Tips on Maintaining Connection

Dave and I have run into a proverbial wall as of late: we altogether lack connection. You know, that certain tension both parties maintain in their hands, arms, and body that ensures effective lead and follow. Sometimes we start out with good connection and then lose it the minute we do something other than a basic (we've noticed this in particular when dancing a fan in cha-cha or rumba); other times I feel like we never even had it in the first place! Overall, it leaves him feeling shepherd who's lost his sheep and me feeling like a lost sheep wandering around the dance floor without a shepherd :cry:

How do all of you maintain connection? Did it give you problems in the beginning? How did you remedy the situation? Are their any "tricks" to keeping good connection? Where does the connection even come from (hands, fingers, arms)? How do you avoid losing it? Any input would be of GREAT use!

BBG ... wow, where to begin?

Good connection is about feel. My wife and I spend a great deal of time on this area of our dancing. I don't know of any tricks ... just hard work. We have a series of exercises, that help develop the sensitivity. The lead must be sure, and steady ... and the follow must be patient, and intuitive. I believe hours of repetition is what it takes, because both partners must be able to perform consistently, in order for the other to maintain "the connection".

Example ... I must finish a movement completely, and be able to "feel" that my partner has also, BEFORE going on to the next movement. If my lead is good, then I'll be able to tell if my wife has completed her part of the figure with me. Then, I can go into the next figure. We do this over and over ... often in slow motion.

Perhaps others have a good explaination.

Hi BBG....

Um, why do I feel like I'm trying to boil the ocean. Ok, here goes...

some random thoughts....
(warning: long post)

I highly encourage you to seek the assistance of a qualified professional for specific help on this. Feel free to share what you learn if you do get the opportunity. This is a very meaty technical point that I and my partner have worked long hours trying to perfect and something we still work on (I suspect that this will be something we will always work on). I don't think it's possible for me to offer specific technical advice in regards to your partnership without at least seeing what it looks like on the dance floor. I do get the impression that this is a question on connection as it relates to your Latin program (tell me if I'm mistaken).

Let's first understand what connection is. To me, a connection is simply a point of contact between two dancers. Often it occurs at the center between the two, but not necessarily. If I were to simply hold your hand or just place my hand on your shoulder, we would be 'connected'. In order to maintain this connection, we simply keep moving in the same direction. However, if I wished to indicate a change of direction, I would be 'leading' and you would be 'following'. Are you asking about leading and following? or connection? As far as 'tricks'....

Sadly, there are none. While there are specific adjustments that people can make, I tend to agree with superbimmer, there is no substitute for hard work. Yes, you will see people taking shortcuts and doing 'tricks' to achieve good short term results. However, quality of movement that can only be learned by taking a long term approach. While I became a very good social dancer by employing 'tricks', it took months of hard work and long hours 'unlearning' tricks before I really began to dance with my partner.

Good leading/following comes from the center of your body. While leads can be transmitted through the arms, it always orginates with the body. While it is relatively easy to feel each other by maintaining stiff arms and leaning into each other and then trying to maintain this feel throughout a dance, to me, this approach is more akin to a wrestling match than dancing and will most assuredly make your dancing look and feel stiff. In order to have the same effortless connection you see with the best professionals, it is imperative that each dancer really knows and dances their respective parts.

One of the things I do with my partner is to simply dance our routines apart from each other without touching. Are you balanced? Are you properly stepping on each foot? Do you know what leg you are supposed to be on? Are you correctly shifting your weight? Can you break down the movement into it's basic elements? When I first started to pay attention to this, I began to realize just how much I didn't know about our routines.

Then we would dance our routine with a very light, feather-soft, one fingertip connection (an 'E.T.' connection, if you will). Trying to maintain that connection was a real eye-opener which revealed precisely just how much technique we lacked! :shock: It took months of consistent technical work before we were able to complete the excercise with just rumba! (consequently, rumba became a very strong dance for us :wink: ). These experiences merely illustrates the basic fundamentals behind connection and leading and following.

The quality of the connection and the lead/follow is a direct result of the quality of your movement when done with clarity. One of my coaches maintains that the very best ladies are able to dance their parts without the man. Only when quality movements have clarity, then and only then can two dancers dance with each other.

Hope this helps....

BBG-

I agree with taita, especially the part about leading from the body.

I've heard different ideas on connection, but one of the easiest is to roll the shoulder blades into the back, and more or less keep them there. Another test (good for a follow) is to push yourself into a spin off of a wall. You should feel the force transmit through your arm to your torso, and it should begin to turn your body. If your arm is floating up off your torso, only the arm will move, not the body. D Nice also had the idea of falling against a wall and catching yourself, noting that if your arms aren't connected to your body, the resulting collision of your face with the wall will perhaps provide sufficient conditioning to avoid such problems in the future. A little rough for my tastes, but possibly effective.

Similarly, a lead can put his hand against a wall, then extend the rib forward towards the hand in a Latin sense. If there is a strong connection from the body to the hand, the lead should feel a massive pressure increase in the hand. Note that the lead should not be leaning, just extending the rib cage forward.

Everyone above is really in there to assist you, and everything they've suggested is right on.

I know that you are talking connection, not leading. Right?

There aer actually three connections: your partner, the music, and with the floor . . . and you are talking about your connection with your partner.

Questions -
Is he allowing you to do your right to have a continuous connection?
Is he a "heavy" lead?
Is your centers connected when they need to be?

Always do your part of the connection and be light, where you are supposed to be, and your hand is where it is supposed to be so he can reconnect with you if the connecton is broken.

There should always be a continuous, subtle, light connection for most of the dance, unless there are some free spins or turns.

A trick I learnd early is to practice (for both of you) with the handle of an refrigerator door - you can't and won't move it, but you can maintain leverage and compression.

Secondly, if he is heavy . . . practice with a nickel in your fingertips . . . just keep the nickel there . . . you'll figure it out! Light is key

For him . . . have him practice with a shopping cart the next time you go to the grocery store . . . two fingers on the handle, maintain frame, and lead . . . it akes little effort to move that cart in either direction if you don't break frame and your center is on the cart.

Simple but effect tricks!

Dear BBG,
I'm also trying to figure out the mysterious "connection". My current theory is that you "sense" with your arms (or whatever body part is in direct contact with your partner) and you respond and maintain connection via your body/gravity center.

Also, because you have to achieve connection with this particular partner there's an advantage - you can practice, try different things and figure things out (social dancers usually have only a couple of seconds to "process" with each new partner). But may be there're also disadvantages: (1) some people are easier to connect than the others, (2) when you dance with different partners and can't connect with most, it'll alert you that YOU have to work on it but if you can't connect only with one particular partner, most likely he has to work on it... But again, I'm a social dancer...

In addition to the excellent advice already posted, I would like to add that connection is not just the lead's responsibility. Wherever the pressure happens, the follow needs to respond in kind. If your partner provides forward pressure, you respond with equal forward pressure. If he pulls away, you pull away to keep that pressure consistent. If you are in open position and he places his right hand behind your shoulder, match his pressure with your shoulder. Not more or less, but the same amount at all times. Learn to do that throughout your dance and your connection will dramatically improve.

My former coach uses a visual aid to talk about the followers responsibility in keeping the conection. A balloon in a coffee mug. The coffee mug is like the leader's frame and the balloon like the follow inside that frame. It's the follows job to "expand" inside the lead's frame enough to maintain connection at all times. She may expand her back into his arm, she may expand her hand into his hand to keep the conection. Whatever it is, it's also the follow's responsibility to keep the connection sound.

Pretty cool. :wink: 8)

Thanks Pygmalion. This is definitely an analogy that I will use this FRiday when I attend the free beginners waltz dance lesson before the Ithaca Social Dance party. It will be interesting in seeing how well that goes.

On Saturday, February 14,

Hank said:

Steps in creating a connection. These apply to all partnership dancing, including ballroom, salsa, swing, and lindy.

1. Anchor the arms through the shoulders to the back. This is accomplished by keeping the shoulders lowered, and by flexing the chest, shoulder, and back muscles. As an exercise, place your left hand on your right chest near your armpit and flex your pectoral muscle until it pops out, pushing your hand outward. Flexing your pectoral muscles in this way will also flex the muscles in your shoulder and back. Often, people speak of having tone (or even worse - tension) in the arms as a part of the connection, but I think this is misleading. I do not flex the muscles in my arms in any significant way when dancing; instead I flex my chest, shoulders, and back, which anchors my arms to my back through my shoulders.

2. Flex the abdominal muscles, which pushes the belly button back toward the spine and lifts the rib cage. This also pushes the lats backwards, which fills out your body into your partners frame and causes positive contact with your partner.

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