Every once in a while, I ask experienced dancers to suggest something that I can work on. When the context is competition/performance dancing, it’s quite easy for people to suggest things for me to improve. But if the context is social dancing, then it’s hard for people to think of suggestions. That’s because once the basic techniques are mastered, everything else really becomes an aspect of personality and style.
In competition or performance dancing, we’re aiming to entertain an audience. When it comes to social dancing, we want to entertain each other (and ourselves). And the essentials for this are the three Cs: connection, conversation and compensation.
Laura Riva writes well about social dancing, including about connection and compensation. She has the advantage that she dances both as a lead and a follow, so can see both sides. But I haven’t seen her writing anything on conversation yet.
A dance is actually a three-way conversation. The music is the first speaker, and it provides the topic, sets the pace, and generally polices the conversation. The leader is the second speaker, and “talks” within the framework given by the music. The follower is the third speaker, but that doesn’t mean that she has a lesser role.
As with a verbal conversation, it can be hard to have a good conversation about a boring topic, and that’s why the music is important (and one of the reasons I dislike Salsa is that the music is fairly monotonous and the lyrics are in a language that I can’t understand). As with any conversation, it can also get boring if one person does most or all of the talking.
Unfortunately a side-effect of the way we teach most partner dancing is that we emphasise the lead’s training, and spend little time on the follow’s training. And so leaders form the impression that they should control all aspects of the dance. That is, they’re trained to command and control, rather than converse. What’s more, since leaders are generally male and followers generally female, the leader normally has the strength to dominate the connection, and control comes easily.
If the leader is experienced and the follower is a beginner or fairly inexperienced, then it’s inevitable that the leader has more say. But if both are experienced, then it’s more fun if there’s a balanced conversation. In practical terms, what this means is that the leader should be constantly listening to the follower. If the leader starts a sentence, and the follower interrupts, the leader has the choice of talking more loudly, or listening to the interruption. Sometimes the interruption is at a bad time, and the leader is justified in continuing. But a lot of the time the follower is making a statement at the perfect moment (or at least a really good moment). In those cases the leader should pause and respond to the follower.
The immediate benefit of the conversational approach to partner dancing is that both partners enjoy it more. The leader benefits because he can have a rest from leading for a while (even the best orator gets bored with his own voice), and simply enjoy the music and his partner’s interpretation. And the follower benefits because she can put more of herself into the dance. For both, it’s much more enjoyable than a dance where the leader commands and the follower obeys.
There are some guidelines to the conversation. The most important one is to acknowledge the structure of the music, and converse within that structure. When a follower makes a statement, it can either be a stylistic accent on top of whatever is being led, or it can be an interruption requiring the leader to pause. If the latter, then the follower needs to take control until the end of the bar. A second guideline is that the follower should be firm about the interruption: be assertive enough so that the leader notices. A third pointer is that the follower shouldn’t spend the entire dance interrupting - leaders tend to be planning moves a bar or two in advance, and constant replanning can be disconcerting.
Related to follower statements are follower “mistakes”. These occur when the follower misinterprets the lead - either because the lead isn’t clear, or because the lead requires the follower to react in a way that is outside the framework of what she knows. From the leader’s point of view, in doesn’t matter whether the follower does something different because she chooses to, or because she misinterprets the lead - in both cases, the leader sees an unexpected response. And if the follower misinterprets the lead, and realises that the leader didn’t expect the response, then the best thing she can do is take the opportunity to have a play, just as if she’d interrupted on purpose.
With any conversation, there's a risk that it can degenerate into an argument, with each party convinced that the other is wrong. Unfortunately, in a dance conversation the argument is automatically physical. That means both parties must be very aware of the risks of disagreement, and ready to concede to the other. My opinion is that the leader should normally be the one to concede, unless it's a safety issue. That's mainly because normally there's a size and strength imbalance in the leader's favour, and if he asserts himself then he risks injuring his partner. But it's also because the disagreement probably means that the leader isn't listening to the follower, and he's missing out on something great.
(c) John Stoke 2016