Spoiled rotten: when his lead was too good!

[Twilight_Elena]

Has it happened to you?
You've danced with many leads in your salsa/ballroom scene (I'm talking about both styles since those are the ones concerning me) and you've sort of categorised them into "beginners", "completely hopeless" (though I haven't danced with a hopeless one yet), "like to dance with him/her", "sort of teachery style", "pretty darn good" and so on. We all do that. It's natural process, I suppose.
And then you dance with this one lead who's so brilliant all others are just fading in comparison. We're talking real standing out performance, and I don't mean showing off. Purely good, smooth, stable lead. Nothing like it before. In my own case, even my teacher (and she leads great, btw!) says he's one of the most amazing leads she has ever danced with. Very gentle and yet very firm... you can't even guess how good he is because you can't think! You're just doing those moves and go "Woah, I did that? When did that happen?" You all know what I'm talking about, right? So what's the problem?
Sure, it's amazing to be dancing with someone who's great at it: makes you look and feel good and competent and all that, especially if you're a beginner. But then you dance with all the others again, and even the ones who were in your "darn good" category are now flawed. They're just not as good as that one lead. You find yourself being spoiled to death; you can't follow others so good anymore because they don't have the MagicTouch™. You start putting most of your mistakes down to lead incompetency... it's the road to pure hell paved with good intended leads!
So I'm being spoiled rotten, and it's bad bad bad for me. It was great at first, being able to do things I couldn't do with others, but now I think it's bad for my following, since I can't follow normal, "mediocre" leads, so to speak. I feel like the comparison I'm doing is killing my dance joy, and even when I'm dancing with him, I'm terribly stressed out, because I think "if I can't do it with him, I can't do it with anyone!"
So has it happened to you? How do you go back to ordinary leads? What, oh, what should I do now? Give me advice, my friends.

Twilight Elena

 

[hopelessly_addicted]

I think your problem can be fixed by dancing socially with as many leads as you can. My understanding of your problem is that you cannot follow ordinary leads. The only way to find out whether the fault lies with you or with your partner's incompetancy is for you to dance with many leads.

If you cannot follow all others, but that particular great lead, well, you just gotta improve your following skills by dancing with various leads a lot. This would help you to be sensitive to different styles leads. Also, you will get used to those different leads with time.

I think there's a big difference between leads who can give you "the fix", those who are good leads (reliable and firm), and those who cannot lead. Because I do the asking a lot of times, I don't normally get to dance with the leads in the third category (incompetant leads) because they're in general shy since they're just starting off and don't invite me to dance. With incompetant leads, more experienced and better followers will be able to follow. So if you want to be able to follow any leads, basically, as I said earlier, the soluation would be to dance with as many leads as possible :wink:

 

[Twilight_Elena]

That was pretty much my plan. Dancing with as many beginners as possible will help me adjust, I hope. But I wanted to ask, just to see if you guys have any other suggestions.
I'm really wondering if this has happened to anyone else as well or if it's just the freaky things that happen to meeee.

Twilight Elena

 

[hopelessly_addicted]

Has it happened to you?

Not really, because I've always tried to dance with as many leads as possible...

... then you dance with all the others again, and even the ones who were in your "darn good" category are now flawed. They're just not as good as that one lead.

Perhaps try not to think of the others' leads as flawed but look at what they're good at and try to make the best out of it. For example, there are some guys in my scene that I reserve for really slow songs or merengue. They're great for those songs because they can really feel the music and convey it very well to the partners they dance with. However, they suck at doing medium to fast salsa as their leads are not great, plus they don't follow any specific standard steps.

Also, although you may not enjoy so much, dancing with incompetant leads would help your following in general. I think others have said about the benefits of dancing with mediocre to incompetant leads somewhere...

So I'm being spoiled rotten, and it's bad bad bad for me. It was great at first, being able to do things I couldn't do with others, but now I think it's bad for my following, since I can't follow normal, "mediocre" leads, so to speak. I feel like the comparison I'm doing is killing my dance joy, and even when I'm dancing with him, I'm terribly stressed out, because I think "if I can't do it with him, I can't do it with anyone!"

Urmm please don't stress out.. just get him to do it again if you miss it and learn from it. Then, you'd be able to do it with everyone else because now you know how it's done. It's ok not to get all moves no matter how great the lead is! Also.. given a cometant follower, anything that she does wrong is the lead's fault - that's what I heard from various leads anyways :wink: (This is detable on many levels but just saying that there is no perfect lead/follower as no human being is perfect!)

 

[hopelessly_addicted]

That was pretty much my plan. Dancing with as many beginners as possible will help me adjust, I hope. But I wanted to ask, just to see if you guys have any other suggestions.
I'm really wondering if this has happened to anyone else as well or if it's just the freaky things that happen to meeee.

Twilight Elena

Well, for me, it kinda happened when I first started out dancing socially, but the other way around from your case The leads that I used to dance with where I first learnt to dance salsa was so bad that any lead who dance socially was better :lol: :lol:

I can see how you can get spoilt by dancing with great leads a lot though to the extent that you cannot follow everyone else.. It is not freaky thing at all! Also, there's that factor of getting used to aside from the competancy of the lead.. if you're used to dancing with one person only, then you may face difficulty following others...

 

[Sabor]

i think its just the freaky things that happen to u..

either that.. or u are freaky and things happen..

.. i think its the third option.. u know

:lol:

 

[Twilight_Elena]

i think its just the freaky things that happen to u..

either that.. or u are freaky and things happen..

.. i think its the third option.. u know

:lol:

:lol: It might be the things that happen just to freak me out.

Twilight Elena

 

[hopelessly_addicted]

i think its just the freaky things that happen to u..

either that.. or u are freaky and things happen..

.. i think its the third option.. u know

:lol:

:lol: It might be the things that happen just to freak me out.

Twilight Elena

:lol: Sabor!

Good come back T_E! :wink: :lol:

 

[jhpark]

The same thing happens to me as a lead when I find particularly good follows. There are a few who just follow everything right -- I just barely think of what I want to lead and it happens. Amazing. All the moves I have problems leading just *work*, and it's like, Wow! And they're so light and easy to move around, and it's like heaven.

Then it's back to a normal follower and it's like.... oh well....

But I have the same dynamic, where I want to get my lead better so that I can lead even followers who aren't amazing, but there's always the temptation to get lazy and only dance with those amazing follows, because, let's face it, it's just *easier* and feels better to dance with them.

 

[Sabor]

I believe that .. with time and experience.. a perceptive dancer will find out more and more ways of how they can enjoy their partner in different ways than they do others.. its like getting to know people and kind of focuss on their positives and grow out of there..

no two people feel the same in dance.. at least thats how i feel and i find that i can multiply each of their strengths exponentially to cover up other negatives .. its part of the adjustment and connection between the two to take the dance to new heights..

in short, your perception expands to accommodate different tastes and strengths.. and build on different styles and skills .. so that 'feeling good' is always present ..even tho in different ways and rates.. but always present or near always..

dance with your heart and mind first then the body.. it'll help :wink:

 

[HF]

I like that: MagicTouch™ :wink:

I think that salsa and dancing in general reflects everyday life often. So you can go easy ways sometimes but at the end of the day you just get what you are working for.

We have a guy here that dances quite well (used to be a show dancer) and changes his regular training partner every half a year. These girls begin to learn in the dance school as everybody else, then turn out to be talented, and once they are "discovered" by the really good leads it does not take long time until they think they are better than they are. They feel like little princesses and will develop a snobby attitude ... "you know, I am the dance partner of so-and-so now, and I am doing shows with him and I am so great."

Needless to say they are all very young.

In the time I know him this guy perished three ladies. Always the same story: They broke their partnership and the lady stopped dancing because she was completely spoiled for the "normal" salsa scene.

One of them took a second start and had a hard time developing her really own dancing skills. Her attitude seems to be changed a lot now.

 

[MacMoto]

So has it happened to you? How do you go back to ordinary leads? What, oh, what should I do now? Give me advice, my friends.

Yes it has happened to me, a few times now. But luckily it tended to happen when I was away from my local scene dancing with a complete (or almost complete) stranger, so I wasn't able to dance with these amazing guys on a regular basis. The experience boosted my confidence and made me determined to keep on dancing, with as many leaders as possible, including (or even especially? :roll: ) with complete strangers, for another chance of such an encounter. It also made me a bit of a weekender junkie :lol:.

 

[Flat Shoes]

Forgive me if I'm way of the mark here, but my thought after reading the initial post was: Put more of yourself into the dance.

I say this because I read you as dependent uppon the lead to make the dance good. Good lead, good dance. Bad lead, bad dance. Seems very passive.

A good partner dance is a dance where both lead and follow give input to the dance. Both give of themselves and inspires the other. Good technique is only half the dance. The rest is the partners chemistry and communication.

 

[africana]

Great topic TE - what you've experienced is NOT anything new or unique, it happens to the best and worst of us

so far I gotta hand it to Flat Shoes and HF - they made EXCELLENT points in their posts, take notes (especially the part about bringing your thing into the equation)

ANd I agree with MM matter of fact I'm off to my own "weekender" of dancing with lots of strangers 8)

 

[Sabor]