I can't stand this place. You're all insane.
In Lindy class, as in almost all other dance classes, we rotate partners (there need to be special reasons for not rotating). As our Lindy teacher tells us, we will find that some of our partners dance well while we will have problems with others. However, if you have problems with each one of your partners, then
you are the problem.
Just offering that as a friendly suggestion that if you are experiencing problems with everybody else, then there is likely something about your approach or your perceptions that creates those problems or make them worse.
In dancing as a leader, even if it's clear that my partner is the cause of the problems we're having, I still take responsibility for those problems. My reasoning is that the only person I can control is myself -- in partner dancing, the leader gives the follower an indication of how she is to respond, so it's still up to her to actively follow my lead. If she is having a problem following (common for beginning followers), then I may be able to help her by making my lead stronger and more clear so that she can feel what's being led and can learn how to follow. Of course, if she's like my ex and refuses to follow, then all it can ever become is a very unpleasant wrestling match (been there, had to dance that).
And an interesting thing about leading is that most of the time it involves following the follower. I give her the lead, the indication of where to go and what to do, and she reacts to the indication (AKA "follows"). She might not do exactly what I had intended. She might even do something entirely different (in which case, as taught by my first country 2-step teacher, I'm supposed to claim that what she did is what I was leading). I need to deal with what she does and position myself and her for the next move -- or even decide upon the next move based on where we end up. Many times we do not end up where the leader has planned, but reacting to that is a lot of the fun. And even if she does follow my lead correctly, exactly how far she travels, how fast she turns, where her arms/hands end up, exactly when her back is there for me to pick up (avoid those speed bumps!) ... all that will vary. I need to gauge all that and end up where I need to be when I need to be there -- that's the following that the leader needs to do.
So you might think of a thread you start as a dance you're leading (there are variations of dances where a man can dance with multiple partners at the same time; eg, Double Bug). You provide your lead, but we don't quite follow it as you wanted us to do. Do you just stand there glaring at us accusing of us of not following? How long to you think a guy would last in a dance community if he did that? No, once you provide the
indication of the direction that you intend, you then follow us as any half-way decent leader must do. You see how we followed and then you react (ie, set up the lead for your next move) accordingly.
Now, in just about every group class you learn a routine (a short choreography, a fixed sequence of the moves that you're being taught along with ways to seque (look it up; sounds like "Segway" but it's not that geeky mechanical conveyance) from one move to the other. There are leaders, especially beginners, who only learn those routines and then try to use those routines while dancing socially. That presents two distinct problems:
1. Some routines are not leadable, so the only women you can possibly dance them with are the ones who had taken that same class as you had
and still remember what they had learned in that class.
2. Even the leadable routines will often fail, because the guys never learned to lead them. In a group class, because the women know what the next move is, they won't wait to be led but rather will go ahead and do the move without being led. The guys think that it's working when in reality they never had a chance to lead it. Then they try it on the social dance floor and cannot understand why it suddenly won't work. Similarly, the women, by knowing ahead of time what they're supposed to do, can end up not learning how to follow.
Around 1970 (I was of the high school class of '69), a number of friends had converted to fundamentalism as part of the "Jesus Freak" movement (hippies who "got turned on to Jesus"; that was their own name for their own movement). I learned a lot about fundamentalism at that time and saw and experience (on the receiving end) a lot of proselytizing. I also saw a lot of the materials used to train them in their proselytizing (those god-awful Chick Pubs tracts, for example). Just as many group dance classes give their students choreographed routines to dance, those proselytizing training materials would give their students scripts to run: here's the "unanswerable" question you ask, here's your victim's confused response, here's your next question, etc until you get to your victim's inevitable conversion.
So what happens when your intended victim strays from that script? I have seen it happen often. Like the beginner dance leader, the proselytizer is caught flat on his feet. Always keep your weight on the balls of your feet. If you let your weight settle to your heels, then you are dead in the water. You cannot move; you cannot react; you cannot even think.
Don't rely on scripts you've learned. You need to
think. Stay alert, stay on the balls of your feet. Lead the next move and then
follow your partner(s) and be ready to react to what they did and in setting up the next move. Even when your body is motionless, your mind must be in constant motion -- in West Coast Swing, the advanced leaders will use "advanced footwork" which means that their feet don't move, but their timing and weight changes are still right on the mark, making "advanced footwork" truly advanced.
It is completely within your control to make these "dances" of ourse successful. Or abysmal failures. Your choice. Just remember to stay on the balls of your feet.
PS
I forgot something else.
Recently, Robert Duvall's movie,
Assassination Tango, has been playing on the movie channels. In one scene as his new friend is teaching him Argentine Tango, she's reminding him of what he's forgetting:
"Balance ... {something else I couldn't quite catch} ... balance ... smile."
Some time ago, I came across 25 (as I recall) pieces of advice purported offered by famous jazz muscian Dizzy Gillespie (he had cheeks that made even Kermit the Frog turn green with envy -- yes, he was once a guest on the Muppet Show), advice meant for swing (Lindy) dancing, but applicable to other areas of life as well. The last three points in
Dizzy's Desiderata are:
quote:
With all the hamstring pulls, shin splints and occasional bruises, the dance is still beautiful.
Smile.
Strive to hear the one.
No, that last one is purely musical -- in the 8 counts of dance music, you want to dance with the music's natural phrasing, starting on the "One". I'm pointing you to the next to last one:
Smile.
Though my personal favorite is:
Nurture skill in several dances so you can go dancing and still avoid your ex.
Edited by dwise1, : PS
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