Swing Dancing: Becoming an Intermediate/Advanced Lead

So back in the day (when I was six-month neophyte into the dancing shebang), I posted about dancing for beginner leads and how difficult it was because you had to, among other things:

• Ask someone to dance
• 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

These things are mostly just logistical and really anyone can learn them pretty fast (although some people still get magically run into by other people all the time cough not me). They become second nature rather quickly if you’re putting conscientious effort into it. The real question is how to progress to the next level and become the “advanced intermediate”, basically what most self-conscious advanced leads and what most hubristic intermediates think they are. I would define traits of the “advanced intermediate” as:

• Always be on time, striving for good musicality
• Being able to anticipating breaks after listening to two measures of a song, even if it’s the first time you’ve heard it
• Ability to dance decently with any follow, adjusting to their level and challenging yourself or them while not making either look bad
• Being able to recognize mistakes on the fly and fixing them for the next time
• Feeling confident enough to try new stuff during breaks
• Intuitively knowing what styles to dance to what music
• Protecting the follow/floorcraft
• Having some kind of style, recognizing when someone else has a similar style to yours
• Knowing how you look to others when doing moves

I believe a lot of leads get stuck in the intermediate stage and don’t get past because they lack some of the above traits. The key is self-consciousness: you should always be thinking of how you look and how you feel to others. Watching and carefully analyzing videos of pros is good, but watching videos of yourself, although difficult initially, is better. Find a partner who is also trying to get better, and just do basic stuff over and over again, emphasizing technique. I believe that in partner dancing, good technique far exceeds style in importance. Oh yeah, you also need time and repetition. Lots of it. The journey is long but the rewards make it all worth it.