General Lead/Follow ideas

by byron

Swing Dancing Tips

This is simply a collection of ideas that other people have given me, or things that have occurred to me. (Originally written in '99, with some minor updates...)

Learn different dances. Try ballroom, latin, folk, celtic, and others. It keeps you from stagnating, and it will help give you more spirit for dancing. For one thing, swing is a style of dance that can involves a lot of borrowing and playing around. For example, Salsa has a totally different feel, but many of the moves are very similar, and similarly to Lindy Hop it encourages improvisation and playing around. Even better, many of the other dances have moves that can actually be followed by someone who has not done the move before. This helps alleviate the frustration of finding that the more moves you learn, the fewer the number of people who can do all or most of them with you.

Try a no-touch lead. It's a classic ballroom technique but the people I've seen do the most amazing job of this are Lindy Hoppers extraordinaire, Ryan and Jenny. It builds up exquisite sensitivity between the partners. If you can dance through steps of any complexity without any touch at all, it will be pure magic when you do touch. Of course, if you dance without touching all the time you take a lot of the fun out of it ;-) I don't want to weird anyone out, but you really can learn to feel each other without touching. Usually we hold our hands out, palms facing each other.

Try martial arts. (Or ballet. The martial arts can help enhance your co-ordination and help develop some good habits for dancing, as well as how to move another person effectively. My suggestion here would be, in order of most to least useful: aikido, taichi, judo, wrestling, capoeira, boxing, karate. Many styles of Gung Fu fit in there too, but there are too many to talk about ;-) I did a little bit of Aikido a while ago, and I swear that's where I learned to lead. Once you've learned how to redirect a full-fledged attack and gently but firmly persuade them to twirl around you and come to the ground, you've got a lot of the basic elements in a good lead. ;-)

Or gymnastics. This is especially useful for learning aerials.

Play. Just relax, have fun, and play with it! Take what people teach you, break it down into the simplest elements, and put them back together in new ways.

No mistakes. Don't consider moves that don't go as planned as mistakes - just let it go where it wants to, recover, and think of it as an interesting improvisation. Then try and duplicate it later ;-) It's really great if you have a partner who's willing to experiment with you. Speaking as someone who normally leads, it's great to dance with a girl who is so open to experimentation that she doesn't whether that unknown move you're leading is a "mistake" or a spontaneous idea - she just tries to move with it. The best is when the follower takes what you're leading and adds something to it.

Tips for leading

General:

Learn to lead every part of a move. Rather than merely starting the lead for a step and then going through the motions (which far too many people do) actually lead the whole move. This serves many purposes. First, it ensures that you're aware of everything that both of you are doing, which will keep you in sync. Second, it ensures that your lead will be clear. Third, it makes it easier to include a number of variations in your repertoire because you maintain control. Fourth, the most important role the lead has is often to provide a strong, firm frame for the follow to use. Having a strong, continuous lead will help provide that solidity when it's needed.
Learn how to follow. One of the best ways of making sure you really understand the moves is to try them from the other perspective. Additionally, it will teach you how hard it can be to follow even a good lead.
Take responsibility. Always assume that if something doesn't quite work, that there is something you could have done to make it work better. In fact the vast majority of mistakes are the result of a weak, ambiguous lead.
Teach a beginner. If you can, try teaching a total beginner to dance without showing them the steps. Unfortunately, many times this ends up with the beginner learning very poor basics. However, if you're responsible and attentive you can truly teach someone to follow with decent technique. And beginners can't make up for your carelessness, so you learn quickly to maintain a good lead throughout the entire move.
Dance with an expert. Find someone to dance with who's considerably better than you, and swallow your pride. They'll probably be in the best position to tell you why people are always missing your lead for a particular step - you just have to ask. (Don't get people to teach you on the dance floor, though...

Frame:
Many good dancers do things differently from these, but these are things that are often taught.

Left hand in closed position. Remember to keep your left hand about level with the lady's centre of gravity, located near her belly button. It is not necessary to inspect the exact location of her belly button, however.
Right hand in closed position. There are so many ways to do this, but the most important thing is to not claw at the lady. Aside from that, a lot of teachers (Borgida, Nat & Yuval) recommend keeping the hand at the shoulder blade. In Balboa and Shag you want to bring your whole arm around and lead from the crook of the elbow to the forearm. In closed position this is the most important arm, and you should be able to use it to convey the movement of your body.
Both hands in open position. As above, keep your hands level with the lady's belly button if possible. In cases of extreme height difference, do your best.
Left hand leading. This is most important in the open position. Basically, the left hand is your main leading hand. She shouldn't have to follow anything you don't lead, even something as simple as a backrock.
Don't Be a Dictator (Or just don't be a Dick.) Especially in Lindy Hop, it's important to give the girl room to play around. If she looks like she's really stylin', then don't start leading her into something else right away--let her play a bit.

Tips for following

General:

Go by feel. Try getting someone to teach you a new move without any explanation - just follow. Ideally, try to rely on touch and feel rather than visual cues. That is, don't just watch his feet ;-) This tends to develop a much more instinctive approach to dancing. Since you dance the steps by feel, it's better to learn them by feel than by the numbers. You should always do the correct steps, but if possible learn them by feel first or simultaneously.
Know the steps Above I said that you should know the steps by feel, but never take the argument that you can only follow things that are led well. A good follow can guess pretty accurately what the guy meant, and she can fill in the missing parts of the lead. Not only that, but knowing the steps inside and out can help you improvise and add shines to your steps.
Communicate. Ask people if you're responding differently than they intended, and be sure to find out why. It may just be a bad lead, though ;-(

Frame:
The right hand. In most of the basics this is the most important hand. This is the hand through which the swingout entry and exit, as well as the back rock, should be led (see the leading section). You should be sensitive enough to what's happening with this hand that the guy can lead you into a specific direction, and indicate exactly how far back you should step. That's what makes dancing in crowded rooms possible. In ECS as well as Lindy you should also be able to follow two back rocks, one after another.
The elbow thing. As a general rule, don't let your elbows go past your body, and don't let them get extended so that your arms are out straight. Basically, keep them springy and usually in the same position, depending on the move. When you're pushed or pulled move your body, not your elbows.

This leads into another idea that I've tried to develop since I started dancing. I call it a "reactive lead."

This means that you learn to react to the girl as you lead. Whether you accidentally screw up your lead, or she misses it, or she decides to react or style in a different way, you often have situations where you can make things work by paying attention to the follow.

When you extend this further, you end up blurring a lot of the distinction between lead and follow. Instead, ideally it's just constant communication through body and eye contact. I lead, she responds with a twist or variation, and I accomodate her idea as I continue leading.

Ultimately I think lead/follow eventually turns into partnership. The lead/follow is the foundation you build on, but on top you have this interaction. When I did theatre improv, a big thing they emphasized was not "blocking" the other actors, meaning that you should always go with the flow, and never contradict or resist the improvisational ideas that the other actors came up with. If another actor says "look, a toad!" it's better to go along with it than to say, "no, it's not!" That's the kind of partnership I think makes dancing the most fun.