Riot and Frolic

"Collegiate Competition" and "Many Amateur Competitions" or "Ballroom Newbie Competitions" could all be interchanged in the title today, but seeing as how I just judged a collegiate comp last weekend, that's my title.

Why I Didn't Love You

This is where it was really tempting to pull some of the 18,000 photos from the DanceFest Flickr album to use as examples, but I'm super nice, so I didn't.  

• You can dance International Rumba on time, but not either style (American or International) of Cha Cha… or American Tango.  Please explain.  No seriously, tell me how this happens.
• Body contact trumps good frame?  Dancing in body contact is super helpful, but if it messes up your frame (like everyone's shoulders are now in their ears and the guy's left hand is behind the lady's back), you all need to take a small step away from each other for awhile, build the correct muscles up, and figure that top-line out.  
• The walk-on with the arm out.  This has perplexed me for years.  You can read more about it here. Please, just walk onto the floor.  
• The really elaborate invite.  I love a good invite to dance.  It's so classy.  But sometimes, your invitation to dance gets a little crazy.  Best advice?  Keep it simple, stupid.  And the part that sounds really mean?  Don't let your personality show too much.  Not there anyways.  It's kind of like walking-onto-the-floor thing.  Just get into frame, y'all.
• Your footwork is a constant mystery.  Heel leads on 3 in Waltz, toe releases in Rumba, or just flat feet through entire dances: if your footwork isn't correct, your basic movement usually isn't either.  
• International isn't American and vice versa – there's no Crossbody Leads in International Cha Cha and Rumba, there's no Closed Promenade and everything is in 8s in American Tango, American Waltz has Open Position, Jive and Swing have totally different chassés… I could literally go ON and ON.  And I'm available for private lessons.  

Why I Loved You

These critiques are more fun for everyone.

• Your unbridled enthusiasm.  While most professionals are passionate are their dancing, it's been tempered by years of participation and politics, and your passion is palatable.  Watching you in the ballroom, I literally feel like bouncing up and down and yelling "DANCING!" while hugging all of you.
• Your love for dancing.  Have you ever had a friend who you thought loved you too much?  I sense dancing might feel that way about you sometimes.  It's intense and great and a little bit scary, therefore all the more exciting to see.  
• You dance like no one is watching.  Keep doing that, and apply it to all things.
• Team work.  While ballrooming is a two-person sport on the floor, your ever-expanding teams and the support you give to one another off the floor is endearing.
• Even if one of you looks like you're going to throw up, the other one looks so patient and supportive.  Partnership, man: you're nailing it.
• The occasional count-out-loud.  Beginners are always fun to watch dance, NOT BECAUSE WE'RE MAKING FUN OF YOU, but because we were all there once.  But the lead counting out loud?  MY FAVORITE.  The follow counting out loud for the lead?  My second favorite. 
• The facial expressions.  In case I wasn't sure you were having fun, your face is clearly expressing your enjoyment.
• The proud parents.  While my Facebook feed was basically everyone changing their profile and cover pictures for two days, I also saw many of you tagged in pictures from your proud-as-a-peacock parents, who were clearly bursting at the seams to show off how well you clean up, how fancy you are, and what good genes you obviously inherited.  
• The social dances.  Again, almost scary with the level of enthusiasm and energy level, and as long as I spectate from afar, it's clear you love dancing with each other.  All of each other.  Politicians have something to learn from your inclusion and acceptance.  
• The intercollegiate love.  Yeah yeah, it was a competition, but there's some serious love between teams at these things.  
• The same sex partnerships. Maybe I'm biased, but I especially loved the guys dancing together.  Because it's just what you do.  Who cares who leads or follows?  Knowing both parts makes you a better dancer and it was great to see that in action.
• Your total awareness of the junior peanuts dancing around you that were half your size.  I know they're hard to see and I threatened you beforehand with cancellation of callbacks if you specifically hit my kid and her partner, but you had it all under control and gave all of them a wide berth.  

In case you thought reading this was lame, here's a fun picture:

me, at my first pro-am competition, looking super awesome

 And another one:

kid #1 (the girl), making finals from a quarterfinal, and no, I didn't call them back for the final #humblebrag

The other day, I started a lively debate on The Facebooks about whether social and competitive dancing should be taught the same or differently.

I was pretty vague with the question.  My exact words were, "Should social and competitive dancing be taught differently?  If yes, why?"

What I really wanted you guys to do was read my mind and hear the whole conversation I had before posting that made me ask the question. 

A group of [ambitious, very wise, and clearly forward-thinking] high schoolers recently formed a ballroom dance club and asked me to teach their group class each week.

The president of the club was outlining their goals the other day and he reminded me that they are "just a social club". 

"As opposed to what?" I asked.

"Well, we're not looking at competitive dancing."

"There's no difference," I automatically replied.

"There isn't?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes?" I answered similarly incredulously. My opinion was so swift and strong, I didn't even see it coming.

But, there's not, right?  I mean, if you begin teaching a group of people, with no experience, the basics of ballroom dancing, there wouldn't be a difference in how you teach them… RIGHT?

The field on Facebook was relatively split on whether this was true or not, but I feel like a lot of people who didn't agree that social and competitive dancing should be taught the same were thinking in the long term development of each branch, or were comparing "the social dances" (like West Coast Swing and Salsa) to "Dancesport" (Waltz, Bolero, and the like).  But maybe I just want everyone to agree with me.

OF COURSE, social ("hey, I'm going to a social dance at the rec center tonight!") and competitive ("hey, I'm going to compete in the Silver Smooth division of Ohio Star Ball!") ballroom dancing should be taught differently eventually.  But for those first few months, when everyone's trying to remember the rhythm of Rumba and which foot they generally start with and not to look at their feet and what dance you can do a Twinkle in, IT'S ALL THE SAME.  

There's dancing on the beat, standing up correctly, moving your weight from foot to foot, and the rest of this crazy pyramid:

On the plus side, when a friend ranted to me about it, he brought up my previous post about social and competitive dancing and WHEW I totally agree with myself still.  

If you have more than a few minutes and you want to read up on the debate, it's pretty neat and more than one person is way more eloquent than me at explaining all sorts of things and philosophies and teaching techniques.

The ballroom world is full of brilliant people.  The number of PhDs, MDs, patents, and IQ points of my students alone is astounding.  Big-time CEOs and executives of multi-national companies enter studio doors every day.  Not to mention the amazing entrepreneurs, philanthropists, and creative enterprisers among us.  

To make such professional headway, all these people used their brains.  Their know-how.  Their book-learning.  Their people skills.  Their strategy.  Their street smarts.  

Yet none of those things will help you learn how to dance.

Okay, maybe you need your brain a bit.

But the point is that to learn to dance, you need to move.  

Not think.

One thing is key when it comes to motor skill development: REPETITION.

To develop the ever-desirable muscle memory, dancers need to do.  And then do it again.  And again and again and again.  

By creating a habit of movement in your body, your cerebellum takes control of your movement by making it a long term, procedural memory (the same part of your brain and process you use to tie your shoes or walk up and down stairs).  More importantly, your cerebellum takes it away from your cerebrum, where all the thinking happens.  You know, the thinking, with the stopping, and the wondering, and the worrying, and the stressing, and the "why does this…", and the…WHO CARES SHUT UP AND DO IT TEN MORE TIMES.

After asking students if they worked on a particular movement we'd been learning, I've had many of them reply, "I totally thought about it." Visualization is a GREAT tool, but it is also not entirely effective until you can actually do the thing you're picturing.  In other words, you can't learn a physical movement by thinking about it.

[Some research says you can, but I've yet to witness it being effective in the learning stages of a movement.  It can be very helpful in preparation for performances and in the mastery stages.  See sources below. Yes, SOURCES.]

After learning the proper technique, one has to use plenty of "touch time" (aka, time actually spent working on a product) to program their body to learn the skill.  By embracing your muscle memory, you create a habit in your body that is hard to ignore in times of stress.  Like those practice parties when that one really good dancer asks you to dance.  Or the final of that scholarship you danced four rounds of prelims to get into. 

Now.  Notice I said "after learning the proper technique".  That means you need to be learning the proper technique first.  (And no, I don't mean all the technique first, like "why didn't I learn this when I started" technique. I mean, you need to be learning the right foundation for your skills to build on one another as you practice your basic step for 5 minutes a day.)  That means you have to find a teacher that you trust is doing that.  AND THEN DO IT. 

AND THEN DO IT AGAIN. 

AND AGAIN AND AGAIN AND AGAIN.

i bet he practiced tying a bowtie AND his tennis swing

Sources:

Bergland, Christopher (2011, Oct 13) No. 1 Reason Practice Makes Perfect 

Duhigg, Charles. The Power of Habit. Random House. 2014. Print.

Lohr, Jim (2015, May 1) Can Visualizing Your Body Doing Something Help You Learn to Do It Better?

Overby PhD, Lynette Y. and Bradely MFA, Karen (2003) Better Practice in Arts Education

Wilmerding PhD, Virginia and Krasnow MS, Donna (2009, Nov 15) Motor Learning and Teaching Dance

"Historically, they make the finals," my friend said to some spectators who were interested in watching us dance. 

I had to think pretty hard about her statement; it seemed too good to be true.  But yes, my partner and I have generally made finals.  We're not top 6 in the nation or anything, but at a decent quarter- to semi-final, we usually get to that coveted last round.

That was not the case last weekend.  

And I'm okay with that.

We were dancing "at home" in a small, but devoted semi-final and we didn't make the last cut.  Many of my students and other audience members expressed their disapproval of the result ("You was robbed!" "Those judges!" "I had you winning!").

But let's be serious…

I watched the Rising Star (more or less the preliminaries to the Open Professional events) the night before and saw some great dancing.  Great dancing that might (or might not) be better than mine.

I looked at the list of names in my heat and could immediately tell you the top three placements.  Using simple math, that means there's three spots left in the final.  And remember those great Rising Star dancers from the night before?  I liked them, the judges liked at least half of them,  and those judges haven't even seen me dance yet.  

You might recall I have four kids, one that's under a year old.  Being totally kick-ass less than a year after having a baby is a trick.  And not one I'm sure I have down pat.

We've gotten new choreography in the last year as well.  Another baby, of sorts.  And it has felt HORRIBLE at the last two comps we did.  Like, panic-attack-inducing, career-questioning AWFUL.  

So I was hoping to be do several things during my time on the floor…

A) not use my "thinking face", which is a hilarious, but performance-inappropriate facial expression.

oops, it's also my helping face

B) follow my dude.  I knew there'd be some situations in floor craft and I wanted to give him reign (since some of my problems in the past have been trying to help).  

C) be brave.  Get close to people where I might usually "be nice" (and go way overboard doing so).  Throw myself around the way I know I'm supposed to and the way that makes our choreography work (you know, that whole counter-balance thing).  Emote.  Do my M*F*ing thing.

rocking out (thanks, ha, for the photo)

D) have fun.  The previous comps had been sooooooo bad and I didn't want any part of yuckiness again.  

These might sound like RIDICULOUS goals for a professional dancer to have, but there you have it.  

Well, the second I walked on the floor, I felt good.  I felt like I was supposed to be there.  Like I fit in.  

And I crushed those goals.

Happy dancing, fools.

There's a concept of "dancing down" in competitive ballroom that I get asked about. A LOT. 

There's a couple ways I see it, one of which is okay and one of which is a bummer.

The Bummer

Let's say you see someone dancing a bunch of Silver freestyles and multi-dance events and also dancing in Bronze events. 

This doesn't happen very often, and when it does, it sucks. But different comps have different rules as to how many levels you can dance, and some teachers (teachers are generally to "blame" here, not the students) decide to take advantage of the looser rules and enter some higher level students in lower level events. So they can win.  And "look good".

On the plus side, I've seen very good Silver dancers get beaten in Bronze, or some dancers break the rules for that comp's level restrictions (accidentally or on purpose, who knows) and get DQ'ed.

On the minus side, sometimes the dancer-downer wins over people dancing at the actual level.

I usually mental DQ them in my head and award the next person first. But I have a very active imagination.

The bad-ass

Let's say you see someone whose proficiency level seems to be WAY higher than the level they're dancing in.  Like, they're dancing in Bronze and you can't tell who the pro is, or you watch them for a minute and say, "Are you kidding me?!"

The second example SEEMS to happen more often, but there's several reasons behind it.

Personally, The G and I don't let our students move up a level until they are KILLING IT at everything: both competitions and in lessons, technically and performance-wise (like all of that pyramid I did awhile ago).  Often, this means our Bronzey is dancing with Silvery technique.  

It is NOT only so we can win often (though that is sometimes a nice by-product), but so our students grasp all the aspects of movement required (or implied) at each proficiency level and really enjoy dancing and are good at it (which also makes it easier to enjoy). We know what information is needed at a lower level to make the higher level easier and will make sure all that info is clear and being performed before moving someone up.

I see SOOOOOO many dancers fail at the higher level because they just wanted to move up and their teacher let them (or the teacher didn't have enough info for them, or they both got bored, or whatever), yet they didn't have the foundation to build more difficult movement on. Boo. Hiss.

For many instructors, it's also a sense of pride in our craft. We want our students to dance the best they can at whatever level they're dancing at because we want to enjoy it also. It's REALLY fulfilling to see your student do a great crossover break or amazing back twinkle, whether they win or not.

Us teachers are mostly perfectionists, too, so it's hard to pass someone to the next level when they're still doing heel leads on 3 or can't keep their chin up in promenade. I would rather my Silver guys be dancing with Gold technique before they actually have to hit Gold patterns, so they aren't overwhelmed when the choreography changes.

Selfishly, it's infinitely easier to dance with someone who knows what they're doing. If a student is super proficient, I don't have to work so hard to my job (or sometimes his, too).

As an effect of all of this, having students dance really well also supports one's reputation, which makes it slightly easier to make a living. Yay for my mortgage!

Rules and Such    

I go back and forth about USADance's proficiency points deal. I've seen WAY too many couples get pushed up into levels they are so not ready for (ahem, THE OPEN LEVELS) and THEN even get all snooty about being in "Open" when they kind of HAD to be there, as opposed to learning and progressing there. 

While it's sometimes a bummer that the NDCA doesn't have a proficiency system in place, I've seen people change instructors and move down a level because they never learned those foundational techniques.  They became a better dancer by dancing "easier" steps, not for the sake of winning or taking opportunity away from someone else, but so they could really accomplish the mastery of something they hadn't learned.  

Or maybe an Silver Standard dancer wants to do Smooth, but has no idea what to do with their arms.  Yay for Bronze!  

Conclusion?

There's a HUGE scale of knowledge (I am nowhere near the top) amongst teachers, and a huge scale of perfectionism amongst those teachers, which makes for a huge scale in each proficiency level amongst students.  Ta-da!