Partnership - Teammate, Associate, Friend

  As the cliché goes, "It takes two to tango." How true this is. While practicing alone maybe fun at times, ballroom is infinitely more satisfying with a partner moving across the floor. But not all partners are created equal. Some partners can be lazy and unfocused. Others can be hypersensitive and abusive. Good partnerships are built on more than just skill (although this can be important as well). Thus far, I feel as thought there are three roles a partner plays to a dancer - most partnerships have at least one or two of these (or they would never take off), and lucky is the lead or follow that can boast a partner capable of all three.

Teammate

Granted, "teammate" can somewhat serve as a catch-all, particularly after all of the inspiring sports movies we've grown up with. But I am speaking merely from a co-competitor standpoint - the who-would-I-pick-first-on-the-playground sense. In Little League Baseball, you have some teams with mixed skill sets - some are destined to become Nolan Ryans or Kobe Bryants, and some will never play a second season. But later down the road, teams form around people of comparable skill and experience. People work with other people that they believe have the talent to make them successful. This is true of competitive dancers as well. 

It's a visual sport, and there's no getting around that. Who will you look good with? Who is capable of keeping up with you? Who knows the moves you are best at? Being a good physical and skill match can make a partnership really launch with some promising momentum.

Of course, it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes, one of the partners will be vastly superior to the other. I myself have been the inferior partner more than is fair - it's a great position to be in, assuming you're willing to work hard and learn quickly. But bear in mind, you'd better close the gap soon. World-class musicians probably don't like playing in High School Bands for extended periods of time. If you are in the less-experienced position, you'd probably do well to fulfill the other roles strongly.

Associate

Competitive dancing takes a lot of time, money, and energy. Or not. It depends on your goals and your resources. And the last thing you want it to depend on the drive of someone other than yourself. Aligning goals and setting expectations is critical to a strong partnership. Being responsive to planning practices and following-through on registrations and hotel reservations is important. You don't need a crazy-dedicated partner - unless, of course, you yourself are crazy-dedicated.

The "associate" is the business partner. You set goals and benchmarks, you pool resources, you take responsibilities. It's like having a second job. Whether it's full- or part-time is up to you. But bear in mind that there is another schedule (and paycheck) to accommodate. The last thing you want is to find yourself in a situation where you are ready, willing, and able to take some private lessons that your partner can't afford, so it doesn't happen. 

Also, you need to be aware that some partners want to WIN and are willing to draw blood to make it happen, where as others would be content to have fun and maybe showcase every once in a while. Figure out where you fall on the spectrum, and make sure your partner falls somewhere nearby.

Friend

D'awwwwww, the warm fuzzies. Partners and friendship. But make no mistake, you can partner someone who you cannot stand. You can partner with a complete jerk and still be successful. You can show up to practice, work hard, say good night, then drive home. It can work. But who wants to spend 10 hours a week hip-to-hip with somebody unpleasant?

I have seen plenty of partnerships where people do not treat each other well. But the love of dance can be more powerful than simple taste in company, and thus such partnerships arise.

Ieva Pauksena once said in a workshop, "How hard is it to tell your partner that they look good today?" As simple as the response to that question is, it is very easy to get hyper focused on the goals you've got in mind and forget that there is another person in the room. As much as your partner is a resource to enable you to dance, do not forget that you are privileged to spend time with another like-minded being with a common passion, and these sort of people are difficult to come by in any hobby/activity/profession. Compliments are inexpensive - try handing out a few here and there when they are deserved.

Believe it or not, remembering to grab an extra coffee on the way to practice just may be the difference between a good round and a great round.

Of Ponds and Chins

People in my town don't ballroom dance (Sorry, Grand Rapids, but most dancers out there don't even know what a Fallaway Reverse & Slip Pivot is...). Instead, people swing and people salsa. But when somebody gets a little crazy with the music and plays a waltz or a tango, the dance floor becomes my home court. I still have a good time (typically), but it's tough to really enjoy a waltz when everybody is box-stepping off time and against the line of dance. Yeah, I get my choice of partner, and a little recognition, but it would be nicer to dance a respectable natural turn uninterrupted.

Big fish, small pond - it's a give and take.

So, I started travelling. I moved to a bigger pond. There, I found more people that actually enjoyed ballroom dancing the way I did. And then there's the whole culture of the collegiate competition circuit - if you want to get better, work harder and dance more. And everybody is coming pretty much from the same place:

I'm in college for 3-6 years, and I want to learn something that's new and fun.

So sure, people develop tastes - some people get obsessed and become great quickly; others chill in Bronze and compete on weekends that they and their partner are free. And despite the wide spectrum of personalities and goals ("I just want to meet girls", "I need an excuse to exercise", "this is fun and I'll do it my whole life", etc.), there's still a pretty universal camaraderie among the college crowd.

• Sure, let's have an afterparty. 
• Check out this video on youtube. 
• Let's all go to the social. 
• Let's all do a fundraiser. 
• Let's carpool and then crash on a couch.
• Let's reserve the studio from 10 pm to 12 am then get a drink afterwards.

It's a blast, for sure -

But

- and I never though that I, of all people, would ever say this -

what if it's a little too much fun?

Ok, imma have to explain that one. I mean, what if somebody wanted to get a little more...serious about dancing? What if ballroom dance became more than a hobby or pastime, and became more of a lifestyle? What if that's not a means to an end - when the switch happens from:

"Oh, I'll learn how to dance in order to meet people."	-to-	"I only want to meet people who dance."
	OR
"My partner isn't free tonight. Guess I'll play a video game/go to the pub/watch a movie."	-to-	"My partner isn't free tonight. Guess I'll go practice alone/find somebody else/watch pros on youtube."

I may not be quite so crazy as that, but I'm getting there. I feel like a clingy boyfriend, and ballroom dance is my girl. I spend all my money on dance, I think about dancing throughout the day, when I am forced to take a break from dance (sprained ankle, etc), I still try to show up at places where I know where ballroom dance will be and "accidentally run into" it, and try to gauge if ballroom misses me as much as I miss it.

....kinda sad how accurate that last paragraph was....

More to the point, I was wondering if there was anybody else in the college pond who wanted to treat ballroom dance as more than a friend.

If you look at the general flow of the volume of ballroom of dancers, it will go something like this. Let's say there is a competition with 100 competing couples (remembering couples can dance two levels):

35 will dance Newcomer

• 50 will dance Bronze
• 30 will dance Silver
• 15 will dance Gold
• 8 will dance Novice
• 3 will dance Prechamp
• Every once in a while, there may be 1-2 couples that make it to Champ

I'm over-simplifying it, but not many people want to (or are willing to) make the push past the bronze hump, then the syllabus-to-open hump. So, where does everyone go, and why?

Well, for one, the "while I'm in college" constraint typically makes it difficult for college couples to get to champ - unless you start in Freshman Undergrad and stay through your masters (or you're Alex Rowan), it'll be tough to go the distance in the allotted time. But even then, the steady stream of open dancers seems to trickle off rather rapidly...but why? Where do they all go?

They go to the a bigger pond - the Adult Amateur category.

Imagine, instead of the pyramidic picture I painted of how dancers struggle to make it to the top, there are more people in Champ than Novice because they've won Prechamp too many times and it would now be cherry-picking. Yeah. Imagine walking into the ballroom and out of the several hundred dancers there, only about 5% are wearing dresses that cost less than $1K. Earlier this year, I danced a prechamp standard round at Michcomp - ONE guy wore a tailsuit. At the MAC in January, I was one of 2 or 3 out of 40 that DIDN'T wear tails. But the wardrobe and distribution wasn't even the most jarring difference.

It was the chins.

[the wha...?]

THE CHINS. STUCK IN THE AIR, NO LOOKING DOWN.

Everybody had their head held high, dancing or not. And nobody talked to anyone other than their partners and coaches, save for the few sets of college "teams" (meaning 4-5 couples out of a team of 50+) that came as a group. Everyone was there on business - "this is the result of the work I have done. I am here to dance my best, and hopefully it's enough to get me into nationals. I am here for the dancing and for the ribbon." And that was it. No "dude, let's chill," or "can you teach me that," or anything like that. It was all....COLD. Oh, sure, a few "I love your dress" comments, and a couple "You guys were great" compliments, and the occasional, "Oh! I haven't seen you since X!" introduction. But mostly, people came alone and kept to themselves.

AND I LOVED IT.

[To be fair, I was getting plenty of unorthodox attention from the Ballroom Addict video]

But everybody was in the zone the whole weekend. And as much as I tried to behave, I still ended up losing my cool and nerding out, simply because here are people that "GET IT". That joke about Fallaway Reverse and Slip Pivot? Everybody gets it - they all went through it. Punchline about a line figure? It's now funny.

Since then, I've mostly stuck to the bigger pond. I'm sure there are more out there. My partner and I are just starting to dance Champ - I imagine we're in for a bit of a culture shock. I wonder what the differences are between the amateur, pro-am, and professional scenes? I suppose there's a newfound respect for higher level dancers. Nobody "gets lucky" anymore - with the exception of some politics, everyone is exactly as good as the work they've put in. And I'm excited to see how my work stack up.

But for now, CHINS.

Jogging might be a better idea than dance practice

I like getting better. At anything. Who doesn't? Whether I'm getting faster at my job, or ranking up in a video game, or parallel parking like a boss, it feels good to improve.

This is especially true when the task is competitive in nature. When you are working toward a goal, testing your progress against others with the same goal is the only true measure of your progress. The thing is, it doesn't necessarily come down to your effort versus my effort - if it were that simple, skill could be quantified in hours, and we might as well go home as soon as we're up against someone who's been doing our task a little longer. It's also about knowing what to practice, where to get help, and how to respond to successes and failures along the way.

Dancing is no exception. And I suppose I'm mostly speaking in terms of competitive dancers, though I've met a few rather serious social dancers. Like anything else, you get back what you put in - however, "what you put in" refers to more than just time and energy. If you practice 10 hours a week, trying to duplicate what professionals are doing on YouTube, you will look like a dancer who spends 10 hours a week practicing what they saw on YouTube. If you take 3 hours of lessons with world-class coaches, practice on your own for 3 hours drilling basics, and only frame up with your parter for 3 hours to talk about connection and to dance rounds, you will look like a dancer who...well, you get the idea. 10 hours of unfocussed effort is not going to give you the same result as 9 hours of effective training.

However, where that focus goes is a tough question. I seem to come across two different schools of thought when it comes to practicing ballroom dancing, though I'm sure it translates to other skills.

First, I meet dancers that are focused on impressing. Flashier moves. Bigger shapes. More difficult footwork. Have a couple of amazing moments, and they're sure to want more. I used to belong to this group - gotta have a few go-to steps I could do well, and spam 'em. Focus on the strengths, and play to them. I have trouble with shapes? Then I'll do faster moves. My footwork is poor? I'll do the easier steps and more lines.

Thing is, there's only so much you can do like this before it catches up to you. Sorry, but the biggest frame in prechamp standard will probably get smoked if they're taking bronze-sized steps.

Second, there are the dancers that are attached to the cleanup. Learn every step in every syllabus. Learn all of the technique on this figure before moving on. "I have one section that doesn't feel right - let's work on it until it feels right." This route requires patience, but ends up being very rewarding in the long run. The hard stuff is easy once you've got the basic down solid.

And yet, where's the fun in that? And what if the problem you're stopping to fix isn't really the root cause?

I belonged to this group at one point as well. I spent weeks "fixing" my frame to make a single section of one routine feel a little smoother, only to find out much later that my footwork was wrong, making it nearly impossible to step without distorting myself (and my partner). Quick fix on the placement, and it was all good in the frame. And all that time was wasted - anything that I had improved upon was overshadowed by the time it took to get out of the bad-footwork habit I was solidifying.

Now I certainly can't suggests that either of these routes is the way to go - as you probably guessed, I prefer a mix of the two. In competition, you may only get a judge's attention for 3 seconds, and you need to make sure that you don't give them a reason not to mark you. You have to keep things clean. But just being clean isn't enough to make you stand out - you need to keep learning new concepts as well. In fact, sometimes the new stuff inadvertently fixes the problem spots - I had a big problem with timing in the Slow Foxtrot, but learning better swing helped fix that little mess.

Bottom line, if you show up to practice just to power-through your choreography 10 times, you might as well do it once and go jogging instead. Because unless you're actively working on something, then you're only doing you and your a partner a favor on the memory/endurance side. Instead, try fixing a bad habit you've internalized, or adding some technique you've learned but haven't internalized yet.

And remember, like most skills, identifying what to do next is easier with professional help. And knowing is half the battle.

PSA - Bad Dancing Victims find Treatment in Ballroom Dancing

Expressing Oneself - Huh?

I never understood the phrase "expressing oneself" through an artform, until just recently.

But I think I have an idea now.

Dancing is like any other form of communication, like a second language. When learning the basics, one does nothing more than communicate, 'I am capable of doing the basics.' But as understanding of the language increase, so does one's ability to express themselves more clearly in the language.

And it is appreciated more by those who can understand the language. Maybe this is why the "Dancing With the Stars" phrase comes off a bit insulting? Not out of elitism (well, maybe a bit), but from the part of us that wants to be known and understood. Nothing wrong with the show - just dancers with very different intentions than us outside of professional showbiz.

Maybe that's why I like International Waltz so much. If you've hung out with me, you know my voice and overall demeanor reflect "Jive".

Perhaps I have a hard time expressing "Waltz" in English?

The Cost of Ballroom

And as for me, you can FORGET Pro-Am!

Why [Ballroom] Dancers Can't Date Non-Dancers

"Hey, honey - just a heads-up...

For the next year-or-so, I'm going to spend the bulk of my free time, not to mention disposable income, not on you, but on activities with this other girl. We'll probably be spending an average of 2-3 hours a day hip-to-hip, or at least in close proximity. Also, she makes it her everyday goal to appear more attractive than those around her, and I will dress to match. I'll be spending more time doing my favorite pastime with her, making all kinds of memories, than doing anything with you.

Ah, yes. Memories. We have goals that we would like to achieve this year. By the way, part of obtaining that goal is traveling. About once a month, we're going to travel to another city together, share a hotel room, and then spend the weekend convincing a bunch of people that she and I are madly and passionately in love. Also, I'll be more dressed up on these little excursions with her than I ever will be for one of our dates.

If she and I do well, people will recognize her and I all over the country, and we'll always be mentioned in the same breath. Oh, but you can sit at home and watch us on Youtube.

That cool with you?"


 - (Also, if my girlfriend doesn't dance, there go about 90% of my date ideas)

5 Stages of Acceptance (that your partner is right)