Monday 1 July 2013

The One Where Keith Takes The Lead (Or Not, Arf!)

He Goes:

Since I'm predominantly a lead, for me learning to follow is largely about empathy improvement - that I'll get better as a lead if I understand what it feels like to be a follow. I guess some men (Apologies: I'm going to be a bit gender role normative in the next few paragraphs, but I hope not offensively so) do learn to follow simply because they want to be able to enjoy the follow experience, some because they feel that learning only one half of the dance is somewhat unbalanced, and some out of solidarity with their female friends who are often made to learn to lead whether they want to or not. I don't think those are bad reasons to learn - in fact, I think they're all probably much better reasons than mine. But I think it's reasonable to say that most men who learn how to follow do, like me, justify it with the thought that it will make them a better lead.

So has the little following I've done helped me, and how? Well, the first answer is simple, if unsatisfying: I can't say - my follows will have to be the judge. The second is less simple.

First of all, it's given me an acute (and perhaps uncomfortable) insight into how being a man helps with being a lead. Now, this is not to say that I think the lead role is essentially male! Just that the way I lead and therefore expect to be led is helped by the fact that I'm bigger (taller possibly, certainly more massive) than most of my follows. It's really easy to lead someone into a turn by just moving your arm if your follow moves with you because she doesn't have a choice. My mass makes it easy for me to lead people in fairly simple moves, but it also lets me off learning how to lead subtly, I think. When I'm following my leads generally don't have the same lazy option I do, so I end up missing leads or misinterpreting them. That's made me appreciate how hard following is if you have to move between leads with forceful and gentle leads, and it fills me with admiration for how leads who are much smaller than me can do the same job (and in many cases a much better one) without the benefit of sheer weight to help them lead. It's also important to remember because there are plenty of follows who can't do their best work if they're not given a light lead occasionally.

Second, I've learnt how important it is to give the right signals as a follow, and perhaps sometimes why it's impossible to tell the first time you dance with someone how good they are. When I'm following and I'm led into the open position I sometimes think it might be worth trying out some swivels.

Mistake.

I'm no good at swinging-out as a follow. I can kind-of, maybe, just-about do the steps if I really concentrate, but most of the time I can't, and styling? Forget about it. So doing swivels instead of a rock-step isn't just a bit of harmless fun, it's my hips writing a cheque my feet can't cash. When a lead (particularly a lead who can follow well her-/himself) sees that, what she's really seeing is me making a promise: you can lead me into a swing-out.

Now, I'm not saying that I get false-signals like that from follows myself - in fact, it's more the opposite: that sometimes follows understate how capable they are, possibly to avoid getting led into complicated moves before they've figured out whether the person they're dancing with is capable of them. As a lead you can try moves out to test your follow and work out what moves you should be leading (e.g. I find a lead-in-front promenade is often a good way of scoping out if I can safely lead someone into a swing out). As a follow you can't do that, so you have to get your information about your partner's ability as it comes to you, and hope that enough pieces of the jigsaw are delivered that you can build up a usable picture.

Last (for the time being) - I realise how difficult it is to keep time if your lead is off. It's not impossible, but it's quite an effort of will, and since most of my brain when I'm following is already dedicated to not doing a lead's footwork, the whole thing sometimes disintegrates into a furious mess. Now, most of the people who are willing to lead me are good enough that this isn't a problem, but it does happen, and my god is it hard to dance when it does! Next time I'm dancing to some crazy jazz song with an obscure beat, I think perhaps rather than manfully struggling to find it I might just turn to my partner, make my apologies, and ask her for a little help...

She Goes:

New job. Newness. Herräng. Packing. Dancing. Dancing. Can't focus. Bleurgh!

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