choreography vs. lead/follow in comps?

[chachacha]

In competitions, does anyone else not do formalized choreography/routines during their heats and do pure lead/follow?

My instructor doesn’t want to give us formalized choreography/routines at the bronze level as she wants us to work on our floorcraft and mastering technique before introducing it when we get to silver.

My understanding this is an outlier, and that even at the bronze level, most pros will give their students routines for their heats at all levels.

Thoughts?

 

[MaggiWrites]

In competitions, does anyone else not do formalized choreography/routines during their heats and do pure lead/follow?

My instructor doesn’t want to give us formalized choreography/routines at the bronze level as she wants us to work on our floorcraft and mastering technique before introducing it when we get to silver.

My understanding this is an outlier, and that even at the bronze level, most pros will give their students routines for their heats at all levels.

Thoughts?

My teacher plays a variety of music choices for teaching the syllabus dances. If he notices a student is responding more and dancing better to some pieces than others, i.e. is actually listening to the music not just thinking about the steps, then he offers the choice of a choreographed program quite early, to the student's best/favourite rhythm. I jumped at the chance and had my own waltz and rhumba programs at the early bronze level. Other dances that I found more difficult, like the quickstep, I still just do the syllabus dances at silver level.

 

[fiesta0618]

In competitions, does anyone else not do formalized choreography/routines during their heats and do pure lead/follow?

Paging @ProgressNotPerfection! She has spoken several times in the past about her teacher's philosophical rejection of choreography.

My instructor doesn’t want to give us formalized choreography/routines at the bronze level as she wants us to work on our floorcraft and mastering technique before introducing it when we get to silver.

My understanding this is an outlier, and that even at the bronze level, most pros will give their students routines for their heats at all levels.

Thoughts?

My perspective on this might be a little different, because I've never been a Pro-Am student. I've only competed Am-Am, or as the unjudged dancer in Teacher-Student for a couple years. But the structure used for me, and which I now use myself with students, is to do pure lead-follow only in three situations:

• Raw newcomers, who work with "repeated basic step plus 1-2 embellishments"
• Students of any level whose main focus is social dance
• Gold+ students working on psychology and musicality

Moreover, I would probably never trust a competitive Bronze leader with pure lead & follow, and I have never seen others try it either. Bronze leaders' heads are already hopelessly overstuffed. The choreo crutch is *far* more important for them than their followers, in the early stages.

 

[Arun Garg]

It’s definitely not the norm for most studios or teachers to not have some skeleton of a choreography (laying out general aerial patterns and alignments). It does have its benefits for certain types of teachers with certain types of learners. It can help develop a fluid and intrinsic sense of movement, when being led by a skilled and educated dancer. At some point I do think having planned choreography becomes a practical necessity to grow into more difficult concepts.

Also having only lead/follow methods for competitions is entirely impractical/not beneficial for most leading students (and easily harmful for their professional followers).

 

[vit]

The choreo crutch is *far* more important for them than their followers, in the early stages.

I wouldn't be surprised if she (the teacher) doesn't fully understand that ...

 

[Mengu]

Yeah, the norm is routines, but there are plenty of exceptions. It's case by case depending on everything from instructor to student to levels, dance experience, and goals.

I always had comp routines, but toward the end of my ballroom competition years, I started to hate them. It's certainly helpful to learn and get used to patternwork through routines as a leader. And for dancers who do routines, it's easier to look more confident and purposeful with drilled routines, which translates to better placements. So that has become the norm. But I wish I had grown with a partner doing more improvised dancing, so we could express music more spontaneously. I'm old enough at this point that I prefer a dance that is more artistic and feels amazing, over a winning dance.

When I dance with folks who only ever do routines, I can pretty clearly see gaps of knowledge in partnering mechanics (lead and follow). So educationally, there is definitely a space for dancing without routines at some point, to cover that gap. But you can't teach everything at once, so both approaches can be useful depending on the student, and basically each instructor has to make their own judgement call.

 

[vit]

At some point, leading and following, floorcraft, artistic expression etc certainly need to be worked on. But doing it too early isn't useful. A choreography consisting of very basic figures isn't actually a real choreography, it's just a sequence of individual basic figures, and each basic figure is there to teach something. So it has a purpose to help people transforming from non dancers to dancers and not only to place better on the competition

 

[dncergrl2]

My first comp was silver syllabus. It was choreographed but my pro led me in a pattern we had never done. I remember thinking “I’ve seen people do this”. Afterwards I told him, “You know, you actually never taught me that”. So it was choreographed for him, but led for me. Lol.

 

[Pryn]

I'm a bronzie and dance the follow part. My first ballroom comp was lead and follow.

To be fair, it was supposed to be choreography and we spent months on choreography, but my Pro was so excited to be back on the dance floor (he had stopped doing competitions for a few years) and had to utilize more floor craft than he originally anticipated, that he gave up on the choreography within 20-30 secs of the first heat, we danced lead/follow the rest of the time. My years of social salsa history helped me feel comfortable with following and not panic (as much) not knowing what was coming next.

But on the other hand, I can imagine that a beginning leader might want the safety net of establiahed choreography when starting out so that there is one less thing on their mind.

 

[lucia_l]

Moreover, I would probably never trust a competitive Bronze leader with pure lead & follow, and I have never seen others try it either. Bronze leaders' heads are already hopelessly overstuffed. The choreo crutch is *far* more important for them than their followers, in the early stages.

I'm doing Bronze, senior Am-Am with my husband now. There is no way he could deal with no choreo. He'd be a puddle of sweat.

I could do non-choreo bronze if the pro lead wanted to. It my be better; it might be worse. But I could do it. My husband needs the choreo even with his pro lead.

With my husband, I do have to be ready for things that might bump him off the choreo, but he does need to have a plan. Choreo is "the plan".

It might be nice if there were "pure lead follow" competitions. But to avoid cheating, they would need to be jack and jills. Otherwise, the leads are going to have a "plan"-- which is choreo. The follows who know those leads may be familiar with it. The follows won't have memorized it, but they will be familiar. That's touchy it dancer dance together-- it might work if everyone is from different parts of the country and the follow is unlikely to know what the lead is going to lead.

 

[vit]

That is of course entirely different subject ...

Sure, followers don't need to know the figure to be able to follow it, as they follow individual actions in the figure (linear movement, rotation, rise/fall, sway ...). There are actually huge differences among followers here ... generally, those with good balance and ability to move on their own follow better (or way better)

And sure, there are big differences among leaders - some have crystal clear leading, some not really.

It's much more likely that bronze level follower (or even follower dancing something first time) will be following something well than bronze level leader leading something well. However, bad leader will usually be better in leading a good follower than in leading follower as bad as him ...

As about jack and jill ... those are usually (at least WCS and bachata) connected with lots of social dancing, so that it's likely that leader and follower already danced with each other, or even if not, that they danced with someone dancing similar way ... I had great social dances (salsa) with followers from different countries and continents that felt like we already danced a lot although it was 1st time we danced ... and I would say leader always has a plan. It's not really a choreography, but a bunch of pieces of various choreographies, individual figures and individual actions that you constantly need to adjust to reactions of your partner, music and movement of other dancers that may come into your way ... which you can't really expect from bronze level leader (or even silver ...) ... it comes with lots of mileage ...

 

[Pryn]

It might be nice if there were "pure lead follow" competitions. But to avoid cheating, they would need to be jack and jills.

Count me in!!! That would be such a mind-blowing learning experience.

 

[Tracy]

My background is ballet/tap/jazz/etc so when I started ballroom comps choreography would have been my comfort zone. My teacher at the time did lead/follow but with closed patterns. It was nerve wracking for me but what I needed to learn to manage the chaos of a comp and to learn to "listen". It taught me a skill I did not previously have. Once I got to open choreography with a new teacher I had to learn that lead/follow didn't just mean "what is next". That was a whole new ballgame! Now I can pretty easily follow when my teacher (pro/am partner) needs to change directions, slow down for traffic, change timing to aim for a musical accent, etc. My beginning of ballroom experience laid the foundation for flexibility and now creativity as well. I had no idea that everyone wasn't doing lead/follow patterns at first.

 

[lucia_l]

Count me in!!! That would be such a mind-blowing learning experience.

I'd love them too... but I doubt most pros would.

I tend to think it would be even worse for the female-follow pros than the male-lead pros since the the leads at least have some control over what they intend to lead. Some am-leads who don't lead well really don't know it. Being yanked around by an eager "competitive" male am could be really horrible.

Not that these same leads might not do the same to their am-follows. But at least some of them would grasp that the follow might not "know the step" and so "dumb it down" for them.

Jack and jills are common in WCS. But the connection is often only through the hand and so the ability of the lead to bodily jerk the follow is somewhat reduced. I don't dance standard, but the thought of a incompetent lead jerking me around when the dance is 100% closed hold... that can be a little scary.

I also don't want to be dipped randomly especially by an am dancer.

Anyway, I think it's not going to happen in the pro-Am model of ballroom competitions unless someone with serious money decides to fund it. They'd have to want it so much they went out and campaigned for it.

 

[fish]

In competitions, does anyone else not do formalized choreography/routines during their heats and do pure lead/follow?

My instructor doesn’t want to give us formalized choreography/routines at the bronze level as she wants us to work on our floorcraft and mastering technique before introducing it when we get to silver.

My understanding this is an outlier, and that even at the bronze level, most pros will give their students routines for their heats at all levels.

Thoughts?

Most ballroom judges do not specifically evaluate lead/follow skills below the very top level (and I mean top professional level here, not even top amateur) -- there are simply too many flaws and deficiencies in dancers' more "basic" skills, such as body structure and coordination, balance, timing, etc. So doing lead/follow at competitions is essentially pointless. It will also, very likely, be detrimental to overall performance: even if your lead/follow skills are evaluated, the quality in a rehearsed sequence will always be higher than in an improvised. Moreover, if you worked hard and polished your steps and actions on a specific set of figures, how does it make sense to do some "random other stuff" at a competition? There is enough uncertainty on the dance floor due to all the other couples, so that should provide sufficient amount of extra unpredictability and lead/follow opportunities.