Metaphors we Dance by: Article 1 (of 2)

Let me start by disclosing that I love coming up with new metaphors for partner dancing, and I often enjoy hearing the (exceedingly random and entertaining) metaphors that my instructors proffer.  I recently rediscovered the book, "Metaphors We Live By" (Lakoff and Johnson, 1980) in which the authors argue that "metaphor is fundamental mechanism of mind, one that allows us to use what we know about our physical and social experience to provide understanding of countless other subjects."

So, what does this mean for teaching partner dancing? Not only are metaphors fun and entertaining, they can actually help our students learn.  It's a win win - not only do I get to entertain myself by coming up with fun ways to describe the dancing process, but the students may actually learn more as a result!

I can categorize the metaphors I use when teaching into 2 categories: metaphors that apply to the broad process of learning to dance in general, and those that apply to the nuts and bolts/details of swing dancing/partner dancing itself. In this particular article I'll concern myself with 2 broad metaphors and their applications, and then I will write a follow-up to describe the specific nuts/bolts metaphors.

Broad Metaphor #1: Learning to dance is like learning a language. Our beginner students often ask whether or not they should attend the weekly dances, even if they are not feeling comfortable/"good enough." What I often tell them is that it's like learning a language; imagine you want to learn French - is it better to practice only once a week in class, or to practice and then spend a few hours sitting in a Parisian Cafe, listening and absorbing the tone, cadence, rhythm and most common words of the language and then even trying your hand at talking to some locals a few times? It's well known that immersion is best when learning a language, and my experience has been that this is true for dance as well.  If nothing else, I always suggest that my students start listening to some jazz music and just practice bouncing to the rhythm (particularly in fun places like the elevator or water cooler at work - you'd be surprised, you might make some new friends that way!).

Secondly, it's been my experience that many students intuitively understand that in order to learn a language you must start with the fundamental building blocks, but when it comes to dancing they often want to rush right into the big complex stuff. I understand this mentality because I was a very impatient beginner student myself - I was itching to get into the "crazy hard fun stuff" right away and wanted to bypass the basics. This would be the equivalent of bypassing "Go Spot Go" and moving right along to "Shakespeare" at the age of 3!  I try to remind students how important it is to get those fundamental components of movement / connection down in the beginning - it's like learning your alphabet and most common words, and then after you've become comfortable with those you can start learning where there's room for flexibility/"irregular verbs" (eg situations where "the rules" don't apply) and more.  If you try to short-circuit that process, you'll likely find yourself having to back-track later when certain things aren't working and you're not sure why - this was the case with me, at least!

Lastly: language is constantly evolving, and so too is dance. People add new moves to our dance just as the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary have to add new words each year as times change. Even within one evening of dancing, I can make up "new moves" with a partner (often spontaneously/hilariously) and it can be thrilling, even if they're never officially added to our "dance vocabulary!" Just as with language, there is often tension between those who want the dance to stay "authentic" and those who want it to flex with time, which I always find interesting as well :)

Broad Metaphor #2: Teaching Partner dancing is really teaching nonverbal communication.  I can't say this enough - I often joke with students that I tell people I'm teaching a "non-verbal communications class," not a swing dancing class. In many ways, it's actually fundamentally non-visual as well, at least when it comes to the connection between partners. Ideally, I get all my information from the lead, who communicates through our physical connection (usually hand to hand or hand to back) and his own body movement. 

As a "follow" (generally the part done by the ladies), my first job is to respond to my lead (and in the beginning stages, this is pretty much as far as we get - later on, we get to add our own spice and flavor!).  Just as in a verbal conversation it's best to first listen to your partner before responding, it's also the case that with dancing we must remember to listen to our partner before "jumping in" or interrupting with what we think he's telling us/asking us to do (I say "he" because the lead's part is most often done by a man), which would be the dance equivalent of starting to go where you think you're supposed to go before the lead has actually led it. 

Additionally, newer dancers in particular tend to try to be "nice" to their partner by following the move as they know it's supposed to be led, not how it was actually led. I understand the motivation to do this, because as a newer dancer you often a) don't want to "insult" someone by implying that the lead was incorrect, and b) you want to assert that you did, in fact, know "what to do." However, I try to train follows to respond authentically to the information they've gotten from the lead, even it is not specifically what we have just taught, because the primary goal initially is to learn to follow the lead, not to do "move x or move y" perfectly. It's really hard to get away from the "learn x move/step, execute x move/step" mentality and into the "follow what he's physically telling me to do," but the more you can get into that mentality early on, the better. I sometimes call this "Zen following" - it's honestly best to clear your mind (as a follow), even if the instructor has just shown you how to "do the move," because at the end of the day it's really about following your leader, not about doing x/y/z moves.

This also has a nice side-benefit of giving real information to the lead about what he has just "told" the follow - if someone always said, "I would like 5 legos of butter" instead of "5 pounds of butter" at the store but the employee knew what the customer meant and never corrected him, he'd continue to think he was saying the correct word for pounds (when really...he's saying legos...which, i mean, I'll give you some creativity points there, but somewhere down the line it's going to lead to some confusion when you try to talk to someone else).  In essence, when follows "follow" the move perfectly even when it's been lead imperfectly, they train the leads to think they're executing the move correctly even when they're not, which leads to significant confusion when they try to lead the same move outside of class.This is the same with language - if you are practicing speaking a new language and are constantly "messing up" but your conversational partner does not correct you, you will become trained to believe you are doing something you are not.

Lastly, this applies to the philosophy of having students rotate around in a circle during class rather than staying with one partner. If you were trying to learn a language and only ever talked to one person who spoke that language, you'd eventually learn just their idiosynchrasies, patterns and vocabulary rather than perhaps the larger vocabulary. In the same way, learning to dance with just one person is very limiting, especially at the beginning stages when it's hard to tell why something is or isn't working. By constantly rotating around a circle, our new dancers get a sense of how to execute a move (for example, they can say, "Well, with this other person we did x and it worked because of x reason"), just like when learning a language, you'll get the best chance of retention when talking to the largest amount of different speakers.

That wraps up our first broad metaphors - I'll be back with some more specific ones later! If this makes you interested in swing dancing classes, check out Chris' and my beginner classes at www.SeattleSwing.com (HepCat Productions).