Create a Great Atmosphere

I’ve been to a lot of different social dances. Some are good, some bad, some fun, some not, some just down right horrible. Whether you want to create a great dance environment, or great work place, or great dance studio, it doesn’t matter, some of the same basic principles apply. The environment that you create is far more important than how good you dance or any technical skills you might have whatever the situation is. People might be attracted in the beginning for the technical, but they’ll only stick around if there is a good environment.

Need for human connection

Everyone has a need for human connection. The Non-Violent Communication group ranks connection as one of the seven needs of a human. Forms of connection account for 5 of Professor Steven Reiss’s 16 basic desires. People will go to extreme lengths to satisfy this need, to the point of sacrificing other needs including romance, happiness, peace, independence, or even their own health. Sadly people even do some classically really bad social mistakes where they’re trying to get more connection only to drive people away.

Some people will say anything just so that they can be part of the group. Even if they don’t believe what they are agreeing with. Even if what they are saying is mean and spiteful and they’re a “nice” person, they say it or agree to it just to fit in.

Bashing others or bashing a common perceived enemy is a common tactic people use. (Gossip can be a form of this.) It kind of works to bond you with someone else in your group, but has some serious draw backs. It probably worked better centuries ago, but we live in a connected world, people eventually hear everything. Actually, it probably didn’t work long ago in small towns either. It also sets up an atmosphere of judging. What if you don’t believe the same things? What if you want to go against the judgment in the rumors? Will you trade your independence / knowledge / happiness to keep your connection with your current group?

Being judgmental

We’ve all know and seen people like this. They’re perhaps too vocal about “I like this…” and “I hate this…” and “This is no good…”. (Perhaps a bit self centered too.) Some people have an opinion about everything, which in itself isn’t bad, but they feel they need to share it with the world. All the time. Again, this creates an air of judging.

Many people’s first reaction to being judged is to be defensive or at least cautious. If dancing is at least part about being expressive, do you think they’ll be more open and expressive in this kind of a situation? Are they going to become great dancers in a studio like that? Or worse, the social dancers that feel they need to correct everything someone is doing. What about just having some fun? Why would anyone in their right mind go into a dance situation like that?

If you’re a dance teacher or a dance student, please, save the corrections for the appropriate venue: lesson time.

The judgment concept is actually much bigger than this. People have judgments going on inside their head all the time. To turn the judgment thought process into a thought process of perception and observation is the main key to get people expressive in their dancing (or anywhere else in their life).

A story: I started my dancing at a studio that was hugely judgmental in attitude. I look bad, I think it was horrible. That poor teacher, he was a total wreck when it came time for him to compete. Anyway, further down my path of discovery and learning about dancing, I took my first acting class. (I’ve taken many more since then.) I was stunned that first time though about how they all behaved. About how much it was about observation and not judgment. Everyone should take some acting classes.

Fairness

We are as people wired for fairness. When things are unfair, we are acutely aware of it. If you’re at a dance (or whatever the situation) try to spend some time with everyone. This is especially important for the leader of a group. One of the main qualities we all consciously or unconsciously attach to leadership is fairness. If you’re running a dance, you own a studio, whatever, don’t spend the entire night dancing with just your partner. Dance with everyone in the room. Systematically, one by one go through everyone in the room and dance with them each once, then lather, rinse, and repeat.

Try not to favor anyone in any of your classes. Even if you think you’re being private and just telling one student that “they’re so talented”, other students will hear. Don’t do it.

 

If we work together, we can all easily get all of our need for connection fed. We can all be more successful. Working together can be more enjoyable. Create a friendly environment in which the community can grow.

Straight vs Extending

What do you see when you see a good* ballet dancer? Wait! It’s a trick question. Kind of like one of those black and white pictures (a Rubin vase)  that could be a vase if you look at the white parts and a pair of people’s profiles if you look at the black parts of the image. When you look at the limbs of a ballet dancer, do you see the straight lines, or do you see the stretching and extending?

*Note, I said “good” ballet dancer, because this difference of what you see makes a big impact on how you dance and what the final result is. This difference is probably one of the most misunderstood parts of dancing.

(image by Bryan Derksen, Wikimedia Commons license)

Straight is a static description, it’s not moving. There are many ways to create straight lines with the body, but few that are healthy for the joints. Humans are not robots. Without proper training for how to make straight through extending and stretching, the straight lines people produce in their bodies are stiff, awkward, weak, and have a slight tinge feeling of “gosh that looks unhealthy”. Often students will lock their knees, lock their elbows, popup their shoulders, or stick out their hip just to “make a line”.

If we get that same straight line by stretching and extending we get a different look. With the arms, shoulders pull back into the body. (Have you ever had a ballroom instructor or ballet instructor tell you to lower your shoulders? Can you picture the beginning ballet dancer with their shoulders way up by their ears when their arms are up?) With the legs, the hips stay more stabilized underneath the torso instead of popping out the the side or the front. (Have you seen people walk and they have to swing their hips all over the place to just extend their legs? Or that awkward looking hip popped out to the side tendu?)

So, here’s part of the problem. Forcing the lines with out extension is unhealthy for the body. It causes stresses on joints in odd directions that the body can’t support. It’s one of the reasons that it looks “awkward”. Sometimes to the confusion of someone looking at it – “it’s a straight line and that’s nice, but it still looks awkward, but it’s straight, but it’s odd, it kind of looks like what the good dancers are doing, but it’s different…”.

Doing it nicely with extension and stretch is more work. We have a sedentary society and all that sitting and lack of exercise really works to misbalance the muscle groups in the body. To a point that many people just starting out dancing can’t actually get to the true healthy straight line of the arm or leg. Usually the shoulder or the hip socket is too tight to actually straighten the arm or leg with out pulling against it in a healthy position. Then, as a teacher you have to take time to strengthen the right muscles (latissimus dorsi, serratus, psoas, periformis, etc) which, once strengthened, allow the arm or leg to freely straighten. And there plenty of good exercises in yoga, ballet, modern dance, weight lifting, and many other areas to help with that.

There are plenty of groups out there (especially in ballet and ballroom dancing) that just focus on the line and not the healthy extension and stretch, to the point where they are mocked about it. One of the dancers I knew went to a Lindy Hop Swing lesson and the teacher started mocking them about being in Ballroom and that they just do “Lines” and then proceeded to dancing all mockingly “oh, I’m doing a line here, I’m doing a line here.” And then on the other flip side of the coin, I’ve heard one (kind of arrogant) ballroom dancer (big into doing fake unhealthly lines) say that Lindy was for sloppy dancers.

And it’s kind of sad. Two different groups both kind of right (straight lines are good and nice too look at artistically, and straight lines done poorly looks awkward and is unhealthy). But neither of them seeing the full pictures and realizing both are right. Both could learn from each other but both just fighting each other.

So, be open minded. Start to see the full picture. Take some time to just observe dancers. Are they “doing lines” or are they stretching and extending to get to, to reach, to perhaps not quite even get there for their movements? Get on the internets and watch some youtube videos.

Obsessed with Winning

Are you obsessed with winning? Do you know somebody who is? “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing!” is a famous quote from Henry Sanders, a football coach from the 1950’s. Do you love that quote? Or do you feel it exemplifies bad sportsmanship?How does this effect dancing? Does it making your dancing better or worse? Are you obsessed with “looking good”? Is image all that matters?

Intrinsic vs Extrinsic

Understanding the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards and motivation is hugely important. Extrinsic rewards are external rewards: winning a competition, looking good, fitting in with other people, it’s about obtaining an outcome that comes from outside the individual. Intrinsic rewards come from inside the person, it’s about enjoyment of the task itself or interest or knowledge or self development.

Psychologists have studied intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation for decades. Some basic stuff comes out of this research. People are motivated for longer amounts of time and end up being more successful in the long run if they have more intrinsic motivation. People who are intrinsicly motivated tend to be happier. As a teacher, if you focus on result based criticism (“That was good”, “That was bad”) you train extrinsic thoughts and students do worse over time. If you focus on effort based criticism (“You worked really hard”, “You need to work harder”) you train intrinsic thoughts and students to better over time.

To learn to dance well, it takes a long time to learn. So, if you’re a savvy ballroom dance teacher and you want your students to dance a long time, you should de-emphasize the results of competitions and applaud the work and effort for preparing for the competition.

But now you’re saying, wait a minute Chuck, that’s not what my dance instructor does, or you’re an instructor thinking, that doesn’t motivate students to buy as many lessons as emphasizing results and image. So here’s the catch 22 – by emphasizing the results students get worse, or just stay the same, but they’re being taught stuff, so the logical conclusion is to take more lessons! Some teachers are just naive and just teach however, some teachers actually know and just teach that way to sell lessons.

One time in a group class I went around the room and asked them all to share some of their motivations for dancing. One by one they all came up with extrinsic motivations: “they want to look good dancing”, “they want to look better physically”, etc. So then I explained to them the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards. Then I asked them all again to come up with an intrinsic reward, it didn’t even have to be their own reward, they just needed to describe an intrinsic reward that you could get from dancing. Then one by one we went around the room again. And again they all came up with extrinsic rewards. Ooof. It was going to be a difficult time teaching that group.

Measurement

One of the things you think you might get from competition is measurement. If you’re going to do anything in life it’s good to have some metric to measure what you’ve accomplished. That way you can tell if you’re getting better and what you might need to adjust. Unfortunately competitions provide a really horrible measurement for the feedback of your development. A large part of that comes from the huge variation of who you are competing against.

You could go to a competition and there could be 20 people that are all much better than you, and rightfully so if they’ve spent the time and done the work to develop their dancing. You could go to a competition and those 20 other people just haven’t worked on their dancing as much as you. You never know who’s going to show up. Couples break up, good dancers get together with other good dancers. Sometimes there are a whole bunch of couples that have been together for ages and are all very experienced. At any one point in time it might be really easy or really hard to do well in competition.

Some days you could be dancing really great and just make it to the quarter finals. Some days you could make it to the finals and be dancing horribly.

Finding Good Measurement

In the study of flow in sports, the idea comes up of reframing your mental perspective on competition. The idea is that you find a different goal for doing competition than the competition itself. This new goal needs to be something measureable and something that’s completely within yourself. Ideally you choose a goal that is both obtainable, but will also take work to accomplish. Examples of good goals for dancing in a competition might be: just getting the choreography danced; adding laban dynamics to your entire routine and making sure they were all clear in your video; or having something specific for your arms to do all the time.

Separation of Mind and Body

In dancing, our instruments are our bodies. Our subconscious minds have difficulty separating what we do and who we are. Separating internally between how are dancing is and how good a person we are takes some skill. Some people get really mentally beaten-up when they compete. I’ve seen plenty of dancers totally psychologically torn apart by competition. Until you accept that your dancing and how well you move is just a result of knowledge and training. You are going to be however good a dancer you’re going to be at any one point in time. Some people just have had more time or better knowledge and some people have had less. You can control your own effort and learning, but there’s nothing you can do about someone else’s. In that respect competition is almost just total random craziness that just causes drama.

What makes competition good?

So, Chuck, what are you saying here? Competition in dancing just sounds like a bad idea. Why should we compete? There are several aspects of competition that are good. Competition sets goals and deadlines. It could be social. It could be a way to cheer, encourage, help, and praise your fellow competitors.

So, if you go about it for the right reasons. To compete purely against yourself (intrinsic rewards). Help others to realize the same. Dance for others so they might see the courage you have in facing your own personal challenges. Be social, be polite, realize everyone is at their own level that is right for them in that moment.

Winning is not everything. Winning is nothing. Sportsmanship and self development is the real value. Everyone wins when no one focuses on winning.

Rhythm 101

Some people say they have no rhythm, that they’re rhythmically challenged. And it’s true. They’ve got no rhythm. But have no fear! A better understanding of rhythm is just a few moments away. And with it, something to play with and practice and incorporate into all your dancing. Like many of the things I teach, it’s something that is obvious once you hear it, but not obvious until you hear it.

This is something I knew to do dancing from before I started dancing. I don’t know where I learned it or picked it up. No teacher ever taught me it, and as a teacher myself I didn’t think to teach it. Until one day I read a book about note grouping. I thought “Oh my gosh! I’ve done this forever in my own dancing and never realized to teach it and it’s something some of my students are missing.”

Many people I’ve taught who say they have no rhythm can hear the beat of the music, clap or tap or do what ever perfectly to it. Some of them have near perfect internal metronomes (maybe that’s something that screws them up). And that’s all great, but not really what rhythm is.

They can also all speak fine. What? Why is that important you might ask. Language has an important skill that they’re not applying to their dancing. And many people, especially if they learned dance later in life don’t apply right away to their dancing with out some direction or instruction.

All languages have rhythm. Each language has a different rhythm. It allows us to understand word breaks. It’s why for a language we don’t know we can’t hear the word breaks. And why for a language we do know, we can hear the work breaks even if we can’t understand the words. And it’s why it’s recommended to take dance lessons or listen to the music when you move to a new country so that you can pick up the language faster.

What’s important about language is what needs to be done to your dancing. Not all syllables or in the case of dancing beats (or movements) should be danced the same. English and the romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc) have a particular up-down pattern to the syllables. One syllable is accented, then the next not, then the next after that is accented. And this is half way to understanding rhythm.

In dancing (and playing music) we need to group notes together. Grouping them together into groups of 2s or 3s on the lowest level and then grouping those groups into bigger groups. Here’s a super important point – in dancing (or playing music) – we need to increase the intensity or strength of the accent as we go.

Let’s take a look at Cha Cha. On the basic level we have:

1    2    3    4 &

In the Latin dances (Cha Cha, Rumba, etc) we group across the measure boundary to end on the 1. (In the American dances – like Swing – we group staying within the boundary of the measure.) That will give us a very different feeling for the music.

So let’s re-arrange a bit…

2    3    4  &  1

Now let’s group them (into a group of two and a group of three), and increase the intensity and accent of the beats…

2    3        4  &  1

So now we have something very different to dance. We’ve all seen dancers that dance every step the same. Maybe you cringe a bit when you see it (I cringe a bit). Maybe you realize what you’re seeing, maybe you don’t, maybe it just looks wrong, or feels wrong to you. If you’ve listened to computer generated music and it just felt dry, un-alive, un-feeling. Yes, the notes are all there, the playing was all the same though.

This is not just for ballroom or latin dancing. This is important for modern and ballet too. I saw a performance just recently. In this performance there was a section where all the dancers were out on stage doing a sequence of things. And most of them, just were don’t a very even rhythm, except for one. That one was doing this beautifully grouped and accented version of what everyone else was doing. It was beautiful.

Now, all rules in art you should have, you should follow most of the time, and sometimes you should just break them. As one of Wally’s student’s quoted of Wally: “You know all my rules, this is not an exam, go break them, break them all!” (Wally being Walter Laird – that cool dude who wrote the Latin syllabus). Understand note grouping. Use it most of the time – build a rapport with your audience through the music. And then break it and take them on a wonderful intellectual and artistic journey. Entertain, enlighten, and educate all at the same time.

Hip Socket, Hip Socket…

The hip-socket is probably one of the most important joints to work in the body no matter what activity you are doing. Not just dance, but yoga, or weight lifting, or running, or just simply walking around in everyday life.

In the modern age we has humans sit a lot. Over time sitting shortens and tightens the muscles in the front of the hip socket – the psoas and the hip flexors and at the same time lengths and weakens the muscles across the back of the hip socket – the glutes and hamstrings.

When the muscles get stiff, tight, and misbalanced around the hip socket then some other joint has to take the burden of the stress of any activity you do. Above the hip socket this is the lumbar region of the spine, below the hip it’s the knees. Both of the lumbar region and the knees are not designed for going in lots of different directions to absorb stress so they end up hurting. They are both great indicator joints that there is not enough mobility somewhere else (like the hip socket).

At it’s worst I’ve seen dancers literally punish themselves on the dance floor, suffer through pain as their dancing with very stiff immobile hip sockets and then walk off the floor still keeping the show going and then once they’re off stage limp around.

Having mobility in the hip socket allows for us to adjust to whatever we are doing movement wise. It allows us to have grace in our movement. If we’re dancing with a partner as in ballroom it allows us to adjust to all the small details of coordination in the moment, allowing for a smooth partnership. It allows us adjust our fine timing, to express detail in speed or slowness.

In ballet the fundamental exercises are largely about training the body to move at the hip-socket and stabilize the low back. The plie and the tendu both work toward mobility in the hip-socket.

In weight lifting the squat is considered the corner stone of the weight lifting exercises. It’s proper execution to lower the butt all the way to the ground. “Ass to grass” as the saying goes.

Yoga (if properly taught) is filled with exercises to practice using the hip socket. (If improperly taught it increases mobility in the low back.)

What do you do about it?

For the most part, just moving and bending at the hip socket is all you need to do to improve. Many people do other exercises poorly by not mobilizing the hip socket. Even just basic actions in everyday life you should pay attention to mobilizing the hip socket and not the low back or oddly stressing the knee.

Walking and Running

Pay attention to if your hips are rotating back and forth as you take each step. Extra rotation like this goes right into the low back and can be caused by lack of mobility in the hip socket. When the hip socket is free and easy to move then the hips can remain level and quiet through your movement and the legs will swing freely. If the legs can swing freely then they can also move quicker and easier (for better sports action or quicker, sharper movements in dancing).

Sitting (and standing up from sitting)

Sitting and standing from sitting can actually be a very difficult exercise that really works your core, if done properly. People do one of two things typically to take away from the bend of the hip socket. They either lean back to sit (and use a lot of arms) or lean forward a lot. You want to make just basic sitting into a super great exercise to build your core and improve hip socket mobility? Try this: try to remain upright (with just a slight tilt forward with your upper body) and lower your torso all the way down to the chair and again the same thing going up. Being careful to work to get rid of any excess tilting forward or jerking forward to get going or to land. And also work for no falling in that last inch or two sitting down.

What is Blackpool?

Blackpool England is home to the world’s largest ballroom dance competition. It’s mentioned in several big movies – Shall We Dance? (Japanese and American versions), Dance With Me. Often when you lookup Blackpool in a travel guide for England the first sentence is usually “Blackpool is the Las Vegas of Europe.” Hardly. If you take away the hookers, the strippers, the neon lights, the huge extravagant hotels and many other things, then maybe you have Blackpool.

The competition happens right downtown at The Winter Gardens at the end of May.

A typical day starts with competition that starts in the afternoon and lasts until midnight or 1am. For the most part, it’s just one or two competitions per day. (There were 300 couples in the Pro Latin competition this year.)

Pretty standard ballroom dance competition rules. In latin a couple dances 5 dances (Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble and Jive). In standard a couple dances 4 dances (Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, and Quickstep). Couples who have danced the previous year and have gotten past the first few rounds are exempt from dancing the first round this year. Each round the panel of judges choose roughly half of the couples to go on to the next round.

The final round is roughly 6 couples, semi-final 12 couples, quarter final 24 couples. When it gets the final, then the judges order the couples.

The Empress Ballroom is huge. It’s much longer than it is wide, and much longer than any of the competition floors in America.

Blackpool is northwest of Manchester 1.5hrs by train. It’s easy to fly into Manchester and hop on a train to Blackpool.

Blackpool is kind of a resort down although it’s no Las Vegas. It is a popular destination for hen and stag parties and there are blocks and blocks of bed and breakfasts…

And there are 3 piers which have various amusements, arcades, casinos, and rides…

And to the south, past the last pier along the promenade are a bunch of cool sculptures, including maybe the world’s largest disco ball? (It’s like 20ft across.)

But the real reason to come to Blackpool is the dancing…

Lighten Up

Dancers take themselves too seriously sometimes. It happens in all dance forms, not just ballroom. It is a bit a hazard of the work. The end result of the art is the body dancing. It takes a lot of mental strength to separate the development and criticism of the art and work from the character of the individual. In painting or writing or sculpture the art becomes some other inanimate object. If it is criticized it’s physically separate from the artist. That doesn’t happen with dance or acting.

Without the separation in the mind, through training and effort, it’s easy to get messed up. To get very sensitive. To get bound to rules and ways things have to be. That provides a bit of mental safety from that it’s just art.

Have you seen “Black Swan”? That’s a documentary! I dated a girl like that once… (LOL)

The healthiest and most successful of dancers develop a detachment. What they do is not who they are. Or at least their value is not only just hinged on their dancing. Many people have the opportunity to have multiple things going on in their lives: work, family, relationships, hobbies. A bigger perspective and balanced view of life can be cultivated. That doesn’t happen with a lot of dancers. It can be such a time consuming thing that that is all they do, it’s where they find relationships, it’s their work, it’s their hobby, it’s everything.

So take a breath. Step back and take a look at the bigger picture of life. Bring more the value of other things to your dance life instead of making it everything. That kind of psycho-ness just drives people away. That competition you’re worrying about isn’t everything. That performance isn’t everything.