Breathing 101

Let’s cover some basics about breath. Being better about your breathing will allow you to do more physically, make your dancing look much better, help you find more natural looking movement, and give you better presence. It’s not just enough to breathe, but actually to know some of the components to breath and how to change it. I caught myself the other day teaching and telling someone to breathe – but it’s not like they weren’t breathing and turning blue and passing out – it’s just that they weren’t breathing well.

Breathing parts

We’re going to break breathing into 3 parts. Your breath could be one of these parts, two, or all three.

Part 1 : Belly breath

Part 1 is the deep belly breath – like a baby’s breath. This is the diaphragm (the muscular division between your rib-cage compartment and your abdominal compartment) pulling down (it’s got two little fingers that attach lower down the spine). In pulling down it expands space for the lungs pulling in air and pushing out the organs in the belly. Of the three parts, this one can expand the lungs the most. In a good dancer you’ll see a nice expansion out of the belly (the rectus abdominis muscles will be relaxed – the body gets real support from the transverse and obliques on the side). Various exercises can be done internally working the diaphragm against the transverse abdominis or timing it with the transverse (things like yoga fire breath etc).

In the average population you see a lot of people never use belly breath and they need to be retaught it.

Part 2 : Rib cage breath

Part 2 is rib cage breath. This involves expanding out the ribs. It doesn’t get at much volume to the lungs as belly breath but it’s what a lot of people will do thinking they’re doing a big breath. This can be a very nice breath and many exercises can be done to expand the rib cage in different directions to stretch out the intercostal muscles (the muscles in between the ribs) and strengthen them. Some nice exercise I like to do with students in learning to expand one side (left and right) more than the other.

Part 3 : Scalene muscle breath

Part 3 is scalene muscle breath. These are small muscles in the neck that reach down to the top of the rib cage to the tops of the lungs and pull the tops of the ribs upward. This is the weakest and smallest of the three breath parts. There’s no way it can deliver the oxygen you need to do even minimal exercise, but it’s amazing the number of people just breathe with just this part all the time. People look kind of tense just breathing with the scalene, if you ask them if they’re breathing they say and think they are, but it’s really not an effective breath.

A Nice breath

A nice breath would start with part 1, then do part 2, and then some part 3. Then release those in that order. Not that is what you’re going to do all the time – it’s just a really good breath to practice. It doesn’t take into account the lobes of the lungs and it’s relation to forward flexion of the spine or backward extension, or times you might want to hold your breath (like building inter-abdominal pressure), or different breath timings (exhale time, inhale time, and holds on both ends) – that’s all for later lessons.

How are your Questioning Skills?

Our lives are led by questions. What should I wear today? What should I have for breakfast? Should I take that dance lesson? Unfortunately we don’t use our built in questioning skills to our advantage. Asking good questions can get us out of ruts that we might be stuck in, it can help us to have better relationships, it can get us past learning plateaus we don’t even see that we’re in. Asking good questions will change your life.

Western Teaching

Unfortunately we have a tradition of teaching that kills creativity and good thinking. The teacher comes in, they explain stuff, they babble on for an hour or two. Students have to take notes and repeat back the information on a test. The whole process is very one directional. It’s no wonder students get disengaged, uninterested, bored, and tuned-out. When do they get to actually think about the subjects? When do they get to feel something about it? Some will, but probably in spite of the teacher’s methods, not because of them.

Neil Postman the famous educator once said, “Children enter our schools as question marks and leave as periods.” Our society un-trains people from asking questions. It’s always amazing to me that when I stop class and ask people if they have any questions, no one is brave enough to ask any – even when they’re having difficulties – even when I know from talking to them personally that they’re curious.

Make-up a Question

Lately in class I’ve been asking people to make-up questions. Go around the room and each person has to make-up a question. (It’s not quite practical if you’re teaching a huge class, but if you’re teaching a typical sized class, try it out.) It’s not for the faint of heart, what you learn about your students will amaze you, and use your best judgment if to do it. Most people come up with amazing great questions, questions that will huge benefits for their dancing. Things that they’re interested in, engaged in, curious about – and now more involved in the class about.

Unfortunately some people come up with questions that just reveal that they’re just not there to learn anything. They’ve already closed their minds.

Becoming great comes from within

In the end, the reality of the situation is that teachers really don’t do much through giving information. In the end, you have to learn everything yourself, the teacher is really just a facilitator for it. The best teachers know this. A great teacher doesn’t have to do much teaching at all, they really have to build curiosity, passion, engagement. Students really teach themselves.

Dig Deep

Someone once wrote “you will only be as good a coach as to how fundamental the questions you ask”. Fundamental questions have driven my life. Not just simple questions like, “how can I dance this step better?” but bigger – How can this improvement apply to other movements? Is there a universal technique? What are the fundamental parts to good movement?

• What does it mean to move from your core?
• “Got belly?” How does that really help me to learn about the core? What is really going on with the muscles?
• What are the muscles of the core? How do I use them? How do I train them? Why should I train them?
• How often should I practice? Is there a point at which practice is not useful? Is there a point where practice makes things worse?
• Is there do enough, but not too much rule to practicing in dance? Is it something like over practicing acting?
• What makes good dancers good?
• What is artistic about dancing? What is art? What are the fundamental components of any art? How do they apply to dance?
• Is there a “genetic” component to being a good dancer? Or can it all be learned? Do you have to start at a young age?
• Is body shape genetic – or is there something else there at play? If you’ve seen someone go through good dance training and their feet change shape, their shoulders and arms change position, their rib cage changes, their back changes, with-in just a few months, can you really just explain things away as genetic? And “some people have it and some don’t”?
• Why do some people take lessons for years and never get better?
• If it’s clear to see that a dancer from outside the ballroom world (ballet, modern, whatever) is much better, can start doing ballroom and win right away, or not ever do ballroom and still dance awesome, why do people get so sold on thinking their coach knows everything, or you must be a US or World finalist to know what you’re talking about?
• What makes a dance a dance? Is it the music? What is character?
• How much of you do you express on the floor? How much should you? What does it mean to express you on the floor? How do I change that?
• What is theater? What makes good theater?
• If coach A says to do such-and-such always or never, but I can watch the world finalists on YouTube and they break that rule all the time, what does that mean? Is there something more fundamental being hidden here?
• If coach A says to do one thing and coach B says to do something else. Why? Is one right? Is there a way for both to be right?

Ask questions, change your life. It changed mine.

Improve your Sexiness Quotient with Boundaries

Boundaries in relationships are hugely important, but greatly messed up. Whether it’s a relationship with a friend, romantic relationship, family member, acquaintance, teacher, student, co-worker, whatever. Problems with relationship boundaries leads to losing friends, losing business, boring performances, fizzled love relationships, fighting, isolation, feeling threatened, and many more problems.

Relationship boundary skills are not taught as a class for everyone. Most people learn through observation of their parents. Maybe that’s not the best thing in the world. Perhaps you’re inheriting a divorce rate. There is lots of information in psychology about these skills, but our historical-national view on psychology (among other things) is to use this information way too late after there’s already huge problems instead of using this information early on and for improvement of everyone’s lives. And you can learn these skills from a good ballroom dancing teacher – because teaching ballroom dancing is often like being a couple’s councilor.

There’s something to learn here for everyone. For people who have really good boundary skills to learn to be more observant of boundaries in other people and why you react to them the way you do. For people who are dating or looking for someone to date. For people in long term relationships. For improving storytelling and dance quality.

People can get really messed up. And it’s not so much really that they’re messed up, it’s just that they’ve never really seen good relationship boundary skills up close. Perhaps they grew up in a home with just a single parent, or with parents that had no boundary skills of their own. Their parents fought all the time, or were distant, or alternated between the two. When did they ever get a chance to learn the tiny, subtle, joyful, fun interaction of the setting of small minor boundaries and breaking them and renegotiating them.

The Wus/Dullard/Wall flower

The problem of the wus is the problem of not setting boundaries – of not reacting soon and often enough. They don’t set up boundaries and so people step right in and they don’t respond, and things progress, and they don’t respond, and they don’t respond, and they don’t respond. But then they do respond – they go postal. They yell at their husbands, they make wild accusations that they’re being threatened, they whine that they are the victim. They lose friendships, marriages, connection with people.

The Speedster/Slut/Easy girl/Salesman/Slimy guy

The problem of the speedster is the problem of brushing past boundaries and the negotiation of boundaries that would normally happen. Instead of paying attention to the subtle negotiations of personal boundaries they just go in and take or do. They come of callous, not caring. They are kind of unaware of the people they are interacting with.

Interactions

What if you put an extreme wus and an extreme speedster in the same room together? Just wait till the explosion happens! Put either of them with someone who has good boundary relationship skills – the wus or the speedster might just think the good skills person was just boring or inert or dull… the good skills person is probably thinking “red flag! red flag!!!”. (Want some entertainment, watch the SNL perfume ad spoof “red flag”.) What if you put these different type people on dates?

Learning to Negotiate

Developing good boundary skills is about subtlety. It about doing small simple harmless actions and observing the small reactions. On the course level it’s about protection and safety, but really if you’re doing it on a course level, it’s already too late. On the subtle level, it’s about flirting and leads to any number of things based on the situation: business deals, job offers, relationships, romance, hot sex, great dance performance, or just great friendships. It gives you full control of the relationships in your life.

Romance and Seduction

Perhaps this is easiest first to see in the example of romance and seduction. There are multitudes of small interactions and information to observe in situations of romance, many people are very aware of and thus a great place to start. First, the eyes, is someone awake, aware, looking around? Or are they closed down, distracted, or “not there”? Are they smiling? What emotion are they in?

There is always a boundary between you and other people, sometimes small, sometime great. You start distant. Observe the starting condition. Now instead of just barreling up to this someone and saying, “hey you’re hot, let’s go on a date”… Instead of that, just move slightly closer. Not a whole lot. This person you are interested in, what is their reaction? Again, move closer. What is their reaction? In this method, you have started to set up a dialog. A question and answer response, a series of boundaries that is the key to communicating and negotiating intention. You know right away if someone is interested, distracted, ready, not-ready, busy, or whatever. No blood needs to be shed, no one needs to be caught off guard.

Everyone’s personal distances (distance to acknowledgement, distance to casual conversation, distance to intimate conversation, distance to friends, distance to lovers) is influenced by culture, but still hugely different amongst a culture. If you can’t read exactly where those distances are just by walking up to someone, you can improve your relationship boundary skills.

The Poking Experiment

A popular favorite amongst high school boys is the poking their finger into the abdominals of a girl. It can be done as a surprise or with total awareness. It can be done platonic-ly or non-platonic-ly. It even works well into adulthood. It’s an initiation. In the communication and developing of boundaries, there is always a boundary, someone must initiate the crossing and then observe the interaction afterward. Initiating and not observing? That’s the speedster. Not reacting to something that’s clearly an initiation? That’s a wus. Initiating again and again and again and getting negative or no response? That’s just obnoxious.

By building up a catalog of initiation actions and reactions to them we build up a repertoire of communication with someone. You need to rebuild that with everyone you meet. It’s called relationship building. You create a gentle chase, you interact with them, they interact with you. Look for a balance. (Tennis gets really boring really fast if your other player can’t volley back the ball and you learn nothing and neither of you get better). You respect and give space to the other person by waiting for their response.

Dancing

There are a lot of great dancers out there. Beautiful technique, interesting choreography, but some have no chemistry. They may dance great, but they hold very little interest for me. They are not interacting with each other. There is no timing of waiting for the reaction of their partner after they have initiated something. If a couple has great interaction with each other, it changes everything, timings are now interesting and varied instead of boring, movements have cause. For couples that have great interaction, they could do a basic all day and it would still be interesting.

Observe

So go out an observe people now. And observe your own actions and reactions. And then take a moment for peace to observe the neutral and then wait for an initiation or even better – initiate something yourself. You can learn so much by just playing the game, experimenting, having fun. Take times to take breaks, rest, heal if you have to. But then get out there and mess around. Pay attention to others reactions carefully, respect them. Work small. Negotiate boundaries and actions and then renegotiate them again and again.

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.

Your Dancing is a Result of the Exercises You Do

It’s pretty simple really. Your dancing is a result of the exercises you do. Practicing the steps or your choreography may not help you at all. Good dancing is a product of good movement. Even the best choreography can be danced poorly – boring, lacking in dynamic change, unhealthy movement, etc. What matters is the quality of how it’s done, what gets added to it from yourself, from the exercises you do, from your personal character, from the body training.

This has been known for a long time in ballet, modern, jazz, African, acting, and any number of other classical forms. Seventy to ninety percent of the classes and training there focuses on basic movement, basic exercises, and less on the final form of choreography or the dialog or whatever. Why is it that so many ballroom classes, teachers, and students still are naïve to this and just practice choreography?

Some people have figured that out obviously. I love a quote from Karen Hardy from an educational video when she was dancing with Bryan Watson: “What you see at the end of the day is not what we’re actually working on in the studio, but it becomes that at the end of the day.”

Here’s a quick mind-map of just a smattering of some of the exercises one could do for Latin…

Choreography 101

Here it is, pretty simple really: VARIETY. And yet it’s amazing how many people don’t follow this really basic rule of choreography (or writing if you’re writing, or acting a play, or playing music, etc, etc, etc). Simply one of the first things you should do is show a lot of variety.

If you’re doing a formation routine don’t just show me everyone all moving in the same layout across the floor back and forth. You bore me! Show different shapes on the floor, show me lines of people, show me circles, show me intersecting lines, be a sculptor of people on the floor. Make the shapes created in different ways: people all get there at once, people get there one by one, or they come together from two different groups. Be creative about it, have fun with it!

Your audience will create story

It doesn’t have to be all that thought out, it doesn’t have to be smart. It just needs to show variety. Humans have a natural tendency to seek out meaning and will create story in their own minds to try to match whatever you do, even when you’re not even trying to show a story. Sometimes it’s better just to have a random sequence of a whole bunch of different wild strange unrelated movement.

Be methodical

Lists are wonderful for this. You can find tons of lists of all sorts of aspects or parts of dancing. Use it. Be methodical about it. A list of all the ballroom dance positions? Fantastic, make a routine that shows all of them. (That’s a great exercise I had to do for a class once.) A list of the Laban dynamics (wringing, pressing, floating, gliding, slashing, thrusting, dabbing, flicking). Again, fantastic! Layer that on top of your routine of different dance positions. (Also a fantastic exercise I’ve had to do for coaches and I’ve used for training students).

Find lists. Make your own lists. Treasure them. Dance positions, dynamics, partner Interactions, shapes of the body, shapes of movement on the floor, shapes of groups, timings of groups, rhythmical patterns. Get a great book like “Modern Educational Dance” by Valorie-Preston Dunlop which has tons of great lists from Laban.

Great creativity can come from just being methodical.

Show people everything you know

Know all the steps in the syllabus? Great, show me. Know the Laban dynamics, great, show me. Know different types of rumba walks, great, show me. Know different types of turns. Show me ALL of them. Know some acting? Awesome, show me different emotions. Layer as many things as you can on what you do. Make your dancing RICH. Show me all that you’ve learned and all the effort you’ve put into learning dance. Make it look like it costs a million dollars.

Don’t be afraid to incorporate other things you’ve learned. You know modern dance, ballet, african, acting, yoga, pilates, music, whatever. Incorporate the variety you have learned from those into your dancing. Create your own style that is uniquely you.

Refine style later

Start with the variety. If in the end your purpose is to create a certain mood then cut and trim and manipulate after you have the base variety. To create or show a certain mood, to truly show it, you must show the opposite. You can’t show speed without slow – otherwise it is just frantic. You can’t show happiness or sadness without it’s opposite.

This is fundamental to all art

Writing. What kinds of sentences are there? Passive, Active, Interrogative, Imperative, etc. Show them all to me. What types of phrases are there? What kinds of constructs are there? Show them all to me.

Acting. What kinds of feelings are there? What are different reactions to them? What are physical actions that people do?

Shame, Embarrassment, Resilience, Teaching Dance

How do you feel about your dancing? If you’re a dance teacher, what is the attitude and feeling in your lessons? If you’re a student what’s the attitude and feeling in the lessons you take?

It’s a learning environment. Students (and teachers) are learning to do something differently that what they were doing before. You’re going to do things wrong, you’re going to make mistakes, you’re going to learn different things to do, you’re going to do things that might be difficult to do. But should you feel embarrassed when you do? Should you feel ashamed when you do? Probably you will at some point.

For some people it will be more extreme for some it will be less. Some teachers will try to over protect their students and some will be just the opposite. Both extremes can be bad for the students if it continues. The best teachers will switch, and soothe when it’s needed and just be direct (which at times can seem kind of harsh) when they need to. Over time we can get to a point of more resilience for the students and more compassion for the teacher (and more compassion for ourselves).

Being direct and honest is a lot different than specifically trying to shame or embarrass someone. If people are specifically trying to shame or embarrass you, don’t just walk, run!!! If you get trapped into the situation of being embarrassed about what you do dance-wise you won’t feel like expressing yourself. And we want more unique individual people out there, not more robots! (the robot apocalypse is already here and it’s us!)

The Steps

Too often the syllabus is taught as a strict set of rules. But it not really. It’s just a guide about levels and order of teaching the steps. “The Technique of Ballroom Dancing” is not the technique of dancing – it’s the technique of teaching dancing. It won’t teach you to express or move more efficiently or move more gracefully. Teaching the syllabus is not teaching how to dance. It’s not teaching dance. It’s just teaching steps.

Vulnerability

Don’t get overly soft. Don’t baby your students, don’t seek out teachers that are overly nice (don’t seek out ones that are overly harsh either). That feeling of vulnerability in learning dance is important. Standing in front of an audience with that kind of vulnerability takes courage.

The teaching cycle of doing things “right” and working to get better. Or even just thinking that there is a “right” way of doing things creates this cycle of shame and avoidance. Dancers become more disconnected from their audience from themselves and their emotions.

When dancers can get out on the floor and show vulnerability, relax their bodies and let their own natural emotions out they can get the best presence on the floor. It can be magnetic, magic, and incredible. When dancers try to do the “right” thing, force their actions and close themselves off, they come of unauthentic, unfriendly.

When people come to see you dance no one ever comes to see people dance “right” or how correct they can do something. People want to see the extra-ordinary not the ordinary. Take chances, express your feelings, take risks, be unique! Do the steps your way.

It’s Really About Community

People sometimes forget that it’s all about community. Why do people take a dance class? or are part of a group? or part of a dance company? or take lessons? or work a certain job? Is it for the technique? or the teacher? or for the money? or for many other very superficial reasons? For the most part, it’s actually about the community. Community fulfills a basic human need for connection (a health need – sometimes “need” has a bad connotation).

Community is a good thing. Through creating community we create friends, people that can help each other out. The ability to work together as a group to accomplish things that otherwise would not be able to be accomplished alone. Group classes are a form of community – a group of people who all pool their money together to afford lessons. They can also support and encourage each other.

How do you create community? How do you improve the health of a community? How do you grow a community? What things get in the way of a community growing? What things drive people away from the community?

Criticalness

If people come into your community to evaluate it, to see if they “fit-in”, to see if it is right for them, if they feel they are accepted, what will they be looking for? If someone who is new to dance and comes to a social dance and they get met with someone who is not going to just dance with them and have fun and play, but bombards them with criticisms and telling them what they are doing is wrong, how are they going to take that? Are they going to feel accepted into the group?

Maybe perhaps more dancers would be more prudent to take a break from the judgemental attitude and just have fun for a bit. (Maybe it would be healthy for their own dancing as well to allow themselves to be more forgiving of their own dancing. Grow a dancer, not a robot!)

Negativity and Gossip

This can be a double edged sword. In a way you can bond with someone by complaining about a common problem or person, you create a common enemy. Or maybe you are playing some sales line that your teacher told you to say, “well, you don’t want to learn wrong do you?” in some hopes to discredit some other teacher. In the end, these things fail.

Many people see through this. They think, “this group is petty and mean, why should I join them? There are a hundred other groups I could join that don’t have this kind of negativity.” And they run away from that social group or community – rightfully so!

Small Group Thinking

In an interesting study social scientists put mice in different sized colonies and observed their behavior. Something interesting happens when a colony gets bigger than 150. The group gets big enough that not every member has to work hard and contribute to the group – some become noticeably mentally unhealthy.

How would you behave in a small group? Like growing up in a small town? What if you knew everyone would eventually hear exactly the gossip you spoke? (That kind of happens even in large groups!) There’s good reason why most of the religious rules and politeness rules exist and are common across the entire world.

Create and Grow

How can you grow your community? It’s actually pretty simple – people want community in the first place. It’s mostly just being careful not to kill its growth. So go out, be friendly. Ask people questions and learn about them. Make them accepted for who they are and ok for them to feel like they can be themselves. Don’t tell them right away that you hate pink dresses (especially if they’re wearing one at the moment). What’s more valuable to you in the long run? A person’s friendship and support, or if they don’t wear pink dresses?

Everyone hits plateaus

It happens to everyone at some point, they hit a plateau in their progress. If you haven’t, then either you’re not pushing yourself enough or you just haven’t realized that you’re in the middle of one. Once you’re in one, how do you get out of it? And perhaps more importantly, how do you feel about being in one?

Are you progressing things in your life? Your work, your relationships, your dancing, your fitness? Whatever things you might have in your life…

Recognizing the plateau

Most people actually know already when they’re in a plateau. You must listen to yourself and your feelings. Most people do feel when they get in a plateau about life, but they don’t realize that is what they are feeling. They get angry, frustrated, difficult, bored, disconnected, melancholy, unresponsive, depressed.

Sometimes people ignore these obvious signs of the plateau. It could be because they are distracted by things in their life. More often though people actually use the things in their life as a distraction to avoid the fact that they’re sitting in a plateau.

Sometimes the distraction is external – ever have the dance teacher that told you that you are just in a plateau and your just need to work hard and you will get past it? What if that never happens? I’ve seen plenty of people stick with teachers for ages in a stuck state, just spinning their wheels, working super hard and not progressing.

Getting out of the plateau

As one writer put it, “Ten years of the same one year of experience does not make for ten years of experience.” So it’s important to move out of the plateau and continue to progress.

The primary reason people plateau is simple. It’s lack of knowledge. It’s not knowing how to progress.

The trap of the pretty good

In dance, and in fitness (even business and relationships) there is a lot of misinformation. A lot of mixed benefit things – things that partially work or work pretty good. Plenty of things, techniques that work pretty well or good enough – good enough for people to use them and get results for a few months, but then those methods stop being effective. Even after the methods have stopped working to get progress people continue to use them – boom – plateau reached.

Keep learning

It’s pretty simple really, to get out of the plateau you must learn new things, new methods, new practices, new exercises. You must try new things. Even if they fail (usually a quick tell) it will only have taken a short time instead of the vast time people usually keep trying to do the same thing again and again.

It’s best really to get information from things that are different from what you do but similar. Want to progress your dancing? study yoga, weight lifting, other types of dance, music, gymnastics, martial arts, theater, etc.

Read, take coaching (a good coach shows you the things you are missing more so that just teaches you), watch videos, go to theater, or just simply experiment.

Shoulder Placement

It’s rare to find people with nice shoulder placement in their bodies in modern society now a days. Most pro ballroom competitors have it, many pro ballet have it, and many modern dancers have it. The average amateur or person on the street does not.

Good shoulder placement allows for a stronger and more confident look on the floor. It allows for easier movement of the arms allowing them to move quicker, easier, and more expressively. And for ballroom allows for much better connection with your partner – less noise and stronger, clearer leads/follows.

Bone Placement / Alignment

For many years early in my dancing I looked at different people with different body types and thought of it as just that. They had different body types, and there was nothing to do about it. But as I’ve learned over the years, it’s not really so static. There is a lot of change to the body and how it holds itself.

Any single bone in the body has multiple muscles pulling on it in different directions. If those muscles are misbalanced in their work and one is tight and it’s opposing muscle is weak the bone eventually gets placed in a location that is “easy” feeling but not efficient for the body to work. The joints around then function with less range of motion and weaker. Over longer periods of time the connective tissue itself can change to adapt to the new position.

There are lots of bones / joints in the body that effect our over all look and function, and it might be easy to look at them and think, “oh it’s just the way someone is shaped.” And it is the way someone is shaped, but with proper muscle training the joints and bones can be moved to a more pleasing or attractive look for the entire body.

Things to observe in people… The natural direction of turn-out in their feet. The shape of their foot – are their toes curved inward (the big toe very common, and sometimes the pinky toe). The shape of the curve of the back (is it a natural S? and note it’s relationship to the intercostal angle – the angle made by the bottom of the breast bone and the two bottoms of the rib cage in front – is that angle a nice 90 degree angle?). The straightness of the legs – bow-legged-ness or knocked-knee-ness. The shape of the spine on the back – is the spinal bones bare to the world or do they sit in a nice valley. Any unusual bumps in the spine.

Many of these things are all just the way we hold our bodies. And they can all be cleaned up and realigned with some simple training. Is it that all the top dancers have a certain body type and that you need a certain body type to be a great dancer? Well, yes, in a way, but it’s not that it’s given to them, most of them have earned it with lots of physical work, whether they were conscience about the muscle training or not, their bodies went through it.

The Shoulder Blade

The shoulder blade should really slide nicely flat against the back of the body. No protruding sides or edges. The shoulder blade itself really isn’t connected to the body with joints. It kind of free-floats, like a weight floating in space and it floats in space by being pulled in all different directions at the same time by different muscles. if the muscles are mis-balanced in strength or just improperly trained then the shoulder blade ends up in the wrong position. Often with many people these days, pulled inward toward the spine and pulled up – which totally restricts the movement of the upper spine and blocks some of the free movement of the arm because the rib cage blocks it in front.

Different muscles pull the shoulder blade in different directions. The trapezius muscles pull the shoulders inward and up. The romboid muscles pull them in toward the spine. The latissimus dorsi (the “lat” muscle) pulls toward the spine and can pull up, just toward the spine or most importantly downward. The serratus muscle connects on the inside edge of the shoulder blade and wraps around the rib cage and can pull the shoulder blade out – away from the spine.

The serratus muscles and the lat muscles are probably the ones weakest in most people and need the most development on average. They will bring the shoulder blades down and out and flatten them against the back for most people. When balanced out it will give someone this nice trapezoidal shape to their upper body (it’ll make you look thinner!). People who did gymnastics or swimming in high school often have this nice shape already because those muscles trained.

When the shoulder blade is properly placed and the muscles around are strengthened the shoulder becomes more stabilized and connected to the core of the body. Force from the center can more effectively be distributed to the arms.

The Scapulo-humeral Joint

The scapulo-humeral joint – the shoulder socket, once the shoulder blade is more stabilized, the scapulo-humeral joint can then be worked to be looser and more mobile. Often this joint is over worked and actually limited in range of motion because it is over worked because the shoulder blade is not stabilized.

If we can stabilize the shoulder blade and allow for freer movement at the scapulo-humeral joint then we get nicer arm positions in ballet, and nicer, easier, and thus quicker movement for all our dancing.

Weight Lifting

By far this is one of the fastest ways I’ve seen to train people to get the shoulder blades into proper position. Significant progress can be made in a simple 3 work out a week (for about 1/2 hour) for 6 to 8 weeks that will have a long lasting effect.

Basic work-out: 3 sets of 8 to 12 reps of horizontal push and pull and vertical push and pull. Horizontal pull: rowing actions, rowing machines, etc – works the romboids and the middle range of the lat muscle. Horizontal push: a bench press, push-ups – works the pulling of the shoulders forward with the pectorals in the front and the serratus. Vertical pull: a pull-up, lat pull down machines – works the lat muscle pulling down. Vertical push: a military press, shoulder shrugs – works the trapezius.

Focus on technique: get aware of the muscles you want to train – it does no good to go on the lat pull down machine and use your biceps and triceps to pull with. Focus on the larger muscles around the shoulder blade first. Then in time work to balance effort along the entire chain of muscles of the arm – all the way from the spine to the hand.

Ballet

Ballet class or any other formal training type of dance, if the teacher is knowledgeable, can be a great way to get the proper placement and movement in the arms. I find this usually takes longer to get to the right placement of the shoulder blade (often 2 to 3 years of class 2 to 3 times a week) (but keep in mind you’re learning lots of other really good stuff at the same time too).

Being Sold

Do you think that your teacher is “the one”? Has he (or she) convinced you to only take lessons from them? That they have the only RIGHT way to teach dance? Ballroom dancing in America (more so than Europe) has a long history of being part of the hard sell. To the point where it is even considered on the same level as used car salesman.

Now I know you’re thinking, I’m not gullible. I’m not easily manipulated. Social psychology professor Robert Cialdini has done a lot of research into this topic (and has a great book: The Psychology of Influence). Part of his research involved being a used car salesman, a door to door encyclopedia salesman, a waiter, and yes, even a ballroom dance instructor. (His book is required reading for most Marketing majors.)

So, what do you think… out of someone who has a strong will, someone who has an average will and someone who is weak willed, which one of them is most manipulatable? Most people say it’s the weak willed one. But the actual studies point to the fact that it’s the average person that is more manipulatable. (Partially because they think they’re not vulnerable.)

Things people fall for

Or perhaps “things I’ve fallen for”

Or perhaps “things you can use to get more students”

Teachers with a heavy sense of “Right” and “Wrong”. Some teachers will fill their lessons with “always do this” and “never do that” and “this is right” and “that is wrong”. The simple advice is this: don’t walk away from those teachers, RUN! That style of teaching fulfills a certain sense of security people are looking for. In a way it’s feeding on people’s insecurity. In the long run, there really aren’t any absolutes in dancing. It is art, it is about learning rules and then breaking rules. It’s about creating style, not boring robots. It’s not about learning right and wrong – that’s a waste of time! It’s about doing the work – training the body to physically move well – it takes time and physical effort, muscle building and learning muscle coordination. Classic sales line: “Oh you should take lessons from teacher ABC, because you don’t want to learn it wrong do you?”. Bonus points for wording questions with negatives or double negatives because that’s been found to be more effective manipulation.

Emphasizing style over technique. Classic Sales line: “Oh don’t take from teacher ABC, because they competed in (American Style/ International Style/ Smooth/ Ryhthm/ Standard/ Latin) and not (insert whatever style you want to sell here)”. People use this all the time in the ballroom world. I fell for this a couple times and avoided taking lessons from some really awesome teachers that really knew their stuff. The underlying technique of good movement is the same across just about everything. You might as well take lessons in ballet or modern or african or hip-hop. I often encourage my students to diversify. Do you really think that just one teacher has cornered the secret on understanding dance? I mean, really? Who do you think they learned from? Or how do you think they developed a unique style themselves without studying from multiple different sources?

Teachers that over compliment. Again, it’s feeding into something the student is looking for. (Acceptance? Acknowledgement? Desire?).

Teachers that over criticize. Some students will think, “Oh how wonderful, I have something to shoot for, I have work to do, I have a challenge.” This is a spot were a strong idea of work ethic can get you into trouble. Like I said earlier, It’s about the work. It’s about understanding the muscle development, the exercises to get there. It can actually be done very plainly and simply. Need to criticize? Not really. Need for guidance, yes definitely. Over criticalness can actually lead to worse performance, a lack of expressiveness, and a lack of play. All things that we really want more of in dancing.

Core Training: Getting Aware of the Transverse

Sure people talk about training the core, and dance teachers talk about moving from the center, but what does that really mean? And what do you really do to train for it? And why train for it in the first place?

I often use this analogy with my students. Imagine you’re in the middle of a pool of water, if you push directly out, you have nothing to push against. You end up just moving water around and not going anywhere. If you’re at the edge of the pool, the wall is there, it’s solid, it’s not going anywhere. If you push against the wall you can send your self drifting off in to the water pretty far. Your core is like your natural internal wall for your body, if it’s toned, the rest of your body can work off against it. Your arms can push stronger from a strong center. Your legs can push out as well, allowing you to move with more stability, speed, and strength.

Without a strong core our centers are like jell-o. If you push out with the arms or legs to move half of that force just goes into counter-acting inefficient wiggly noise absorbed by the rest of your body. It can also cause lots of sheering type forces in the other joints in the body which just lead to injury. A strong core not only gives us more efficient movement, it prevents injury. (In fact, I’d say good movement and unhealthy injury prone movement are really opposite ends of one continuum – what you need to learn to get better movement – whether it’s dance or sport or yoga or whatever, is the same as what you need to learn to prevent injury).

The search for understanding

At one point I just got annoyed with some of the teachers out there. Many would talk about using your core, or moving from your center, but none of them would give any description of what that really was! One instructor was just like, “Got belly?”. That just wasn’t good enough for me. I had to seek out more information, I needed to find somebody who knew more about what was really going on. Dance people had a lot of the training ideas and exercises but lacked actual understanding (and thus lack consistency in the success of the training), yoga people also had some knowledge, had better understanding but again lacked enough understanding. It was with fitness people that I finally found the answers to the questions about core and center that I was looking for. (Check out the work of Paul Chek among many others.)

Transverse Abdominis

The transverse abdominis (or TVA) is a large surface of muscle that wraps around the sides of the body through the belly region. If you’re standing it’s fibers line up parallel with the ground and pull the front of the body around the sides to the spine in the back like a built in corset. It has the action of pulling the belly button in toward the spine. Cough. (Go ahead take a moment and cough, I’ll wait for you. That action is also a contraction of the TVA).

Contracting the TVA as an explicit exercise is taught in many movement types, you’ve probably already experienced already and just didn’t know it was the TVA that you were activating or supposed to activate. Ballet teacher telling you to “zip up”? Pilates teacher tell you to pull your belly button to your spine? Sports teacher tell you to pull your belly in like you’re about to get punched? Martha Graham style contraction? Belly Dancing actions… yoga breathing…  the list goes on and on…

The TVA pulls on connective tissue surrounding the lumbar region of the spine (the low back). Not only creating protection for the low spine but also creating a center – a place for the rest of the body to work off of. Not only does this connective tissue wrap the spine but also wraps the lats (latissimus dorsi) going upward in the body to effect the arms, but also the iliopsoas muscles going downward in the body to effect the legs, and also the erector spine to effect the rest of the spine going upward. This wrapping effect around the muscles can even act as a multiplier effect on the efficiency of those muscles by squeezing them tighter.

Simple Exercise

Lie on the floor face down. Lift your belly button up off the floor, and hold if for as long as you can. Don’t cheat the exercise: when first doing this, it’s easy to cheat by lifting your belly button up by pushing into the floor with your legs or arms or shoulders or something else. Try to relax your limbs. Only lift your belly button by using the TVA (cough again just to get the feel for it). Can’t hold it very long? That’s ok, relax, and try again. Do 10 repetitions. Try to get to being able to hold it for 2 minutes straight. (Paul Chek says that’s just for good healthy movement in everyday life, if you’re a professional dancer, go for more!)

You don’t have to do the exercise everyday, 3 times a week is pretty good. Do it at the end of a workout instead of the beginning – if the core is weak from being tired, you’re more likely to injure yourself during normal exercise.

Integration

Ok, got awareness of your TVA? Got it stronger? Start integrating it into other movements you do. Could be anything. In advanced athletes the TVA is measured to activate several milliseconds before any other muscle activates in any action they do. Going to take a step across the floor? Contract the TVA before you push off your leg. Going to lift your arm? Contract the TVA before you do it. Going to make a connection with a dance partner (as lead or as follow or as just general partnering)? Contract your TVA before you connect. Even just going to lift your Starbucks coffee up to your mouth? Contract your TVA! :)

Knees

Problems with knees usually aren’t problems with knees at all, but problems at the ankle or at the hip socket. Knees are actually pretty free formed joints, just like two bones in proximity to each other. No boney restrictions or muscular restrictions, but the combination of 6 ligaments restrict it’s movement to just bending in one direction, and once bent, some rotation. Knees tend to be high indicator joints, they are the points where pain tends to show up first, because they are so restricted in movement. The problem though isn’t at the knees, it’s at the surrounding joints – the ankle and the hip socket. Both the hip socket and the ankle have a huge range of motion, and if they aren’t held stiff with too much tension and they can move freely, then their movement takes all the stress out of knee joint.

Mobility

People have natural mobility in the ankle and hip socket, but if they don’t use it, or train themselves to force things too much the joint will get immobile. (One of those reason why people should avoid those teachers that teach over forcing movements just to look good or fast). It takes practice for people to learn to allow movement at the joint and relax away from forcing action at the hip and ankle.

Getting mobility going at the ankle and hip allows for natural ease and grace in movement. It gets rid of most of the ever being off balance a dancer will feel. It allows for a huge amount adaptation when you’re dancing with a partner (especially when dancing close in Standard or Smooth). It allows you to move around your center and adapt and change shape while just standing on a single spot and not moving (all those wonderful juicy moves that Bob and Julia used to do? yeah, work on your ankles and hip-sockets to make that sort of stuff easy.) It allows for easy leading in Standard from the body, and that nice rolling through the feet action that is needed to make Slow Foxtrot so slow.

Exercise 1 : Loosening the ankle

Lift one leg (you could be standing, sitting, laying down, doesn’t matter) and with the free leg make circles with the foot. Try to get as far around as you can – explore the full range of motion. Ready for a little change? A little more challenge? Trace the letters of the alphabet with your foot.

Exercise 2 : Plié (Squat)

Stand (could be feet/heels together -- “first position” or feet shoulder width apart -- “second position” do a few of both) and bend your knees and lower. Take a look down as you lower, does your knee track in the same direction of your foot easily? Does it track to the inside (very common)? or track to the outside? If your knee doesn’t track in the line of your foot, you have a tight hip socket or ankle – you needed this lesson! :)

When you lower, does your heel come off the ground? How far can you lower while keeping your heel on the ground? This insures that your working bend at the ankle – that’s the mobility we want to improve. Do several plié’s, only go as far as you can keep your heel on the ground – this isn’t a contest, you don’t get a prize for going lower – you get a prize for working the right joint – and that prize is better health. Pass go, collect $200, get better balance and grace, and reduce the chance of injury for your knee for the rest of your life.

When you lower, do you stick your butt out to the back? Do you tilt it up forward to the sky? Try to lower keeping your hips going straight down without tilting, so that your spine keeps it’s nice natural curve in the lumbar region. Like keeping the heel on the ground assures movement at the ankle, keeping the hips inline assures movement at the hip-socket.

(Plié from the french plier – to bend)

Exercise 3: Knee circles

You can find versions of this exercise in everything from gymnastics, to yoga, to gyrotonics, to ballroom, to whatever. Stand in a slight plie (with some bend in your knees) and make circles with your knees. Go clockwise, counter-clockwise, both knees in the same direction, go in opposite direction. Although the knees are the things moving though space you want to try to get most of the action happening at the ankles and hips – the knees won’t really be doing any work when you’re doing it right.

 

Remember, relax, have fun, learn to enjoy the movement and not force it. Here’s to happy knees!

Performance Anxiety

How do you feel about performance? Many people have performance anxiety. Some studies put it as the number one fear of Americans. I remember seeing one of the last competitions one of my coaches did and the absolute fear and horror on his face. I personally never really had a problem with it, I’m kind of a ham. It wasn’t until I had a couple of students that had a big fear of performance that I started researching it a bit more. What is it? Why do people have it? What can you do about it?

I often try to find someone who has dealt with this issue before to learn from. Who deals with this the best? Dancers and dance teachers as a whole tend to ignore the situation. Although this has some merit in that by shrugging it off, as if it’s no big deal, that people will just relax about it. But that doesn’t work. Actors deal with performance anxiety the most, they’ve done the most research about it, they’re written about it the most, they talk about it the most. I remember reading an actress’s account of starting to learn to dance, and she was amazed at the total lack of dealing with the issue. That dancer’s just tried to ignore the problem.

What can we learn from theater? What makes it different?

Teaching Focus

When I first started taking acting lessons, it was a shock as to the completely different focus they had from dance lessons. In dance lessons there is perhaps an over concern and value placed on technique. And on a very extreme end taught very much in a right wrong perspective on technique. In acting classes the focus is on a different set of things. It’s on the individuality of the person, and on feedback, positive feedback about how the person is presenting themselves.

Now if you are worried about everything being right or wrong, where is your concern directed? What are the consequences of doing something wrong? Of course you’re going to get tense performing with that kind of focus. Of course you get tense and since a large part of good dance technique is about being able to relax muscles, well there goes half your technique out the window. You’ll probably even feel worse then!

Uniqueness

What if your focus and goal is on something else? What if it’s about showing your uniqueness, your individuality? Then perhaps making mistakes just shows humanity. It shows willingness taking risks. It shows courage.

Think about why you go to watch other people perform, whether it’s dance, music, comedy, or theater. Do you really go to see them to see how perfectly they can do it? Do you go to dance competitions to say, “Oh they did that Natural Turn so perfectly!” (If you do you’re probably fooling yourself). Aren’t you actually more paying attention to HOW they did their Natural Turn? Aren’t you actually fascinated that all of the top couples do it slightly differently? That the best couples do it differently every single time they do it.

When you watch performers aren’t you actually fascinated by the fact that they are all at different levels? Doesn’t it make it more valuable to actually watch one performer at one level and another performer at a different level? I personally love going to the comedy club. A popular format is having 3 different performers. One local, one regional, one national, each at different levels and abilities, all in one night, one after the other. You can really learn about what is comedy, what are the components about it, what makes the good stuff good.

Don’t you want to see people at different levels? I can’t tell you how many times after doing a showcase that the people that inspire others to dance the most are the beginners? “Oh! I think I could do that.”

Extraordinary

People have ordinary lives. They get up they go to work, they come home, they eat food, they sleep. It’s practical. We have to do that. We train our children not to be way overly emotional or crazy – and that’s healthy. We need that to deal with the world as it is now. If the building is burning, we don’t have time to worry about how we feel about it right now, we need to get out of the building.

But we are emotional beings. We have feelings, we feel sad, happy, angry, disgusted, surprised, have contempt, and have fear. These things are hardwired into us (check out the book Emotions Revealed by Paul Ekman). When we go to see people perform we go to see something out of the ordinary – something extra ordinary – people expressing themselves. Allowing us as audience members for a moment to dance with the dancer on stage, be in the position of the actor in the play, be connected to the comedian. To live vicariously through them. To allow all the emotions that we want to express so badly to be expressed through them.

When we perform, if we’re not concerned and distracted by getting it right or wrong, we can express. We can be a vehicle for people to be expressed. In a way we can allow the audience a small amount of healing the pain of not being able to express in our overly practical world. Performance can actually be one of the best gifts we can give to our fellow human being.

I find that perspective, that performance is a gift and not a fear of judgement, is the key to dissolving performance anxiety. But it takes practice and an approach to teaching to make it happen.