Stop thinking and just dance....
- Thread starter latingal
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When dancing. Not when technique-ing. So I guess that corresponds to rounds.
I have a dancing mind and a learning mind.
When we are working on Whatever, the learning mind is active. Rise MORE HERE. At this point, extend! Use breath to make yada yada. Use the most torque in your outside partner position HERE, etc. I missed that lead, so let's practice the cue and response a few times so I can get it into my internal response dictionary. We changed the way that figure works, now that I understand XX/YY, and he led it the old way so I gently chew him out, we do it again the new way. Etc. This is all learning mind.
When we are dancing, dancing mind takes over, and I do not have a conscious thought in my head. If, after we pause, Teach says "let's go back the Rumba Cross," I am likely to say to him, "We did a Rumba Cross?" or wtte. Active following, without analysis.
example: yesterday was a Quickstep day. Teach designs the dance as he goes along, (no we do not have a routine) and also makes up figures on the fly. At one point, after a couple-three walls, when there were a bunch of improvs, we stopped and he asked me, do you know what we just did?
Nope.
I still don't know if he hoped I was taking notes because it was fun and he wants to reproduce it. ;-)
this this this but I disagree that this is thinking; the English language is inadequate in so many ways
AKA active following.
Yes, discussion wasn't that much about leading-following ... despite it's important even in choreographed dancing, just it works slightly different than during improvised dance, and here analytical thinking doesn't help ....
But even when learning something new - I found out that "feeling" it by dancing with someone better than me is way more efficient for me than being presented with lots of explanation that my mind has somehow to transfer into lower part of my consciousness - which usually doesn't work well or at all (for me) ...
Warren J. Dew
Forum Master
While that certainly seems to be the case for what this thread was meant for - essentially, “stop overthinking” - I think it’s different from when a habitual follower says “we’re not meant to think” when coaching. The former is generally applicable to both leaders and followers; the latter is specific to followers and following.
Yeah ... in that case, explanation obviously helps your mind to understand what your body is doing after learning or improving some action. But how helpful it is to improve your dancing further ... I'm afraid the answer might be the same as answer for the first question ... quite limited
Depends on what exactly we mean by "words."
Because words themselves are not useful. Just sounds or marks on paper. The real value in words, from a dance perspective, lies in their ability to help us understand chains of causality, categorize ideas so that we separate the things that need to be distinguished and unify the things that are similar, and clarify which things in the current moment are signal and which are noise.
Those ideas are indispensable for long-term improvement. I would even venture to say that this is the *only* method for any dancer of average talent to reach a high level. Not limited by any means!
Agree ... teaching happens on various layers ... pure theory is probably least useful ... hints, ideas and similar things more ... how everything sounds (relaxing / disturbing) also ... quality of demo and showing important things and not overloading someone with things not important at that moment ... etc ...
Fair shout!
In my defense, the reason I said more things after that is there are plenty of concepts where words *don't* help us understand. And I imagine this is what vit is talking about. He's far from alone in that stance, too.
Where should my elbow be? When exactly should I start lowering? For topics like these, you can waste tons of ink that could be easily replaced by just a few seconds of poking, prodding, or mimicking.
Why is my elbow there instead of somewhere else? Why are we lowering there, instead of staying flat or rising? Those are the sorts of topics where words become necessary.