Riot and Frolic

Things You CANNOT Control at a Ballroom Dance Competition

• How hot the ballroom is
• How cold the ballroom is
• How slick the floor is
• How sticky the floor is
• How crowded the floor is
• How empty the floor is
• How big the floor is
• How small the floor is
• When you dance very early
• When you dance very late
• When you dance all your heats in.a.row
• When you dance all your heats spread   out   throughout   the   day
• When they are running ahead of schedule
• When they are running behind schedule
• How long each heat is danced
• What tempo the music is
• How strong the beat is
• What song is played
• How many people are watching
• How few people are watching
• Where other couples dance
• When other couples dance
• How other couples dance
• How other couples place
• How you place
• How much time you have in between heats if you dance more than one style
• What your partner is doing

Things You Can Control at a Ballroom Dance Competition

• Your dancing
• Your look

Well.  That second list is short.

Here's the hard fact about comps: the only thing you have control over is yourself.  

BUT many of the uncontrollable aspects of competition can be managed with proper preparation of "just" your dancing and your look.

You can practice as many RIDICULOUS situations as possible as many times as possible BECAUSE THEY ALL HAPPEN. 

• You'll end up dancing Open American Viennese Waltz on a 12' square platform four feet off the ground for 500 executives.  
• You'll get tripped on purpose by a drunk pro during a pro-am competition with your student.
• You'll have to duck, bob, weave, and separate from your partner completely.
• You'll have a wardrobe malfunction.
• You'll dance at 1am after starting at 6am.
• You'll get kicked, stepped on, and elbowed.  
• You'll pause in one place for more than a measure.
• You'll fall down.  
• You'll forget your routine entirely.
• You'll dance to "Inchworm" in a final.  

Shit happens in the ballroom.  The challenge is to learn how to deal with it.  And once you learn how to deal with it, many of "problems" you have at competitions will be part of the daily routine, instead of destroying your good time on the floor.

Challenge Your Dancing

• Practice on floors that are too tiny (try our house! or section off a big ballroom with chairs!)
• Practice with music that is too slow, too fast, and too long
• Practice at peak hours in the studio, or create practice rounds with your buds (especially if they dance different levels than you!)
• Practice at 6am and midnight
• Hit every studio showcase, local comp, and performance opportunity available
• Practice with your least favorite songs and genres
• Practice by yourself! (Or sometimes with your partner next to you, but not in connection)
• Practice with your buddies purposely getting in your way
• Practice charging your phone before you go to sleep and setting 7 alarms so you know you won't miss your heats.
• Practice having fun (make up a story line: I totally destroy the Death Star in my Waltz; find your buddies on the sideline and schmooze them, pretend you are your dance hero and channel their performance style)

Challenge Your Look

• Practice your hair and makeup millions of times so you know it's going to come out right. Or NOT come out, right?  
• Practice in your real dress and hair and makeup to make sure your foot doesn't catch in your horsehair or your fringe doesn't bash your partner in the face on that one trick and that you really look the way you want to look. 
• Practice in your fancy pants to make sure the length is correct: you only want to see a glimpse  of your pizza socks, not to see your ankle the entire dance.
• Practice your roll-out so you know how many turns you can confidently do, how to not get caught in your floats, and which way you both are going to face. 
• Video your "tech" practice and see if your look is cohesive.  
• Send your video (or even pictures) to some trusted coaches and see if they agree.  

The Perfect Round

Working on all of these ideas will culminate in the Perfect Round, right?

THERE IS NO PERFECT ROUND.

I've heard dancers talking about this concept in an ambiguous way.  They danced visibly well, but "it didn't feel right" or "we ran into these couples" or "I forgot to do that thing I've been working on" or "I fell down" or WHAT HAVE YOU.

A vacuum the ballroom competition is not, as Yoda would say.

While dancing your routines to "perfection" EVER is a nice idea, it's never going to happen.  Dancing your shit to the best of your ability while keeping in mind all the interesting things that can happen while you're at a competition (see the first list) and your excellent, OBVIOUSLY ALREADY PLANNED goals will keep your attitude in the right place: looking up and moving line of dance.

Six years ago (yes, this blog is older than most of my children): Don't Dance What You See: Episode IV

Previously on Riot and Frolic [cue cleverly edited montage of my witty and amazing writing voiced over by Morgan Freeman with some dramatic and foreboding music in the background]…

But really, I was talking about partner dancing and what the hell are we getting into when we go social dancing.  And I copied my own work and changed some words and came up with this:

Number 1 when we go partner dancing is we agree to dance with someone.  Once we hit the floor with our chosen partner, we're agreeing to dance with that person from this dance until the end of this dance, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health.

That isn't to say grounds for divorce won't apply, but you should have a clear, verbal agreement before you begin your partnership, no matter how brief it may last.  Many of these things will be implied, but if you have ANY DOUBTS, please be explicit about your wants and needs:

• Who is leading and who is following? While most dancers think this is obvious, it's not in many circles.   If you're at an event where partnerships are pretty liquid, go ahead and confirm which part you enjoy doing.
• What dance are you doing?  Many songs could be a Cha Cha, Rumba, OR West Coast Swing, and if you're comfortable with all of them, it's still nice to be mentally, physically, and attitudinally [it's totally a word] prepared.  
• What level will you be dancing?  If you are a beginner, you can state exactly that: "I'm new to [whatever dance you're about to do]," and hopefully your delightful partner will follow suit. If you're not a beginner and you have no idea how well your partner can dance, you will do some magical basics to get a feel for their proficiency, but you WILL NOT ASK "BRONZE OR SILVER?" OR THE LIKE. That use of lingo produces a culture of separation that turns off a lot of potentially awesome partners, especially when not all dance genres use the same distinctions to describe someone's skill level.
• What are your limitations? Maybe you have a bad ankle, or just had shoulder surgery, or had vertigo last week, or got whiplash in an unfortunate Tango accident earlier that evening, WHAT HAVE YOU.  Please disclose these kinds of things so your partner can help provide an enjoyable experience during your dance together.

While all these things should be understood between both parties before dancing, make sure you have your end of the pre-nup in order.  There is much more implicit agreement you have accepted when you showed up at this dance function, namely several rules of good manners.

• Hygiene I've talked about this before, but it deserves another mention.  A recent shower, breath mints, deodorant, and a fresh shirt or two go along way.  
• Language Those who know me know I loooooove a good curse word or three, but when I'm around "mixed company" I try to keep my vocabulary PG.  Please, thank you, "may I" and all that BS [see? OOPS] are all really lovely to hear, especially because the dance world is a great networking device and you never know when you might be talking to someone who needs a new contractor. 
• Positive Intent When you decide to go dancing, you are also deciding to shut up, smile, and dance.  You are there to have fun, dancing, with other people.  You are not there to teach, or solicit feedback, or grope your partners.  Have a polite conversation if you can multi-task while doing your Rumba, and dance to the best of your ability with each amazing person you get to dance with.  The Golden Rule and all that.  

What if our beautifully negotiated contract can't hold water?  It happens.  Just like in The Real World, sometimes people don't click on the dance floor.  Can you last another 50 seconds with this person? Yes, you can.  However, repeated or blatant disregard for the following rules is grounds for divorce with the resolution being immediate separation and an amicable reunion in the future being rare.

• Cruelty Besides the blessed light-as-a-feather/heavy-as-a-brick follow, there's the leads who don't know they're squeezing the circulation from your hand or torquing your wrist in the weirdest way.  Follows meander away while turning, leads crash into other dancers, all parties might sweat profusely or smell bad.  THESE ARE ALL MINOR AND OFTEN UNCONSCIOUS BEHAVIORS.  Please refer to that "Positive Intent" line above.  On the other hand, excessive force from either party, any tricks (continuous turns, dips, lifts and drops) without prior awareness of said skill, and general "jerkiness" (counting out loud to "help", verbal guidance, etc.) are all over the line.
• Sexual Harrassment You would think this goes without saying these days, right?  But let's be clear, I can completely tell when someone does an accidental graze because they forget where their free arm was and when someone is trying a grab-ass.  Let's keep the ballroom sexy, yet civilized and leave the groping to da club [uhn-ce, uhn-ce, uhn-ce].
• Substance Abuse Sure, a drink might loosen one's inhibitions to ask an attractive stranger to dance, but if you're sloshed (or worse) on the dance floor, you're a mess to dance with.  Stop it.
• Irretrievable Breakdown Probably not grounds for immediate desertion, but there are people who will get on your nerves and leave your partner dance experiences less savory.  It is okay to politely decline every single time they ask you to dance or avoid them like the plague.  

All of this, just to dance with someone?  YES.  It's better to cover your ass before you start dancing with a new person, and if any of your circumstances change along the way with a dance acquaintance (injury, mostly), you should renew your vows with them. 

Next time, I'll shake my head and cover my eyes as I talk about timing.

Recently, we went out dancing with a gang of our students to a long-standing swing joint, the Wabasha Street Caves.  It's an old mob hangout in a cave along the Mississippi River, which now legitimately hosts weekly swing dances with live big bands.

While obviously the setting is amazing and atmospheric and nearly everyone had one of their first partner-dance experiences there, I was left with a really unsettled question:

What is dancing?

Let's narrow it down to "what is partner dancing?" because I can't tell you what all dancing is or is supposed to be (modern, for example, continues to be a very cool mystery to me).  

I do however, feel like I have a pretty good grasp on partner dancing.

Classically, I love the definition being "two people dancing as one".  Spending time in studios and competition floors makes that an easily accepted idea.  Move.  Lead.  Follow.  Technique.  Patterns.  Fancier patterns.  Fancier technique.  Etc. 

But as we walked in the historic Caves and were greeted by a majority of under-18 dancers (you guys, like, SO MANY high schoolers), my question began forming.

Now, I know what it's like to forget the basic.  I remember clearly my first lesson where I was introduced to three dances, the last of which being East Coast Swing (or Triple Swing) which I danced gleefully and ignorantly.  The next lesson, my teacher started with ye olde ECS "since it went so well" and I. Had. Nothing.  No idea about how many chasses were involved and good God, why it is only 6 counts and what's a rock step and all that.  

Watching the sub-drinking-age-people "warm up" and "practice", it was clear that they might not know the basic in the first place.  Or care about one.

insert conversation with one of my sweet high school students from the start of the school year:

me: who's done Swing before?

girl [raises hand enthusiastically]: I have!

me: oh cool! What was it? Lindy? Jitterbug? East Coast? Just plain ol' Swing?

girl [blank stare]: … I did aerials.

me and the crickets: …

The kids at the Caves did know aerials, of differing difficulty and danger to others, and were intent on practicing them (thankfully off the main dance floor near the ill-attended, but delightfully inexpensive bar).  Once in awhile, they'd wander toward the dance floor, possibly with the intent of demonstrating their tricks, but were often stopped by the throng of people who were moving on the excellent wood floor.

Now many of these other people who were moving on the floor were doing something akin to the rock steps and side steps that would comprise most Swing basic steps, but without any identifiable rhythm or timing with the very obvious beat that was being used by 20 live musicians.  Let's call it "dancing".  It was often way too fast and not at all in sync with their partner, whose shoulders and elbows and wrists and side-eyes were getting a workout.

So, the majority of the fun-loving crowd at the venue could do a couple tricks, presumably with no movement to connect one trick to another, and/or had a vague knowledge of the movement involved with the favorited dance, but no idea how to execute and communicate it to another person.

And there was my question: what is partner dancing?

If it's just jumping on the floor with another person, every drunk person at a wedding is a pretty good dancer.  

Just to plagiarize myself, I propose this:

Agreement 

Whether explicitly or implicitly, when you grab hands with another person and head to the floor, you are agreeing to dance with that person for the dance that has recently started through the duration of said song (unless you're talking about Argentine Tango, but we're not).  SOMETIMES IT'S GOOD TO BE EXPLICIT. 

I'm sure you want to find out in which ways you should be explicit, but that's what a cliffhanger is for…