Dancing For a Beginning Lead

11 Jan 2009

Being a lead is tough stuff. Dancing is like a team sport, except with different teammates every dance. Learning to build instant chemistry can be as hard as rocket science, especially for rocket scientists.

Let's break down a typical swing dance. Leads have to:

  • Find a dance partner
  • Navigate the dance floor to find open space
  • Find the beat of the music
  • Figure out what kind of song this is (swing chorus, 12-bar blues, 16-bar blues)
  • Continually think up of sequence of moves that fit the music
  • Figure out when the breaks are coming and what to do
  • Make sure partner isn't running into something
  • Make sure no one is running into you
  • Give room for partner to play in
  • Execute the moves with grace, style, and precision
  • Look like you know what you're doing
  • Have fun (or fake it)

Whereas follows have to:

  • Wait for a dance
  • Follow

Ok, so this might just be a little biased.

Other subtle stuff includes:

  • Getting a good connection with partner, even if you've never danced before
  • Figuring out what level to dance at to match partner
  • Compensating for your mistakes and her mistakes
  • Adjusting to the partner's style

If we delve into the mechanics, it gets even more complicated. Tension, momentum, force, compression, dynamic equilibrium, torque, these are all things that good dancers must know. They might not know these terms in the mathematical or physical context, but they definitely know them on an intuitive level and use them to improve their dancing. They also have to listen to the music, and come up with appropriate moves.

All of this is very complicated and really hard. I will believe in artificial intelligence the day that I see a robot spontaneously dancing to music with a partner. It's so hard that I would settle just to see a computer spit out a coherent sequence of moves given a streaming music file it's never analyzed before (letting the computer first learn swing music structure by letting it analyze other swing songs). If the day comes where I witness this, I will steal the machine and take credit for it.

As if the complexity of dancing wasn't enough, leads usually bear most of the responsibility for a bad dance. This can create frustration and fear of failure, especially in the initial stages, preventing them from advancing their dancing careers. This is in contrast to solo sports or music instruments, where you can practice in your room by yourself before revealing your honed skills to the world. You actually have to dance with others to improve at dancing.

All I can say is: keep encouraging beginner leads! Even the smallest compliment or encouragement makes a difference.