One of the most beautiful and magical things about Ballroom, Latin and Swing dancing is the interaction between the partners. This is also one of the most challenging aspects of our dancing. We find the interplay between us and our partner often mirrors our interactions with people off the dance floor, the challenges and strengths we have with others in life are echoed in our dancing.
One of the most important things in any relationship is understanding the terms or boundaries, as our therapists say. One of the wonderful things about dancing, unlike life, these terms are very clearly defined.
There are three important things that we must bring to the partnership in order to achieve our dance goals. It is important to understand that these three elements must be developed in the individual and brought to the partnership and never generated from the partnership.
The first element is our own balance. We must understand how to achieve and maintain our own balance without the partner. This doesn’t mean we only need balance when standing, but as we create the movements in our dancing we must be able to maintain our own balance and control. However tempting it may be to use the partner for our balance and stability, if we do, it introduces an imbalance to the partnership.
Second, what we often refer to as tone must be generated by the individual. This tone or the activity of the body is what supports our posture, supports our dance frame. We must bring an active and energized body to the partnership, this can create and maintain the relationship of the dance frame with our partner and prevents us from feeling heavy or pushy to our partner.
Last but certainly not least is our position. Yes, the position of your body with respect to your partner which seems to be entirely about the partner must first be generated by the individual. Whether we are generating a leftward poise for a Ballroom dance, an extreme forward poise for Argentine Tango or a flexed activity position for Swing, all of these positions are generated before you come to the partnership. If you have trouble generating a particular poise for a dance on your own, you will have even more issues if you are trying to generate your position from the partnership.
If we work on developing these three elements, our balance, tone and position as individual dancers, when we bring them to the partnership we will find an entirely new experience in the relationship. We will find new freedom and ease and the magic of the dance partnership will be ours.
Lawrence Black is a teacher at Dance Station. If you would like to take lessons with Lawrence or any of our teachers, call 505-989-9788 to schedule.
[...] Here is a original: Lawrence’s Dance Tip – The Partnership [...]