Lead and Follow in dance

Taking the lead: Three of Australia’s top dance teachers talk about the importance of leading and following. The man leads. The lady follows. It’s the basis of all social or competition dancing but it is a concept that usually takes a back seat to turn patterns and flashy moves in Australian dance schools. Three of Australia’s best dance teachers talk about their thoughts and approaches to lead and follow.  *Corrie Wade * Nathan Thorneycroft * Sharon Pakir*

Corrie Wade: Seducing the Count Corrie Wade is the founder of Seducing the Count dance company and he believes the concept of lead and follow should be introduced to dancers “in the first minute”. “You should be able to get a new couple dancing socially, free styling, within 10 minutes,” Corrie said. Corrie is an advocate for getting all levels of dancers to explore on their own. “If you teach someone two basic steps than they can explore that socially even if it’s just changing the feeling or the distance... it [dancing] is just a language that you’re learning to converse in, no one can teach you what to say to each other,” Corrie said. When Corrie teaches a move, he emphasises that it is just a “piece of a puzzle”, to be put into any configuration or danced in any style. “You’re learning it to improve your social dancing. That’s why most people are learning salsa, to experience that amazing conversation, that unplanned connection with moves that flow from one to another,” he said. It’s never easy to find a teacher you really like and want to learn from but Corrie’s advice is to find a teacher that creates an “atmosphere where students can practice”. Some teachers choose to “control the class to the nth degree” which can result in men and women alike often forgetting they are dancing with the person in front of them and stare at the teachers every move. “It gets to the point where a lot of women are not even looking at you [the leader], they’re watching the teacher and following their footwork and not responding to you,” Corrie said.  His advice to men and women is to modify the choreography being taught in class to improve the lead and follow. “Say ‘I know what the choreography is but I’m going to modify it a little bit so you and I can both explore what the chorry is really trying to teach us which is the language of dance.’” Nathan Thorneycroft: IUAC Nathan Thorneycroft is a director at IUAC Dance in Brunswick and he says the most instructive part of the class comes after teaching a turn pattern. “We let the students go and we let them do things in their own time. So one-on-one I get to walk around, I get to help couples with problems they’re having with their lead and follow so the girls are reacting to what the guys are doing in the class.” Nathan has seen what can happen when students rely heavily on imitation of teachers rather than leading and following with the person in front of them. “On the social dance floor it becomes a lot harder if a person is used to doing specific turns in a row with certain instructors and then they go out and imitate what they’ve seen and the other person doesn’t know it... they haven’t learnt the lead and follow correctly and they can’t necessarily do any of those moves that they learnt.” Nathan, like Corrie, gets into the teaching of lead and follow right from the start. “We teach footwork first up and that same class we go straight into how your body leads the other person around, how you connect with a person and how that connection creates lead and follow in a dance,” he said. The difficulty with a dancing partnership is it almost defies social norms. Technically speaking, the leader takes ultimate responsibility for the follower during the dance – but some people can be reluctant to neatly fit into that role. “The girl has to trust the guy and try and follow him and trust that he is going to put her in the right space. That’s what dancing salsa is all about. It’s about that connection and without teaching that they may never really know what salsa is all about,” Nathan said. Sharon Pakir: Spin City Dance Sharon Pakir heads up the Spin City studio and is held in the highest regard by the Melbourne salsa scene. She emphasises human relationships and the importance of body dynamics in teaching lead and follow.   “If you understand the basics of a human relationship, you’ll understand lead and follow,” Sharon says. “A lot of people think of it [lead and follow] as signal and reaction and it’s absolutely not signal and reaction. It’s actually communication. It’s more like you’re talking with someone and having a conversation rather than question and answer.” Sharon’s approach to teaching lead and follow in the context of human relationships makes a lot of sense when you consider the closeness and intimacy of dancing. She challenges what people know to be a lead and a follow by introducing body dynamics and movement into her classes. “A guy shouldn’t push you, because that’s a lead and the girl reacts by stepping back.... I believe you can make someone else’s body move in conjunction with your body with the actions that you do,” she says. Sharon says lead and follow is “absent in a lot of classes” and “absent on the social floor”. She says this is partly because “leading is being taught as a signal, and if the woman doesn’t follow, it’s the woman’s fault”, which, as almost all women well tell you, isn’t true, as a woman may be unfamiliar with the signal because she’s never been to the class where the signal was taught! To make her classes as effective as possible, Sharon is stern with women who backlead when set moves are being taught. “If I see girls backleading, I’ll stop the class and say ‘No, you can not do that because you are actually not helping to create a league of good male dancers. It might be great for you in this class but you’re going to walk out and not be able to follow.’ Sharon says the best thing you can do for your dancing “is look like a fool”. “Challenge yourself and learn from every social dance you can. You don’t get better dancing with great dancers, you get better dancing with beginners because you really have to lead and you really have to follow.” Researched and Written by Alexander Cork  2011  Copy Right LEAVE A MESSAGE: Email info@latinlover.com.au