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DANCING WITH PARTNERS OF DIFFERENT
SKILL LEVELS
Introduction
Anyone who dances socially will in the
course of an evening dance with partners of all skill levels. For the purpose
of this article, we will consider only three skill levels: 1) those
who are more skilled than you; 2) those who are less skilled than you;
and 3) those with an equivalent skill level to yours. In my opinion, with
the right attitude, one’s dancing can benefit from dancing with partners in all
three of these levels.
Dancing
With Partners of Equal Skill
Most of us begin dancing with
partners of our own skill level in a beginner level class. Yet even here you
find those with varying natural abilities like physical coordination and the
sense of rhythm. No matter what your skill level, dancing with equivalent
partners is helpful because it is easy to be relaxed with them. Learning to
relax while dancing is important. It encourages you to experiment and be
playful in your dancing and this is fun for both you and your partner.
This is the best opportunity to bust out and refine those new moves and try new
things. Always be careful to not do anything that might injure your
partner or others. It would
be a mistake to decide to dance only with those of your own skill level for
reasons that will follow.
Dancing With Partners More Skilled Than You
The next skill level budding dancers
experience occurs when they’ve gotten up the nerve to actually attend a dance.
There they encounter an intimidating number of dancers that are better than
them. If they get polite partners they will soon find that they dance their
best with partners that are better than they are. This is because the more
skilled dancers are able to make up for the less skilled dancers’ mistakes.
Dancing with those better than you can accelerate your growth as you “feel” how
to do it right, which is an entirely different style of learning than group
lessons with those of equal skill. The joy that comes from dancing with better
dancers is that of gaining new experiences and insights into all that dance has
to offer. When dancing with more experienced dancers, stay with material
you have mastered, avoid the temptation to initiate things you are just starting
to learn, but be open to allowing your partner to guide you into new waters.
Well done basics are far more enjoyable than more advanced material that is
poorly executed. Do not at this point make the mistake of dancing only with those
better than you as you will miss the benefits and pleasures of dancing with
those at other levels.
Dancing
With Partners Less Skilled Than You
If one persists with classes and
attending dances, they will improve and will encounter dances with those less
skilled than they. Leads will feel that they can’t dance up to their usual
level as accommodating their partners’ mistakes takes a lot of their attention.
It requires much more attention to the detail of leading patterns clearly, which
is a skill that will subsequently improve their leading of partners equal to or
better than themselves. Follows feel that the less experienced lead is leading
less complicated patterns and mainly basics. This could be boring unless the
follow takes advantage of this opportunity to practice and refine those
syncopations and stylings that they don’t have as much opportunity to practice
when following a more experienced lead. They will be more likely to pull out
that syncopation or styling with the better leads thereafter. Both leads and
follows can use the “simplified scenario” of dancing with a more basic partner
to experiment with improving their musicality (how they express what’s happening
in the music in their dancing). Start with well done basics, gradually
increasing the complexity of your dancing until you've reached your partners'
limit of skill. Stay at that limit until they relax and then try to take
them just a little beyond this, being careful to seamlessly accommodate any
errors they may make. This is the best opportunity you have to learn the
fine art of "damage control" which is indispensable in becoming an accomplished
dancer. Avoid the temptation to verbally instruct or criticize your
partner during the dance as this is very invalidating. The joy that comes from dancing with less
experienced dancers is that you provide them with what might very well be one of their
best dance experiences of the night. It is always fun to provide another with a
joyful experience.
Summary
Dancing with partners in each of these skill levels provides you with valuable
lessons and meaningful joys. At different stages of your dance evolution
you may feel like dancing mostly with partners in one of the above levels.
In my own experience, I was more comfortable dancing with equivalent dancers
early on. After more exposure, I preferred dancing with those who were
better than me. In recent years, I have found it just as important and
rewarding to dance
with those less skilled than me. Bear in mind that a dancer that may be
less skilled than you generally, may be better than you in some discrete areas
or know a cool pattern, syncopation, or styling that you don’t. You can
learn from and enjoy dancing with every level of dancer if you have the right
understanding and attitude. This facilitates the transformation of a group
of dancers into a dance community with everybody helping one another improve in their skill
and enjoyment of dancing.
Note: Marc
welcomes comments and discussion. You can send your responses through our
Contact Page
or email him at
marc@SwingDanceFusion.com
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Past Articles
The Three Orders of
Dancing
Why Do Fusion
Dancing?
West Coast Swing and Fusion Dancing
More On WCS and
Fusion Dancing
Terminology
THE THREE ORDERS OF DANCE
“Why
dance?” There can be many reasons, ranging from attracting potential mates
to making a living to getting exercise to just for the enjoyment of it.
I’m going to limit the rest of this article to the last reason listed, so we’ll
be focusing on the various reasons one might dance just for the fun of it.
There are three reasons one might dance for fun. I’m going to refer to
them a “First Person Dancing”, “Second Person Dancing” and “Third Person
Dancing”.
The Three Orders of Dancing
“First Person
Dancing” is dancing just for the pleasure one feels within themselves. It
is primally fulfilling to move to music. Everywhere archeologists have found
ancient human habitats, they have found musical instruments. I remember seeing
a show on PBS about music and dancing in humans and animals. There was a
beautiful flute made from an eagle bone found at one site. Their theory was
that humans originally made music and danced for the same reasons as animals;
1) to attract mates; 2) to establish ones position in the social hierarchy;
and 3) to establish territory. One might argue that we modern humans dance
for much the same reasons today. Whatever the reason, I find moving to music as
primally fulfilling as gardening, walking in undisturbed nature, or meditating.
A successful “First Person Dancer” is capable of enjoying dancing as meaningful
movement of their body to music. They feel good to themselves.
“Second
Person Dancing” involves dancing with another. In partner dancing the
individuals are able to cooperatively perform movements and feel
acceleration/deceleration forces that they cannot create when dancing alone.
This dancing involves a higher order of complexity as one must compromise ones
own movement to some degree to accommodate their partner. This expenditure is
more than amply rewarded by the joy one experiences in meaningfully connecting
to another and the music. A successful “Second Person Dancer” is able to
provide their partner with a pleasurable dance experience. They feel good to
their partner.
“Third Person
Dancing” involves performing. The purpose of this dancing is to look good
to a third party observing one dance. While the first two orders of dance are
primarily a matter of tactile feeling, this order is primarily visual. Can a
third person clearly see and understand your movements as a meaningful and
pleasing expression of the music? In short, are you able to provide a
pleasurable experience to someone watching you dance? A successful “Third
Person Dancer” is capable of pleasing an audience.
Each of these
orders of dance has its own rules. Being successful at any one of them does not
necessitate your being good at the others. Each order of dance also provides
its own unique pleasure to the dancer. But there is one common denominator
found in all three of these orders of dance; meaningful connection to and
expression of the music!
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WHY DO FUSION DANCING?
First I would
like to address a more fundamental question, “Why dance?” There can be many
reasons, ranging from attracting potential mates to making a living to getting
exercise to just for the enjoyment of it. I’m going to limit the rest of this
article to the last reason listed, so we’ll be focusing on the various reasons
one might dance just for the fun of it. There are three reasons one might dance
for fun. I’m going to refer to them a “First Person Dancing”, “Second Person
Dancing” and “Third Person Dancing”.
The Three Orders of Dancing
“First Person
Dancing” is dancing just for the pleasure one feels within themselves. It
is primally fulfilling to move to music. Everywhere archeologists have found
ancient human habitats, they have found musical instruments. I remember seeing
a show on PBS about music and dancing in humans and animals. There was a
beautiful flute made from an eagle bone found at one site. Their theory was
that humans originally made music and danced for the same reasons as animals;
1) to attract mates; 2) to establish ones position in the social hierarchy;
and 3) to establish territory. One might argue that we modern humans dance
for much the same reasons today. Whatever the reason, I find moving to music as
primally fulfilling as gardening, walking in undisturbed nature, or meditating.
A successful “First Person Dancer” is capable of enjoying dancing as meaningful
movement of their body to music. They feel good to themselves.
“Second
Person Dancing” involves dancing with another. In partner dancing the
individuals are able to cooperatively perform movements and feel
acceleration/deceleration forces that they cannot create when dancing alone.
This dancing involves a higher order of complexity as one must compromise ones
own movement to some degree to accommodate their partner. This expenditure is
more than amply rewarded by the joy one experiences in meaningfully connecting
to another and the music. A successful “Second Person Dancer” is able to
provide their partner with a pleasurable dance experience. They feel good to
their partner.
“Third Person
Dancing” involves performing. The purpose of this dancing is to look good
to a third party observing one dance. While the first two orders of dance are
primarily a matter of tactile feeling, this order is primarily visual. Can a
third person clearly see and understand your movements as a meaningful and
pleasing expression of the music? In short, are you able to provide a
pleasurable experience to someone watching you dance? A successful “Third
Person Dancer” is capable of pleasing an audience.
Each of these
orders of dance has its own rules. Being successful at any one of them does not
necessitate your being good at the others. Each order of dance also provides
its own unique pleasure to the dancer. But there is one common denominator
found in all three of these orders of dance; meaningful connection to and
expression of the music!
Every WCS dancer
is into “cross-dancing”. Unlike many other dance forms, like Tango, Cha Cha, or
Hustle, there is no specific music for WCS. At any given dance, you will see
people doing WCS to Tango, Cha Cha, Mambo, Samba, Rumba, and Hustle music.
Dancing to a song associated with a specific dance form (Hustle) using a
different dance form (WCS) is “cross-dancing”. If a follow raises her left arm
skyward on her anchor while dancing WCS to Hustle music, she has crossed the
line into “fusion-dancing”. Whatever would possess her to do such a thing?!
Maybe it expressed something she felt in the music. Maybe this became a common
Hustle move because it so meaningfully expressed, tactilely and/or visually,
something unique to Hustle music.
There is an
organic connection between a music form and the dance form traditionally
associated with it. The same peoples who created the music also created the
bodily movements that they felt best expressed their music. It both feels good
and looks good to move to their music in these ways. So “fusing” some of these
bodily movements and rhythms into WCS when it is danced to a “borrowed” musical
style, can increase “First”, Second”, and “Third Person” dancing pleasure as it
helps us to more meaningfully connect to and express the music to which we are
dancing. This is, after all, the common denominator of all three orders of
dance.
By Marc Imlay
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West Coast Swing and Fusion Dancing
By
Marc Imlay
As fusion partner
dancing continues to flourish all around the world, we have received varied
reactions. Some say “Way to go. That’s cool!” Others think it's a joke. Yet
others take exception to our fusing dances and try to discourage us. Still
others just ask us “Why?”
In the WCS
community, several prominent members have expressed sincere concern over losing
the “purity” of WCS by its becoming “contaminated” with other dance forms.
WCS
itself has not remained static over the years. On one of Skippy Blair’s
visits to Seattle, she stated that, over the years, WCS had incorporated
elements of various other dance forms like country, disco, hustle and hip hop.
So WCS evolved by incorporating elements of other dance forms.
Furthermore,
anyone who has followed the top WCS competitors over the past few years will
have noticed them incorporating elements of tango, samba and cha cha into their
routines. So Latin/WCS Fusion dancing has already arrived. We’re just
systematizing it to help the social dancer get started with fusion dancing.
Hopefully this
insight will set the “Fundamentalist WCSers” at rest. WCS is a wonderful dance in its own right, so maybe a new
dance form resulting from the fusion of WCS and another dance will also be
wonderful.
Whether Swango,
Swamba or Jango survive the test of time is unknowable at present. But that
doesn’t mean that these fusions should not be experimented with. If no one ever
tried something new, there would never be any progress. So lighten up guys and
let us have our fun. Expressing the creative impulse is joyful and invigorating
and I invite all of you to have an open mind and maybe even give it a try before
dismissing it.
Fusers, please
share your discoveries with us. Our mission is to disseminate cross fusion
dance info world wide. Join with us in promoting the Cross Fusion dance
movement.
In my next
article, I will further address the question, “Why do dance fusion?”
Marc
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More On WCS and Fusion Dancing
April 6, 2006
I received three interesting responses
to my first article. Each of the responders is a teacher of WCS, a teacher of
teachers of WCS, a judge at WCS conventions, and a trainer of judges for WCS
conventions. Interestingly, they, collectively, had four points to make. The
first was that they all do and enjoy social cross-fusion dancing themselves.
Halleluiah brothers and sisters! The second point was that they all felt it was
fine to do fusion dancing socially. Right on homies! After this bonding, I
was confused to have two of them go on to say that they were concerned that
widespread fusion dancing would somehow degrade WCS. All three of the
responders expressed concern over competitors doing fusion dancing during
contests where they could be disqualified or docked for incorporating more that
10% of “other dance forms” into their Jack & Jill and Strictly Swing contest
dancing (20% for Classic and 40% for Showcase).
Before responding to them, I would
like to encourage all of you reading this to go to our web philosophy page to
learn the definition of the relevant terms like “fusion dancing”,
“cross-dancing”, and “cross-fusion dancing” so we will all be clear about what’s
being discussed. You should also read my first article, "WCS and Fusion
Dancing".
First I would like to address our
points of agreement. Almost everyone begins or at least continues dancing
because it’s fun for them. When three of the most prominent and celebrated WCS
competitors/teachers/judges admit to enjoying cross-fusion dancing, that is
significant! Cross-fusion dancing is a whole lot of fun! That is the best
reason I can think of for doing it. That’s why we do it and why we are sharing
it to others.
I have several layers of response to
the two competitor/teacher/judges concerned with preserving WCS. First of all,
WCS has not been a static dance form. It has no one type of music to which it
is done. In fact, one of the unique characteristics of WCS is that it can be
danced to many different styles of music. Over the years, WCS has been
influenced by the various types of music to which it was popularly danced
(Country, Disco/Hustle, Shag, Hip Hop). I am not certain whether the above
responders felt these influences were detrimental or favorable to WCS. Now that
Tango, Cha cha, Rumba, and Samba songs are routinely being played at organized
WCS dances, it seems inevitable that elements of the traditional dances
associated with them will begin to influence WCS. These bodily rhythms and
movements were created to express this music by the same peoples who created
this music. There is an organic connection between these musical and movement
rhythms. It feels good to move to traditional music with the related
traditional dance rhythms and people are going to do it. The only way to
prevent this is to ban traditional Latin songs from organized WCS dances. By
the way, dancing WCS to traditional Latin songs is, by definition,
“cross-dancing”. Even this drastic measure wouldn’t work. Pop music is fusion
music. Samba or Samba-derivative rhythms are evident in nearly half of funky
pop songs and anyone familiar with Latin music will routinely recognize Cha cha,
Rumba, and Tango derivatives in pop music. If you are dancing to “fusion music”
it makes perfect sense to “fusion dance”. I wonder what era of WCS the above
responders want to preserve? Which brings me to another point. Living things
are characterized by change. Try to hold it static and it dies, it ceases to be
what it is. Catch a bubbling brook in a bucket and it becomes stagnant water.
Catch a fragrant breeze in a plastic bag and it becomes dead air. Hold WCS
static and it will die and cease to be popular. Why deny the mystery and joy of
the creative acts of new dancers by holding rigidly to those of previous
dancers. The essentials will be retained out of necessity. If you think about
it you’ll realize that you only have to “preserve” things that are dead. WCS
will only survive if it continues to adapt itself to the ever changing needs of
those who dance it.
Now on to their final concern
regarding competitions. I can see how an increase in popularity of fusion
dancing could make the already difficult task of judging even more challenging.
I have taken the GSDTA judging course 2 or 3 times now and have done some
practice judging. I have some questions. If a follow extends a 6-count
push-tuck to 8-counts by inserting 3-counts of a boleo (a Tango styling accent),
does this count as 3 beats of dancing towards the allowed 10% of “other dance
forms” or is she charged the entire 8-counts. The first 2 steps are WCS. The 3
steps of boleo are obviously Tango. The 6th step after a 180 turn is
classic WCS and the fan-around (ronde) anchor is considered WCS. OOPS, my bad.
Even though the ronde is considered to be officially ok, it was borrowed from
Latin dances some years ago but has been adopted by WCS. At what point does an
element borrowed from another dance become officially adopted anyway? But I
digress. From my experience of practice judging, I know how little time a judge
has to look at each couple. Often it’s just 30 seconds total for the entire 3-4
songs of a contest. A judge does not have time to accurately assess when a
couples’ dancing has crossed the 10% limit to 11% of “other dance forms”. What
do you train your judges to do when they see fusion dancing? Do you teach them
to: 1) spend the inordinate amount of time on this couple required to
accurately make this assessment; 2) automatically assume they are doing
more fusion than allowed and dock them; 3) assume they are staying within
the 10% limit and judge on the usual criteria; or 4) wing it? What a
nightmare! Fortunately, we have no interest in the inclusion of cross-fusion
dancing in competitions. We do it just for the fun of it and encourage others
to enjoy it in their social dancing.
All of this is a “tempest in a teacup”
to most dancers. The vast majority of WCS dancers are social dancers. Most of
those who compete are social competitors not professionally interested in
climbing the competition ladder. My point in bringing all of this up is that
social dancers and their teachers should not be constrained by the judging
criteria applied to competitors! WCS only needs to be rigidly defined and
distinct from all other dances when it is being tested, certified, or judged.
Those serious about competing must take it upon themselves to learn and conform
to the criteria and conveniences the judges are going to apply to them. To
indiscriminately apply these criteria and conveniences to all dancers, most of
whom are social dancers, unnecessarily limits the creative freedom of the
majority of dancers.
The bottom line is all three
responders enjoy cross-fusion dancing themselves, the pros seem to enjoy it in
their competitions, and we social dancers enjoy it too. When dancers of all
levels seem to enjoy it, where is the controversy coming from?
Your comments are welcome. Let
us know if you want to be identified by name in our response.
Marc Imlay
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Terminology
WHAT IS FUSION DANCING?
As I research the history of the
various American and Latin dance forms, I’m left with the question, “What dance
isn’t a fusion dance?” All of these dances either resulted from the fusion of
two or more previous dances and/or evolved by incorporating elements from other
dances. Since any definition is going to be arbitrary, I’ll begin with the
arbitrary definition that “fusion dancing” is intentionally incorporating
recognizable elements of one currently distinct dance form into another. I use
the word “intentionally” because many people who dance only or principally one
dance form often don’t realize that a move they were taught was actually
borrowed from another dance form.
Fusion dancing
involves degrees of fusion. At one end of the spectrum, it is using
bridging moves to transition smoothly and seamlessly from one dance form all the
way into another and back to the original form again. An example of this is
moving from West Coast Swing (WCS) into Argentine Tango (AT) and back to WCS
again (see our Swango DVDs). Another level of fusion would be the
incorporation of elements of one dance into the structure of another.
Replacing WCS triples with Samba triples or using Samba triples as women’s
takeover adornments in WCS (see our Swamba DVD) are representative of this
degree of fusion. Subtler degrees of fusion include: 1)
replacing the pulsing unique to one dance form with another (e.g. replace the
WCS pulsing of upbeats only with Samba pulsing of every beat – see Swamba DVD);
2) replacing the dance posture unique to one dance form with another (e.g.
replace the closed “H” posture of WCS with the closed “A” posture of the Latin
Rhythm dances – see Swamba DVD); and 3) adopting the
“attitude” characteristic of one dance form in another (e.g. bringing the
smoldering reserved feline sexuality of Argentine Tango into WCS – see Swango
DVD).
Generally one
dance form is predominant and the fused form accents it. Like adding spice to
food. The food is the major component and just a small amount of spice is added
to jazz up the flavor. In cooking, the spice is an intensely concentrated
flavor. In fusion dancing, the fused elements are the flashiest, recognizable
moves characteristic of that dance form (e.g. AT ganchos fused into WCS basics –
see Swango DVDs).
Finally, “fusion
dancing” is dancing to fusion music. Many pop songs in the USA are
incorporating foreign musical rhythms. Many pop songs in foreign cultures are
incorporating the driving bass lines and rhythms of American music. This
results in fusion music that just begs for fusion dancing.
WHAT IS CROSS-DANCING?
Certain distinct
types of music have a distinct dance associated with them (e.g. Cha cha, Tango,
Rumba, Samba, Mambo, Salsa, Hip Hop, Hustle, Zydeco, Waltz). One form of
“cross-dancing” involves dancing to a song that has a distinct dance associated
with it using a different dance form (e.g. Dancing Tango to a Rumba song).
Some distinct
types of music have no distinct dance associated with them (e.g. Blues, Pop,
etc.). Dancing to this type of music with a dance style associated with another
type of music is another type of “cross-dancing” (e.g. dancing Tango to Blues
music).
Certain distinct
dances have no distinct music type associated with them (e.g. WCS, ECS, Foxtrot,
Nightclub 2 Step, etc.). If you apply one of these dance types to a song that
is associated with another type of music (e.g. dancing WCS to a Tango song) then
you are “cross-dancing”.
WHAT IS CROSS-FUSION DANCING?
If you are
“cross-dancing” (e.g. doing WCS to Tango music) and add in some elements of
Tango dancing (e.g. a gancho) for styling, you are “cross-fusion dancing” (cross
dancing and fusion dancing simultaneously).
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