Thoughts on learning to dance

[gurdymonkey]

Condensed from an e-mail conversation with kass_rants
Left Friday Night Waltz a little early last night with a headache, which has dogged me most of today. With
the holiday weekend a lot of regulars were not there, but they'd advertised it as a "social sampler" with 
other activities going on in the hall and we got this weird mix of rank beginners and several knots of 
hardcore ballroom types who wouldn't dance with anybody but their friends - like the man who sat 
complaining to me about people who were stopping in the "fast lane" so he couldn't do set up any fancy
moves but couldn't be bothered to ask me to dance. If you're that good, why are you whining to me instead 
of taking me out on the floor and making me see God? If you don't want to waltz, why did you come to an
event called Friday Night Waltz? Go clubbing or something. 

Tom used me for part of the teaching session. While I am certain he would've said "Lovely, thank 
you," even if I'd stomped all over him and then thrown up on his shoes, it didn't feel that way. I may
be a beginner, but I’m feeling more confident about what I’m doing, with waltz, at least.  

Having taught beginners of all ages to ride horses, I know how hard it is to teach a physical skill and I know a good teacher when I run into one. Tom is very kind and enthusiastic, patient with beginners but at the same time keeps things moving, because two hours is both a long time and not time enough.

One of the things he does is make us change partners frequently throughout the lesson. I call this “adapt or die.” If you’re with the same person for the entire session it’s too easy to compound a mistake you or he may not even realize you’re making. By switching partners, you get to experience different rights and wrongs, and learn to know the difference. If you can dance with anybody, you can dance with anybody. 

He’s not afraid to change things up either depending on what the lowest common denominator in the group needs. He said something to me about flipping the components of a dance lesson around and still arriving at a final “destination.” Made sense to me – if you have all the building blocks, you can do all sorts of things with them.

I have to go to these things solo, and believe me, that's hard for me. I'm WAY out of my comfort zone to 
begin  with. If I want to dance at all, I damn well better smile and make eye contact and attaboy every 
single partner and say, "I'd be delighted," and "Thank you, that was lovely," like I mean it to ALL of them, 
the ones with no sense of rhythm and the ones who only know one step, the ones that don't have a clue 
about frame, etc. If nobody dances with me, I'm not going to learn to get better. If they're not having a good
time with me, they're not going to want to dance with me again. If they're not having a good time dancing, 
they're not going to log the miles they need to get any better. If they're not getting positive reinforcement 
when they do something right, they're not going to know what right is.   

Last night's theme seemed to be: LET HIM LEAD, even if he doesn't know how. Like Mr. Can Only Waltz In 
A Straight Line - been there,done that, understood what he was up against and I spent two waltzes going 
backwards and beaming encouragingly.  And Mr. Showed Up Without Taking The Workshop who wanted 
to see what  happened if we tried a polka turn in the wrong direction. I fell out of frame on him. No harm 
done, we laughed and said, “Better not do THAT again.”  Nobody's keeping score, nobody's going to die, 
it's OK to make mistakes. God knows I'm making plenty of my own.

I find that I think of the whole lead-follow-frame thing as similar to having one’s horse have contact with 
the bit. Frame (or contact) simply  means that each can feel what the other is doing or going to do. Loss 
of frame means not knowing where to go next. I danced with a man who had a rhythm that had nothing to
do with what was coming out of the sound system. As soon as I ignored the music completely (which for
me is REALLY hard), everything gelled. We had a nice, comfortable frame and I could read him 
just fine. He had a smooth, even rhythm, he just couldn't seem to synch it to the music. So we didn't. 

I got to do the "Congress of Vienna" with Jim, a dapper Japanese American guy who I've seen 
around but hadn't gotten to dance with before. It’s a very pretty, choreographed waltz and it is a real
treat to dance it with someone who knows what to do. Pavel and I waltzed to a very pretty 
arrangement of “Sheebeg Sheemore,” a piece I’ve always been very fond of as it was one of the first
things I was determined to learn on pennywhistle. Gary appeared out of nowhere during the last 
minute of Gene Krupa’s "Sing Sing Sing" and grabbed my hand. Wish we’d had longer, he’s very 
good and I was really flattered  - he knows I'm new and still have a lot to learn. 

Dare I attend the Space Cowboy's Ball in San Mateo next week?