to hold your arms, where to lead, and where to put your feet. Plus, we teach classes focused on patterns, where the leader learns how to move the follower and the follower learns to do what he wants. The result is a mindset in which "leading" becomes equated with "dictating" and "following" means "being forced."

I started working with my students last month to shift the current paradigm, attempting to define "leading" and "following" as something other than "move" and "be moved." For the leaders, we looked at the physical change in leading that results when you think of it as "inviting" - invite the follower to go down the slot, invite the follower to go under your arm, invite the follower in and back out. The body movement is the same, but nature and feel is more relaxed, more natural, and, well, more inviting. For the followers, we looked at just going where you were being directed. The followers assume the responsibility of moving themselves, which improves their posture, balance, and ultimately their body flight. It also takes the mental focus off of the leader and puts it more on what they feel, which helps to avoid anticipation and anxiety about what is being led. The result for both partners is more in line with what we do naturally when we guide and are guided through physical contact.

It never ceases to amaze me how much our mindset affects and influences how our bodies move and react. By returning to what our bodies already know, and adopting a different mindset about what it means to lead and follow, we can establish a more relaxed, trusting, and stable partnership, which opens the possibilities for collaboration and creativity.

How do you think of leading and following based on what you've learned? How does this new paradigm above make you think about your role in the dance? Teachers, what do you think about leading and following and does the way you teach reinforce that idea or something else?