"Social dancing messes up [my] technique"?

[lucia_l]

I think the snobbery issue is part real and part not real. There are certainly some people who say "social dancing messes up my technique" and think that's the fault of others and that competition training is a "higher more elite" choice. But there are other people who just mean that it can be hard to break a bad habit and also dance socially regularly.

I met a bronze dancer in the changing room at a comp and struck up a comp-friendship. She advanced very fast. We talked about social dancing and she confided in me that, on the one hand, she would love her husband to learn to dance. She'd love to dance with him socially as I do with mine. But she thought it was lucky for her competition progress that her husband did not want to learn to dance. She also said she wasn't going to tell her husband that dancing with him might mess with her technique! (She went on to win a Best of the Best in her age/bronze category fairly quickly. She also worked very hard. The amount of time seemed similar to PNP or perhaps even more! She was great and might have done very well quickly anyway. But she did think that having all practice be quality practice with an experienced lead helped. )

So that was her version of social dancing messes with technique. The fact is: in some sense social dancing does mess with technique, particularly when technique is fragile as it is when you are just mastering it. I strongly suspect the teachers in "Dancing with the Stars" do not want their student-competitors to go out at night and dance with other non-dancers during the actual course of the show! It would mess with their technique and they'd be less likely to win.

Recognizing that is not "elitism". But there are other ways of saying the exact same thing that can be elitist.

 

[tangotime]

I think the snobbery issue is part real and part not real. There are certainly some people who say "social dancing messes up my technique" and think that's the fault of others and that competition training is a "higher more elite" choice. But there are other people who just mean that it can be hard to break a bad habit and also dance socially regularly.

I met a bronze dancer in the changing room at a comp and struck up a comp-friendship. She advanced very fast. We talked about social dancing and she confided in me that, on the one hand, she would love her husband to learn to dance. She'd love to dance with him socially as I do with mine. But she thought it was lucky for her competition progress that her husband did not want to learn to dance. She also said she wasn't going to tell her husband that dancing with him might mess with her technique! (She went on to win a Best of the Best in her age/bronze category fairly quickly. She also worked very hard. The amount of time seemed similar to PNP or perhaps even more! She was great and might have done very well quickly anyway. But she did think that having all practice be quality practice with an experienced lead helped. )

So that was her version of social dancing messes with technique. The fact is: in some sense social dancing does mess with technique, particularly when technique is fragile as it is when you are just mastering it. I strongly suspect the teachers in "Dancing with the Stars" do not want their student-competitors to go out at night and dance with other non-dancers during the actual course of the show! It would mess with their technique and they'd be less likely to win.

Recognizing that is not "elitism". But there are other ways of saying the exact same thing that can be elitist.

The simple answer is this : IF you come into the world of salsa you need to accept that the technique in salsa is often quite different in corresponding aspects ( hold for one EG ) . And, 95 % of latinos have never had a lesson neither do they care ! . It took me quite a while to accept that I needed to change my approach and went against many deep rooted techniques..

 

[opendoor]

.....But she thought it was lucky for her competition progress that her husband did not want to learn to dance. She also said she wasn't going to tell her husband that dancing with him might mess with her technique..

To be honest, I cannot understand this attitude at all, lucia. On the contrary, dancing with a worse leader actually sharpens one's knowledge of posture and technique. Anyone who only walks with better dancers loses the ability to analyze!

 

[lucia_l]

opendoor,
Perhaps a lead can improve alot with a poor follow. I don't know. I don't lead!

However, I don't think dancing with a worse leader sharpen's ones knowledge of posture or technique! Bad leaders lead too late or too soon. They start leading one thing, then change their mind. Their think they are leading a turn but stand or place their arm literally in the way of the follower. They don't provide connection that allows the follow to stretch left. They wobble. They turn in wrong directions. The stand in the lane when they shouldn't. Etc.

All of this means the follow expends a large amount of mental effort just guessing what is being lead and figuring out ways to try to dodge around the leads blocking arm or the lead lead themselves standing in the lane. There is very little brain space to try to think about anything one might be weak at be it posture or technique. Worse, you often must compromise on technique. ( You can't do some things correctly if you are supposed to move in a straight line but instead have to veer around the lead who stands where he intends you to go.)

Leading is hard to learn. I don't want to make it sound like everything is the leads fault. But I think the idea that a follow improve technique significantly with a bad lead is profoundly mistaken.

 

[opendoor]

..follow expends a large amount of mental effort just guessing what..

Despite many words, you basically agree with me: You can analyze!

 

[IndyLady]

Despite many words, you basically agree with me: You can analyze!

I'm going with this.

I sort of get it, sometimes you have to compromise what you think is your ideal technique when dancing with someone who is not your pro. But then, your (generic "your") pro might be - ok, undoubtedly is - covering for your technical weaknesses. You will find that out when you dance with other people who are not your pro. Maybe your balance is not as great as you thought it was, if you're only on balance when dancing with your pro.

And that wobbling, wandering, stumbling lead - that person is going to help you discover how good your following skills really are. If you require a near-perfect lead at all times... well, I would argue that means there is room for improvement. And the reality is, that if/when you change pros - some things are going to be like starting all over from the beginning, because even equally skilled pros don't all lead in what feels like the same way.

 

[lucia_l]

IndyLady,
I do dance socially; I love it. I also dance with a variety of pros at studio parties.

I think dancing with a variety of leads helps technique especially in the long run. I also think it's helpful to dance with leads who don't cover for you. (Also: in practice, pros should avoid covering too much. But they will cover in competition itself.)

I disagree that dancing with leads who are actually poor helps at all. There is a difference between getting used to the feel of different relatively good or ok leads and dancing with a lead who is actually bad. (Most leads are bad when they start. Leading is hard to learn.)

 

[Cal]

Most leads are bad when they start. Leading is hard to learn.

I’ll quibble with that statement, as I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful to dancers.

I’ve spent a lot of years learning to follow and I’ve spent a fair amount of time learning to lead, and quite honestly, I don’t find learning to lead “easier” or “harder” than learning to follow. It’s merely a component part of learning to dance – just like following is a component part. Sure, maybe each role has a couple of different “jobs” to focus on – but the underlying skills needed to do those roles aren’t really that much different: CBM, footwork, shape, swing, connection, etc. The things that I have most trouble with as a Follow are the same things that I have the most trouble with as a Lead; the things that I find “easy” as a Follow are similarly “easy” for me as a Lead. It’s not the role itself that is “hard” or “easy.”

But, I guess if dancers tell themselves that learning to lead is “hard”, that’s what they’re likely to find. I prefer to think otherwise.

 

[fiesta0618]

I’ll quibble with that statement, as I don’t think it’s necessarily helpful to dancers.

I’ve spent a lot of years learning to follow and I’ve spent a fair amount of time learning to lead, and quite honestly, I don’t find learning to lead “easier” or “harder” than learning to follow. It’s merely a component part of learning to dance – just like following is a component part. Sure, maybe each role has a couple of different “jobs” to focus on – but the underlying skills needed to do those roles aren’t really that much different: CBM, footwork, shape, swing, connection, etc. The things that I have most trouble with as a Follow are the same things that I have the most trouble with as a Lead; the things that I find “easy” as a Follow are similarly “easy” for me as a Lead. It’s not the role itself that is “hard” or “easy.”

I was going to offer measured disagreement to this, but as I thought it over I realized I actually agree with you.

I was going to disagree because, among raw beginners, followers generally reach a state of "able to move without tripping" much more quickly than the leads do. But then I realized that this only happens because raw beginners are often neither leading nor following one another, but rather dancing in parallel. With raw beginners, a follower can often approximate their role reasonably well by anticipating. The leader has such a limited repertoire and ability to improvise that the follower will very often "guess right" with their limited data, and so the dance succeeds.

So I guess what I'd instead say is that, in many styles, a bad lead is more exposed than a bad follow. A sufficiently strong lead can muscle a poor follower around with some semblance of success, but the reverse is not so true. We often interpret this as leading being "harder," even though it isn't.

In the context of @lucia_l's post, this would mean that it is possible for a lead to be so ferociously poor (and we've all been there at some point!) that no amount of following skill will help...because there is nothing to work with. All you can do is revert to anticipating, or try to insert some order through backleading, neither of which is helpful for building technique.

What do you think?

 

[lucia_l]

In the context of @lucia_l's post, this would mean that it is possible for a lead to be so ferociously poor (and we've all been there at some point!) that no amount of following skill will help...because there is nothing to work with. All you can do is revert to anticipating, or try to insert some order through backleading, neither of which is helpful for building technique.

What do you think?

This is what I think. That's where the Bronze-am I met was with regard to her husband. If he started, he would be an absolute beginner. He may have actually tried a few lessons, and been truly bad. And beyond that, if she was till not really following but just starting to learn, alternating every other event with the poor leader has the potential to make her unlearn what her pro is trying to get her to do. The reason is: she can't do what the pro wants her to do with someone who is still ferociously poor.

Once he gets a little better or she is more solid, things change.

 

[Cal]

I realize that my last post veered a little bit away from “messing up technique” into a tangent on hard/easy. So, I’ll try to stay more on-topic this time.

I think whether a dancer feels that someone else has “messed up their technique” can depend on whether the partners are both weak in the same component. For instance, if one dancer struggles with CBM and the partner also struggles with CBM, then sure, it’s going to be really frustrating for both of them - neither one can compensate for the other’s weakness and probably neither one will improve that component while dancing with the other. And both partners will probably end the dance thinking that the other is “bad” and messed them up.

But if they have different strengths and weaknesses, maybe the outcome is different. Say one partner is weak on timing and the other struggles with CBM, then there’s at least a chance that the dancer with the OK timing can compensate a bit for the partner; and the partner with the OK CBM might be able to compensate a bit for the dancer who struggles with it. In compensating for the partner, that dancer sharpens that skill. Granted, they might not improve their own weak skill or even realize that their partner is compensating for them. At the end of the dance, the one might think “I had to do a little steering with that one”, and the other might think “I had to work a bit to keep us on time”. But, they might not actually call the other one “bad” or claim that the partner messed them up.

 

[Pryn]

Forgive me for resurrecting an older thread, but it got me thinking about my social dancing experience last night.

It's not a secret that I have a love for social salsa and for the variety of people it brings together. Dancing socially feels like a gift to me and enforces the skill of being able to have a pleathora of conversations with people who speak the language of dance, but also understanding that some dances have many different dialects (let alone levels of fluency).

I had the pleasure of attending a social last night with a heavy salsa theme. Salsa on1, on2, Mambo were all being danced. I had the good fortune of having some deep dance conversations with 4 of the leads in attendance.

One lead was a strong beginner making his way into the intermediate space. He was solid on his timing, footwork, and body motion. He primarily danced forward and back (LA Style) and his style felt a bit ballroomy.

A 2nd lead was an experienced social dancer. He had developed his own dance style blending what he danced growing up with years of social classes taken here and videos to expand his vocabulary. He was a bit more grounded than the others, gave a prepatory signal before almost every move, and we danced forward/back slot, laterally, at traveling diagonals, and rotationally. When he realized my experience-level, he tried some newer moves and we had fun working out the details of how he needed to signal the lead, my hand placements, footwork adjustments, and body positioning. (Note: We didn't stop dancing to work out the steps, we danced, messed up, improvised our way back into sync, and he re-led it over and over again until we were finally successful.)

The 3rd lead was from NY and danced NY style. He modified his dancing enough to dance on1 for me, but the movements were classic NY style with heavy Puerto Rican style influences. His dancing was the flashiest, loaded with shines, and overflowing with consecutive complex arm turns, waist catches, hip turns and pauses. I had to focus on connection so that I could respond to his movements and match his ebbs and flows of energy. (I was sweating and my heart was racing by the end of each dance.) It was a fun workout.

The 4th lead was a very chill LA Style dancer. His movements were unhurried and his focus was on good partnership connection, not big flashy consecutive moves. To the outside it probably looked like we were dancing in a simple manner but I could feel his technique and control in every step. He also had such good partnership connection that he could feel my muscle movements and when I anticipated his lead vs waiting for it - before I acted - and then called me out on it! I had to downshift to match his chill energy and wait for every deliberate lead. He wanted no unnatural movements from me to make a move work.

All 4 dance styles were super enjoyable in their own right, but none of them improved my ballroom salsa technique. And, I'm okay with that. I was there to connect and converse via dance with people in their own dialect and I did. It was a crash course in building stronger partnering skills and some really fun yet challenging tests on how I manage my body, space, self-awareness in relation to my different leaders.

Highlights of my night: The strong beginner said I was so easy to partner with and he felt like his mistakes didn't matter because I came back in, reconnected every time, and did some fancy footwork to make him look good. The NY style dancer complimented the breadth of my dancing skills, said I'm a really good dancer and a phenomenal follow. He obviously hasn't seen my foxtrot.

 

[neveragain]

The only social dancing I truly enjoy right now is WCS because they have more leaders and many are intermediate to advanced ones compared to my BR community. The only thing that messes up my BR technique when I'm dancing with a lead in a group class/coaching and likes to correct me on my technique. There's a leader in my BR community who is sometimes forceful and if I go off balance or timing, he will point it out to me that it was my mistake and not caused by his leading which can happen but I'm pretty sure it's not always me. This of course messed me up especially when I was a newbie (who started from blank state) but after I made it to a final on my first ever comp, I got more confidence and more respect from this lead. He didn't stop fully doing this man-splaining thing yet but whenever he gets into this mode again, he’s more open listening to me on what didn't work or maybe I got better explaining as well.

 

[Pryn]

There's a leader in my BR community who is sometimes forceful and if I go off balance or timing, he will point it out to me that it was my mistake and not caused by his leading which can happen but I'm pretty sure it's not always me.

Yes! That sounds like a familiar situation.

My ballroom balance isn't the best and I know I'm a newbie to the sport, so I know I make a lot of mistakes. But, I've learned (mainly here on DF) that Leads can make mistakes too. It just feels rare to find one who admits it, or doesn’t blame the follow. (I can think of 3 leads that I have had the pleasure of dancing with who have admitted a mistake was from their lead and not mine.)

It's great that you can enjoy WCS so much.

 

[opendoor]

..about my social dancing experience last night.

I really enjoyed your report and recognized all the dancers.

..but none of them improved my ballroom salsa..

Could you please specify the missing aspects more precisely?