Try to be a little charming. ~ Edith Weitzen, social dancer and my mother
This book is only concerned with social partner dancing.
Definition of Social Dancing: dancing that puts the social nature of dancing first.
While there are many reasons to dance, such as getting exercise, challenging yourself, and entertaining the crowd, at social dancing you put the social nature of dancing first. You put the feelings of others, in particular your partner, first.
Whether at a dance camp, a lindy exchange, or an evening social, when most of the people have gone home, and the time is late, when there is nobody left to see, that is when the best dancing happens. Everyone still dancing is loose. You feel a bit delirious. You are wholly in the present. You can do something with another person you can do in no other way. For a moment you become one with your partner, the music, and your community.
Like any undertaking, having realistic expectations leads you to better experiences. While magic moments happen in social dancing, if you are depending on the quality of the dancing alone, most of your dances are going to be more sociable than magical. Even if a dance is magical for you that does not mean the dance was magical for your partner. If you are disappointed because the dancing does not meet your standards, you are going to find yourself too frequently an unhappy dancer. Try to have fun with every partner. You can create magic moments with any person if you turn on your charm. While the quality of your dancing may not be any better, the quality of your experience can be magical.
Why are you dancing with a partner? What are you getting that is unique to partner dancing? In a word, connection.
The point of dancing with a partner is to dance as one with your partner. You sacrifice everything else for the sake of your partner: how you look, doing the dance properly, and dancing on the beat. None of that matters if you are not dancing as one with your partner.
The violins are on the move. ~ Ney Milo, Argentine tango performer and instructor
What is dancing? Dancing is your expression of the music. If you are just doing steps and the music is no more than a metronome, then you are marching, not dancing. The artistry is your interpretation of the music through your movement. You must listen to the music, not only the beat, all the music. You connect what you hear to what you do.
Objective of Partner Dancing: two people dancing as one to the music.
While most of your dancing, perhaps thankfully, is not a mystical experience, the objective in all partner dancing, whether performing or dancing socially, is for two people to dance as one to the music. You add meaning to your dancing by responding to your partner. You make your dancing feel authentic by improvising to the music.
Beth came to my swing classes for years. She followed me to Argentine tango, where our teacher has us work on minutiae that nobody can see, but you can feel. At a ballroom dance, the DJ put on an American tango. Beth ran over to me and said, "Let's put on a show". Performing is not something we normally do, but she was excited, so we danced Argentine tango with a lot of big, dramatic movements.
At our next tango class, Robert announced to our group that Beth and I got a big ovation for our impromptu tango performance. I said to the group, "It was fun. People like to watch that stuff, but it was about the worst dancing we have ever done."
The purpose of a performance is to entertain your audience. Performance dancing is the opposite of social dancing.
Ordinarily, Beth and I never get ovations except from each other.
Social dancing is about having fun with your partner. In social dancing, focus on how you feel. You may be proud when onlookers applaud, but the only people you need to please are you and your partner.
I have friends that compete in 10 different ballroom dances. They have been refining the same two-minute routines for a decade.
A dance performance is like a pair's ice-skating competition. The goal in your performance is perfection. You have one partner you know intimately well. Ideally, you get a coach, pick out a piece of music, choreograph a routine, and practice each gesture. You precisely prepare every move ahead of time. You perform a routine that takes only a few minutes. You perform the same routine you practiced. You do not want surprises when you give a performance.
Social dancing is like playing basketball at the park. You do not know what is going to happen next. You improvise from moment to moment. The goal is for you to have fun. You dance with as many people as you can, some you know well, some you are meeting for the first time. Each dance social lasts up to a few hours. Every dance is unique even when dancing to the same music with the same partner. You respond to your partner and the music. Things go wrong. Social dancing is unpredictable. Surprises are part of the fun.
For performances, you need tools that help you perfect your routines. You need tools to keep you on the prepared choreography, preventing deviation. The primary tools are repetition of choreography and familiarity with your partner. This is the opposite need of social dancing. For social dancing, you need tools that allow you to make up the choreography as you go along. You need an explicit language that lets you communicate dynamically with every partner.
When you dance socially with another person, you communicate via body language about how the music makes you feel. Like any good conversation, the conversation is unpredictable, ever-changing, challenging, unique, and sometimes messy. That is the fun.
I took casino salsa lessons for two years. I got through the highest level, level nine. The problem was when I went to a salsa club, the only women I could dance with were the ones from my class. I realized I had not learned how to dance with a partner. I had only learned choreography. I was relying on my partners to know the steps.
Your ability to communicate should depend only on your skills. You should not depend on familiarity with your partner nor on knowing the same figures. If you can only do certain moves with your regular partners, you have left social dancing. You have crossed into performance dancing. In social dancing, you need to communicate with people who are not your regular practice partners, some of whom you may be meeting for the first time. The challenge in social dancing is what can you communicate with people you may not know well to express what you hear in the music. To meet this challenge you need a simple, effective language for dancing with a partner.
Definition of Social Dance Choreography: any choreography you can unambiguously communicate safely without having practiced with your partner beforehand.
All other choreography we call performance choreography. Even with a common language, there is a limit to what choreography you can communicate. A move is leadable in social dancing only if you can theoretically communicate that move unambiguously with someone you have not met before. If your signal is ambiguous, the move is not leadable. If a move is not leadable, you can dance in close proximity, but you cannot move as one. You will learn exactly what moves are leadable and what moves are not and why. For those moves that are leadable, of which there are an endless amount, you will learn how to communicate them following the three laws and using the three signals discussed in this book.
This book is gender neutral. Anyone can dance any role. Be aware, however, there is a distinct gender bias in today's social dances. Cultural ideals of masculinity and femininity are reflected in the roles of leader and follower, as well as in the style of many dances. You can explore ways to express yourself outside traditional gender roles. You may have to pioneer your own style. This book gives you the tools to do so.
The terms Man, One, and the pronoun He are synonymous with Leader. The terms Woman, Two, and the pronoun She are synonymous with Follower.
The terms leader and follower can be problematic for a variety of reasons, so we also use the term man for leader and woman for follower, even though either role may be danced by any gender. We are introducing the gender neutral terms one and two for the two roles. However, since the terms one and two are unfamiliar to today's readers, we primarily use the terms man and woman.
Using man and woman allows for the use of pronouns, making passages more readable. This is one impediment to removing the gender bias in terminology. An example is "The leader must be careful not to pull the follower with the leader's hand as that throws the follower off balance." Egad, trying to get through a book like that would make you nauseous. More readable is "He must be careful not to pull her with his hand as that throws her off balance."
I was at a West Coast swing weekend workshop watching the instructors in a Jack N Jill competition where the teachers get paired randomly. One couple was having a difficult time. I had been in classes with both partners. In the man's class, he encouraged us to use a lot of tension and pressure. In the lady's class, she taught with her husband, who had a gentle lead, using no tension and pressure. The competitors were good dancers, but she was not used to his use of force.
Even though this book does not address performance dancing, the communication method still works. For competitions like Jack N Jills that test communication skills, the method in this book should give you a distinct advantage.
I have a friend who was the prima ballerina for the Florida state ballet. When I told her about my method, she said, "We need that too. I do not need the men muscling me around. I can do my own dancing."
When you watch movies with great dance scenes, you can often see men wrestling their partners around. Seems like the method in this book might help them too.