Learning to lead as a woman

[wooh]

Megeliz, you rock. I'd fight for you, but I'm too crabby tonight, I'd just get myself banned.

 

[pygmalion]

My perspective?


It's danged hard for anybody to tell from what I mean from just the written word. So I write what I mean, tone it down, tone it down again, and add smilies. That's the way it is, when you communicate online, like it or not. Wording matters. And a seemingly unimportant disclaimer can change war into a simply interesting conversation.

Unfortunately, that's the way it is, online.

 

[Josh]

Practice resisting those temptations, and following what is actually led - even if it's "wrong" - makes you a better follower.

Yes, but this can be had without the downside of picking up bad habits. With a good leader dancing different combinations of figures, altering timing, etc., the senses must still be alert and ready, and the tendency to guess what's coming must be removed in order to follow well. It's doubly beneficial in that the leader must be very clear with his signals and will likely improve his intention and therefore clarity.

So, replace "wrong" with "different" and you have the best of both worlds. "Wrong" or "unclear" to the lady does nothing more beneficial than "out of the ordinary" does, and in my view does much more harm than good.

And I don't think she becomes a better follower in general either--I think she becomes a follower of whatever bad habits the leader had. Muscle memory can develop very quickly, as I experienced when I spent 15 minutes with a newer student at the beginning of her lesson retraining her body to lower more correctly in waltz after she spent an hour dancing with a leader who has almost no swing or lowering. That's only one example of my own empirical evidence!

At the end of the day I feel a variety of good, clear leaders can be helpful in developing a lady's following ability, but I do not think a bad leader will be any more helpful than a good one.

 

[jennyisdancing]

I think it was actually this part that seemed a generalization:



However, I found it an interesting comment because of the implications. Given that it is also your competition level as well as the men's, does that mean you're just as bad, in which case your singling them out for criticism seems strange? Or are the men actually categorically worse than the women, as seems to me the case in, say, ballet company corps dancers? And if the latter, why is it that west coast swing attracts men that are worse than the women, which doesn't seem to be the case with, for example, ballroom?

Okay, maybe that's controversial, but I'm genuinely curious.

Well, most WCS comps are Jack & Jills, so you enter without partners, and they don't try to gender balance it. There are usually many extra ladies and they get rotated in.

To give an example, a certain division might have 50 men and 100 women entered. If, say, the top 5 couples are chosen, that means the men had a ten percent chance of winning. The women have only a 5 percent chance because there are twice as many of them. So, with stiffer competition among the women, they have be really good - and that means they are usually better than the men within their division. A half-decent male WCS dancer can move up the competition rankings fairly quickly, while many excellent female dancers spend years waiting to do so.

Okay, back to the thread.

 

[megeliz]

I think it was actually this part that seemed a generalization:



However, I found it an interesting comment because of the implications. Given that it is also your competition level as well as the men's, does that mean you're just as bad, in which case your singling them out for criticism seems strange? Or are the men actually categorically worse than the women, as seems to me the case in, say, ballet company corps dancers? And if the latter, why is it that west coast swing attracts men that are worse than the women, which doesn't seem to be the case with, for example, ballroom?

Okay, maybe that's controversial, but I'm genuinely curious.

What Jenny just said. In WCS, we have a points system that determines your level. I've actually been in a competition where there were 5 leads and 18 follows. EVERY guy got somewhere between 1 and 5 points, but only 5 followers out of the 18 did. Add to that, that as noted before, for the follower, there is a different skill set needed in competition than in social dancing - we need to hold our dance regardless of the lead. That said, I'll admit that I'm not a great competitive dancer - I find it very hard not to follow what's lead, and when I screw up, it shows up on my face in a big way, which is a HUGE no-no.

 

[megeliz]

Let me say what I think you just said, putting it another way:

"The leaders I don't think are leading well enough have only to ask me in order to get help with leading better. (I've spent part of my two years of dancing learning to lead.)"

I am NOT trying to pick on you -- just to point out a way this could be read.

Actually, yea, that's pretty much exactly what I'm saying. As a follow, I can tell him that I'm not getting the required type of connection for a certain move. I can tell him that the way he holds me in closed is very uncomfortable. I can tell him that his lead is difficult to decipher. As a leader, I can show him how to create the type of connection needed. I can show him the proper way to hold someone in closed position. I can show him how a quiet arm connected to his body creates a clear lead.

Have you tried to get to know any of these leaders as people? If you were to establish some level of personal rapport, good opportunities might present themselves for everyone to talk to each other about their dancing. If you don't want to establish that kind of relationship, that's OK too; you're still free to dance with them or not, as they are.

Yea, I have, we hang out in bars a lot, and this is where a lot of the said talking shop happens. The thing is, since they have been dancing so long, they are not open to feedback (I actually did bring up to one guy about how he held me in closed - I was practically getting bruised on the underside of my arm! Nothing's changed).

 

[DL]

Yea, I have, we hang out in bars a lot, and this is where a lot of the said talking shop happens. The thing is, since they have been dancing so long, they are not open to feedback (I actually did bring up to one guy about how he held me in closed - I was practically getting bruised on the underside of my arm! Nothing's changed).

In that case it seems to me that you're taking a perfectly reasonable approach, and I'm sorry you're not having a better experience with the leaders in your area.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Yes, but this can be had without the downside of picking up bad habits. With a good leader dancing different combinations of figures, altering timing, etc., the senses must still be alert and ready, and the tendency to guess what's coming must be removed in order to follow well. It's doubly beneficial in that the leader must be very clear with his signals and will likely improve his intention and therefore clarity.

I disagree. No matter how much the choreographic variation, a single leader will still only use a single style of lead.

That will be only a small fraction of the styles of leading available in ballroom. In ballroom, even at the very highest ranks, there are people who lead by "putting" the lady where she should go, and others who instead "allow" the lady to go there. There are people who transmit the lead primarily through belly contact, arching their backs to get that contact; there are others who avoid the arch and maintain their contact higher up. There are those who don't rely on body contact at all, instead using the hold to transmit the lead.

Now, you might consider some of those to be incorrect - I do, in principle - and that might work in competition where we can dance only with one partner and avoid the styles we dislike. However, given that couples using all those different styles of lead and follow have won world championships in Standard, it's very hard to say one can learn to be an ideal, flexible follow while limiting one's dancing to only one of them.

And I don't think she becomes a better follower in general either--I think she becomes a follower of whatever bad habits the leader had. Muscle memory can develop very quickly, as I experienced when I spent 15 minutes with a newer student at the beginning of her lesson retraining her body to lower more correctly in waltz after she spent an hour dancing with a leader who has almost no swing or lowering.

And yet, there can be differences of opinion on how much swing and lowering one should have - if not in waltz, in other dances such as foxtrot - as illustrated for example in the differences between the Hiltons, the Sinkinsons, and John Wood and Anne Lewis when those couples were rivals for the top spot.

If your student frequently danced with both you and the other leader, she'd eventually learn to be able to switch between either type of lead. That flexibility might stand her in good stead if, for example, she encountered a good leader who legitimately favored foot action over lowering for movement in foxtrot, for example. That would make her a better follower than if she were limited to only being able to follow people with a large amount of swing and lowering - even if it did hurt her in terms of how fast she made progress on other aspects of her dancing.