Saying something… important.

In class, my teaching partners and I often find ourselves saying things that are purely intended for the movement context, but we laugh when we hear the call-back to real life situations.

“Dance yourself, not your follow. If you’re dancing, your partner will have plenty to respond to.”

“If you release your tone, your partner can release theirs, making for a less effortful dance.”

“Just create the opportunity for your follow to turn and she’ll go on her own. Don’t force!”

“Think of lead-follow like a conversation. One person initiates a topic; the other responds.”

“Never cause a build-up of tension in your partner unless you can guarantee a good release.”

“Integrity is your ability to resist giving in to outside pressures.”

“Quit trying to ‘get it right’ – let the energy of your lead dictate your movement.”

Put these principles to work in your art, your work, and your relationships and you might find more flow and less need for force—at least, that’s always our goal.

The search for flow has been the driving force behind the decisions I’ve made in the past few years. There are plenty of books on the topic. For me, “flow” is simply the state of being in action, usually a creative action… writing without stopping to edit, dancing without an audience, playing music for myself. The editor is off; there’s little awareness of how the action is being perceived by others, and it’s repetitive or not even designed for artistic output. The ability to work automatically while my mind is free to meander creates a moving meditation. I let my thoughts move like water and follow them, not trying to push them. It’s less about “getting specific things done” and more about making space for blocks of time to be in motion.

Ultimately, whatever you’re learning in dance class should help you move with greater ease and less mental struggle. If the the lessons are sound, then you should be able to apply them to your life and experience greater flow in other areas.

The thing about dance is that it’s a skill and you need to practice it for many hours to have enough proficiency so that you can freely express without worrying about your body position, your vocabulary, where the hell your feet are: all the hallmarks of “feeling dorky.” People often ask for advice as to what kinds of other dance training they can do on their own that supports partner dancing. I make suggestions like Afro-Cuban dance, T’ai Chi, Aikido, Weight Lifting, Modern, Hip-hop… each of these solo endeavors impart a set of skills that build a better kinesthetic foundation. A mentor once observed that a student who practices any other form of movement always learns faster than one who doesn’t. Cross-training cross-applies.

But partner dance isn’t just about your body, it’s about your relationship to another person, to the music you’re interpreting, and some would say, to the community at large. To that end, taking extracurricular dance classes isn’t enough to dance well.

An Anecdote or Two:

I remember talking to a friend who was invited by a popular dancer to compete with him. He told her, “You’re going to have to really step it up for this competition. Last time I competed, a judge told me that I out-shone my follow and that’s why I didn’t do well.”

I laughed so hard. It was so obvious just by observing the way he danced what kind of person he was. My judgment might seem overly facile, but the anecdotes I heard about him over time reinforced my initial assessment: he was narcissistic, selfish and didn’t give a shit about his follow. She was there to serve him. And, it came out later, quite publicly, that his romantic relationships weren’t much different.

Trying to find my mojo during solo pre-lims.

So, imagine my personal discomfort when I posted online, after an event:

“What do you do when you feel you are “going through the motions” on the dance floor and it’s not just a one-night thing. How do you shake out of it? Would you say you go through phases of loving it and not loving it?”

I got a number of responses, but the one that hit where it hurt came from Barry Douglas:

“When your dance is not right, it simply means you’re not right. We sometimes use our dance to make us happy instead of using it to express whatever it is we’re feeling. The beauty in movement is that it allows us to give over ourselves and express life. Good or bad. Expecting it to do more than that can leave you empty.”

Looking back on this, he was right.

Even prior to asking for help, I’d learned not to take myself out dancing when I don’t feel I can give to my partners, just as I don’t go out on dates when I’m feeling selfish, needy, or empty.

It’s unrealistic to expect other people to fulfill you, whether it’s on the dance floor or in the context of friendship or romance. That’s hard to stomach, because often we have the unexpected experience of being fulfilled by an unplanned interaction with someone. So we want to go back for more, and we slowly begin to expect other people to fulfill our needs. When we expect the dance to make us happy, or give to us we give away our agency and ultimately find ourselves disappointed. This leads to being picky about who we dance with, when we forget that no matter what, we’re still always dancing with ourselves. Back to that adage: no matter where you go, there you are.

Being Your Own Partner

A week ago, I made face-to-face acquaintance with a friend whom I’d only had digital interaction with till then. We spent a great deal of time on our first meeting talking about relationships and what we want from our interactions with others. He was adamant that he’s ready for a relationship, but feels nobody else seems to be able to handle his brand of intensity or directness. I could tell how other-focused he was, and yet how self-analytical he was. I told him as much, that it was obvious he’d done lots of work on himself, and that I was loathe to tell him to “work on himself” more. Our conversation meandered on various points of communication and later he sent me this note:

I made myself cry this morning with this epiphany that I thought somewhat akin to your epiphany the other day of realizing that you want to work on the skill of relating with other people:

I need to be my own partner.

I put so much energy into other people and go out of my way and watch out for them and do them favors and keep them healthy and organized and on time—it’s odd that I don’t do this stuff for myself in the same way. I think I need to learn to direct that energy back toward myself more. I think this a foremost obstacle to me being more successful.

I remember being completely in flow during this competition with Chris Mayer.

I found his revelation to be gratifying and informative. He was discovering what I keep learning over and over again about how I hurt my dancing and my relationships by failing to be my own best partner first. (If you read the end of his last sentence the way I did, you might also see that he’s applying this lesson to his life-at-large, not just romance.)

If you saw my post on FOMI, then you already have an idea as to my current thoughts on why focusing on yourself is just as—if not more—important than taking more dance classes to find flow in self-expression. Thinking back to Barry’s advice, it was a clear directive to check in and ask myself what I’m really feeling and go with that.

Expressing oneself authentically and artistically is probably one of the scariest things we can do. We’re full of fear and locked down with self-protection mechanisms. What then, does it take to shed the artifice, the myriad needs and insecurities, to put ourselves out there authentically and without fear of reprisal?

Backstory

There was a time when I took nine dance classes a week. There was a time when I went dancing four or five nights a week. I went to an all-night party a couple times a month. I drove 14 hours for a blues birthday party. I stayed up till dawn, weekend after weekend. I danced for 17 hours a day with only enough break-time to change venues or get dinner with friends.

This is Sunday night of a four-night Blues event in Chicago called the Chicago Underground Blues Experience. People have been partying for four days and the DJ just put on some bouncy pop music. As you can see, everyone has lost control.

The post-exchange blues, a common phenomenon, was bemoaned on dance boards of yore (Yehoodi! Swingtalk! Gargleblaster Blues! Blues Pulse!) and carried forward to Facebook conversations of today. The return to real life, real job, real sleep schedules after 2-3 days of non-stop fun, socializing and dancing leaves people with a chemical deficit. The dopamine and oxytocin stops flowing. You’re back at your work computer, faced with a pile of work, homework, and maybe that same old partner who doesn’t magically change every three minutes.

Dance Exchange culture is a high-reward lifestyle, with an easy shot of happy new chemicals every few minutes. Instead of drugs, we rely on a cocktail of dancing, talking, hugging, eating and drinking to keep the flow of happy chemicals steady. Robb Wolf talks about high-reward food choices in the context of diet, but to me the parallels to dance culture are close enough to consider:

“Certain foods can reduce anxiety and irritability and place us in a more positive place. This is due to the effects food can have on opioids, serotonin, and dopamine. Chronic exposure to foods eliciting these responses will down-regulate our sensitivity to these transmitters and force us to eat more to elicit the same mood altering response.”

Dancing has a similar reductive effect. Like getting stoned, you only need one hit at first to get high. A night of dancing can be incredibly satisfying, but once you go through the full exchange experience, a night of local dancing just doesn’t build the same high. Some have even argued that the more experienced a dancer becomes, the less they enjoy dancers of all levels. Don’t we then keep exposing ourselves to more dance culture, more fun, more party to keep eliciting the same response? And if we aren’t at the party, isn’t it a little bit tempting to party by proxy by scooping up news of the latest event on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter?

In the absence of being at the event, we’ve learned to stimulate our reward centers by interacting with the digital representations of our beloved communities, clicking on pictures of parties, enviously reading and commenting on status updates, embroiling ourselves in heated scene politics debates—anything to stay connected to the party.

FOMO: defined

As social media has expanded and become a very integral part of the dance community, the very real phenomenon of Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) impacts us all. FOMO has been written about in multiple media channels and clearly affects people of all walks of life. For us it’s a highly tangible part of our interactions. “Are you going to xyz exchange? You HAVE to be there!” When the stream of posts, photos, and videos hitting your news feed as the latest big event is in full swing, it’s hard not to feel left out of the action when it’s all being reported LIVE!

The Good

Part of this is good. It’s good press for the organizers. It means continued success for their event. Attendees largely choose to go to events because of who else will be there or because of who was there last year. And they want you to be there. So in an attempt to get you to go next year, your friends will guilt you by pointing out repeatedly how awesome a time they’re having without you, because wouldn’t you rather be there with them?

User generated press is always more believable than official advertisements and word of mouth is largely how our community thrives. (Most advertisers would kill, or pay moles to engage in the kind of evangelism we use to promote events.) Everyone’s capitalizing on FOMO to generate better attendance and greater success for the events they run or choose to attend. While it’s easy to fall prey to FOMO relative to your normal life, (and there’s enough documentation out there to help you work through it) here’s another less commonly defined phenomenon that concerns me: Fear Of Missing In.

FOMI: defined

The more I considered taking a break from extended travel in 2014, the more I realized FOMO would affect me. But all that time on the road was creating a stronger fear, that of missing out on who else I might be, on my other unexplored potential, on all of the non-dance interests and obsessions that I don’t have time for when I’m in the full swing of a dance tour. It’s Fear of Missing In… what’s In me.

I’ve been trying to write this blog entry for over a month. The first date of this draft is from 12/28/13. So, I was amused on 1/28 during a round of revisions to find that when I re-ran a search for FOMI, a new result turned up. Previously, there was no search result for FOMI. I thought I’d coined the term. But, it looks like somebody else was also experiencing end-of-year FOMI. The fact that I’ve been occasionally hacking at this topic for more than a month says that it’s hard for me to admit, hard to put it out there.

There’s so much else I want to do with my life. I’m not even sure if I want to describe my other ambitions. Part of me believes that writing them here will relieve the built up pressure I have (and need) in order to enact my new plans. So, I’m sorry if you’re curious. I can’t satisfy your curiosity about my goals. The deeper question for me is, do I have an identity separate from Ruby-The-Dancer? If dancing were to be stripped out of my life, what would be left?

Making Ted laugh out loud is one of my great joys life. Whether we’re dancing or not, we always have a good time. 

The Point

What’s my point? Dancing is important. It’s how we connect. For many of us, it’s how we build friendships, relationships, and valuable networks. But it’s based on high-reward partying, which emphasizes novelty and constant change. It’s a highly structured way of interacting with yourself and your surroundings. It allows you to move on to the next dance, the next new and shiny, but often without going deeper. It’s a wonderful moving meditation, a way of being in the moment, and of experiencing flow. No doubt the more you do it, the better you get at it. But at what cost?

It’s a way of avoiding the rest of your life: avoiding relationships with people who don’t share your obsession, avoiding the study of deeper topics that aren’t as immediately rewarding. It’s a way of justifying not having a regular sleep schedule, of getting out of learning something that requires different skills. It’s a way of excusing yourself out of possible plans to go back to school, eat a better diet, quit drinking, pay off your debts, or write more because those things are harder to do when you’re dancing every other weekend.

I’m at odds here, because as a dance professional, I want more people to dance. Dancers inhabit their bodies more fully and have fewer hang-ups about interpersonal interactions. I want more people at events. I need people to be willing to sacrifice money, work, personal time, family and relationships to spend a weekend at my camp, learning from me.

But I also want rich dancers; dancers who bring outside perspectives, dancers who have other obsessions, dancers who play sports, or musical instruments. I prefer dancers who practice something else regularly, so that when I try to impress on them that practicing my drills every day will improve their dancing, they’ll believe me and do it, because studying something else always gives you new perspectives on your dance.

Playing with Kyle Greer and Keith Instigators

Yes, sometimes taking time off and spending the money to go to the party is worth it. It’s mind expanding. You learn something. You shake off the day-to-day struggle. You make friends. Fun and friends are part of your quality of life. But there’s a plateau to this kind of continual play, where dance becomes your whole world and your facebook feed of fellow dancers is your only source of news in the world. It’s a wonderful, yet limited world-view.

So, step out and do your thing, the thing that makes you you outside of that fishtail or that swing-out. I need you to bring YOU to the dance instead of being a cookie-cutter dancer. Bring your sense of learning, your ideas, your concepts, your fashion, your quirks. This is what makes a rich dance culture. This is what makes a community I can always come home to, no matter how many times I step out to do my own thing.

me: Business has been tight. I’m thinking of dropping my rates to get more customers.
him: Don’t drop your rates. Cheap rates means cheap customers. You don’t want cheap customers.
me: Yeah, but I could use more customers.
him: Cheap customers waste your time. What’s your time worth?

Inevitably I’d learn this lesson the hard way. When I moved to Chicago in the winter of 2005 I’d occasionally give a client a break on my rate to entice them to visit more often. Invariably the customer getting the discount would be the one who was always late and then would beg for more time without being willing to pay the difference.

So, I stopped dropping my massage rate. For customers who paid my full rate or tipped, I’d be generous with my time; I’d be less of a clock-watcher. The ones who came back again and again and got more than an hour of work and became part of my devoted client-base. They were willing to invest in my full rate and in exchange, I was willing to invest more time in them. I paid the bills and they got great service.

Paying money means you get great service. | They say that adding images improves the readability of blogs. This was the best image I had of me and money in a dance context. Here’s my dance partner, John Joven and I enjoying a private dance from his partner Shoshi. He’s making it rain, I’m drinking from a huge flask and we’re all having a good time.

As a dance instructor just starting out years ago, I started with lower rates, so that I’d be competitive with dance teachers at my level. As I’ve gained experience and traveled abroad multiple times to teach, I’ve felt justified in increasing my rate even though I’d happily do what I do for free, since I love working with people on their dancing.

Occasionally I do offer my services to friends and close colleagues for free or nothing. I suggest a trade, or agree to spend time working and training with a colleague who has become more of a friend. (This agreement doesn’t apply to teaching partners with whom I’m building shared curriculum—we don’t charge each other to train together.) It usually applies to someone who wants more dance training and has some other business relationship with me.

And, what I’ve learned the hard way, yet again, is that when you offer to give your services away for free… or you don’t negotiate a clear exchange, people, even your friends take you for granted. They don’t show up, they flake, they’re late or they try to raincheck your time, often to a time-frame that’s no longer viable.

On the other side of it, I’ve watched as close friends pay practitioners and teachers less qualified than me for bodywork or instruction, even though they’re willing to give lip-service to my skills. This may just be a desire for business/friendship separation or an uncertainty for how to conduct business with a friend, but it still baffles me.

I don’t have clear solutions to either of these situations. Every dance teacher I know probably has friends with whom they’d love to work. Because they’re our friends, we’re often willing to do more for them, to share our skills in the hopes of enriching their lives and therefore adding to our own enjoyment of the dance. But when our colleague and friends waste our time, squander the resources closest to them, or simply fail to take advantage of what we offer, especially when we offer it for cheap or free, it can feel personal.

I’m a solutions oriented girl. I usually make clear rules for myself when it comes to handling business and friends. But I don’t have any on this one, other than to stop giving it away for free, which feels stingy to me. So, I want to hear yours.

The Joy of Conversation

Sara VanVreede asked Lucas Weismann and I this question after she watched us have a discussion about following during a practice session:

From Sara: I don’t know if it’s a class thought, a “help me sort this out for myself by talking about it” thought or something to look at in a lesson but…I’m hoping maybe you can at least help me stop making my brain spin every time I think about it.

So, when I was watching you and Ruby dance, the topic of matching your lead vs being given space to stylize came about, and Ruby commented that the less her lead gives, the more she matches/less flashy her movements are because she has little to respond to from her lead.

Is there ever a point in a class to address that sort of topic? Especially as follows are developing their own styles, we definitely get conflicting messages about styling vs matching. Plenty of times we hear “match your lead” and then in solo classes “move with the music” but at least with a number of MN leads, there’s an assumption that if they place a follow in open position, she is not supposed to match the lead except in pulse.

Personally I agree with Ruby that, sure I can make stuff up and solo, but I’d like to have something to react to from my lead. As dancers, I think we get a lot of “match your partner” and then also “leads, listen to your follow/let her do her own thing” (as far as I can figure out, those aren’t the same thing) and it gets super confusing and frustrating when you think one thing will happen when you place a follow in open and that thing you want, but didn’t explicitly lead, doesn’t happen.

I suppose the gist of this is: how does a lead successfully communicate that he wants a follow to do her own thing, and how does a follow explain, short of having a conversation prior to dancing, that maybe she wants or needs her lead to give her feedback?

Ruby’s Response:

First I want to summarize what I think this question is really asking and answer that, and then give some thoughts about my own personal order of operations when it comes to following, styling, giving input and affecting the dance.

How can you tell, short of having a verbal conversation about it, whether a lead wants you to be conversational? Or how you can encourage that?

Most importantly, I think the prima facie definition of partner dance is that it IS a movement conversation. There’s a flow of action/reaction that loops from the lead (who is simply the initiator of movement) and the follow (who is the responder). But the lead can’t not be impacted by how the follow responds to his/her action, so whatever happens next is going to be a response. To say that there is a form of partnered dance that does not involve this kind of feedback loop is simply to deny the existence of physics and human perception.

But, I know what Sara means. Do you just “walk down the line” or do you add extra rhythm, footwork and body shaping? These are choices we can make as follows that aren’t led, that are considered the “conversational” part of the dance. They can be inspired or suggested by the lead, or we can just “take the space” when it’s available.

This question allows me to address something that I feel is a common misconception about follows like myself— follows who have a demonstrated skill and preference for solo movement. The mistake leads often make with me is that they lighten up their lead, offering very little frame or support, or they lead lots of open moves that are supposed to “give me space” to express. The problem is when the leading is non-expressive or too vanilla. There’s nothing in the movement to give me ideas or something to respond to, so I follow quietly, just going with the direction and energy, and I don’t throw much back in terms of styling or footwork.

Leads who have something to say inspire me to respond. I’ve never had more fun bantering with Luke as when we went swing dancing. All his choreography was very firmly defined by the music, with a clear beginning and end from one swing-out to the next move. But within the confines of those eight counts, he was throwing tons of styling and solo footwork at me. I had a terrific time rising to the challenge of answering his movement within the confines of clearly defined beginnings and ends.

The only time I don’t respond artistically to a lead who is being very expressive is when I’m protecting myself from being thrown off balance or from being crashed into other people. Then I resort back to the purest following I can do that prioritizes self protection.

However, I realize this question is coming from a follow who is still defining her sense of style and who may not have a “rep” as a highly expressive blues follow (although if you know Sara, you know that she’s actually an accomplished ballet dancer, so she has a strong sense of how to move her body).

I have an order of operations that dictates how much I follow purely vs. how much I express:

1) Always stay within the framework of the choreography. By “choreography” I mean the figure or pattern that is being led. I’m not referring to rote or memorized movement. If a turn is led, do a turn. If the lead wants you to pass down a slot, go down the slot. If the lead is quiet, be quiet (which can also mean style quietly). If the lead is loud, be loud.

2) If the lead is adding styling and footwork, try to respond to it, the way you would a verbal conversation. For me this isn’t something I “try” but it’s just instinctual. If a lead throws in a ball-change, well, I want to see if I can toss it back at him/her.

3a) If the lead is leading simply and the music isn’t really moving me, I don’t throw down the usual “Ruby style.” I just follow the movement. This might make my lead think I’m boring or bored. This doesn’t bother me. I do want to communicate first off that I can follow before styling and also that that’s what’s being led. If you style through every single turn, the lead will develop the expectation that that’s how you get a follow to style in that way, even if s/he isn’t initiating interesting movement. I think this is false.

3b) If the lead is leading simply and music really moves me, I follow the choreo, but disconnect the parts of me that are touching my lead, so my styling doesn’t get in his/her way. They can see what I’m doing, but aren’t impacted by what I’m doing. This means I’m still expressing and moving to the music but not in a way that hijacks the lead.

4) If I have already established rapport with a lead who is interested in my conversation but who doesn’t constantly talk (incidentally, also my favorite kind of date), I’ll throw something out that does affect his/her timing— such as a delay, syncopation or speed-up that they can feel. Invariably this leads to more interesting conversation and makes me want to keep dancing (and dating).

5) If I have established rapport with a lead who has the ability to lead simple pure movement as well as throw down his/her own style, then I’ll actually add movement that affects the dance… delays, changes in tone, level changes, things that s/he will ultimately be following. This happens in partnerships where there is a culture of “yes.” I call these “one second leads,” and this is very different from what I do when I’m trading roles in a dance. I’m still following, but with extra added oomph.

I like to use dating metaphors in my dancing, but I recognize that my dating style and standards are somewhat outside the norm or maybe a little unconventional. For example, I recently had a date that was like scenario 3a. He would occasionally ask a question or say something, but sometimes I’d finish responding or offering something up and he didn’t have more than two words to say in response. As a result, there were these really long silences. Since we were walking around and not facing each other across a table, this wasn’t such a bad thing, but most people might have felt this was awkward and would try to offer things up to fill the silence. I decided that I’d only make a conversational offer 50% of the time. If he didn’t bite on every conversational topic, I wasn’t going to force ideas down his throat or work especially hard to fill the silence.

Some people have a slower communication lag and they need time to digest what you say/do before they respond. By trying to fill every possible silence and space with your speaking/movement, you cut off the opportunity for quiet observation or for someone to organically respond to something you might have said 16 beats ago. Personally, I’m faster on the draw, so I gravitate to leads who have a shorter communication lag.

Summary: If you’re awesome, I’m awesome. If you’re plain, I’m plain. If you want to draw out the real Ruby on the dance floor, bring it.

A supportive lead makes it possible for a follow to express with confidence.

One of the biggest reasons we’re not content with ourselves and our lives is that we compare ourselves to other people. —Leo Babauta

Leo’s got it all wrong. He’s comparing himself to the wrong people at the wrong time.

Picture it: you see photos of what someone else is doing on Facebook and think your life isn’t exciting enough.
Actually, I just see people bitching about politics/life/burnt bagels.

You see someone else who has a cool job and think you’re not doing that great in your career.
Only to the extent that my office-free job doesn’t afford me health insurance at the moment. Otherwise, I keep turning down work.

You see someone with a hotter body, and feel bad about yours.
Actually, I check out the folks with the jelly roll middles and thunder thighs and think, “well, you have some junk in the trunk, but your ass ain’t a double wide! You go girl!”

You see someone who has created an awesome business, and think you’re not doing enough.
I’m doing plenty, thank you. I don’t actually want to work any harder than I do, which I’d have to do with a “more awesome” business.

You read about people who are traveling the world, learning languages, going to exotic resorts and restaurants, and wonder why you’re not.
I wonder when I get to spend time at home doing mundane things at home. Traveling is exhausting! And expensive! And there’s nothing like the comforts of home.

Compared to this lady, I don’t have far to go with my fitness goals! I’m betting the same can be said for you.

No doubt, there are people out there who are smarter, wealthier, and probably happier than me, but competition is what drives us to be better. The key is who you’re choosing for your comparisons. It’s going to happen in your brain, whether you are conscious of it or not. So, when you’re comparing, take look at the poor sods around you who haven’t made it as far, who are uglier, fatter, or whatever-er that you’re neurotic and insecure about. Then, when you’ve built yourself up about your current state of achievement, take a good look at your competition to see how much better you can get. It’s the ones who’ve gone before us and who thrive next to us, who drive us toward excellence.

A lot of contemporary bloggers are overly focused on the solo-self-fulfillment/zen/non-comparison method of attaining inner peace or whatever. That’s fine, if you live on a mountain-top and don’t have to fight for resources, money, shelter and love. But the fact is, competition is part of life. Comparing ourselves to the world is how we reflect who we are, what our place is and how we measure where we want to be. Realism about who you compare yourself to (your near peers and people with similar levels of experience) will give you enough impetus to push a little harder. Comparing yourself to Donald Trump (if you’re not already a millionaire) is a waste of brain cells. Learning from those who are out of your league is a way to compare without being crushed. No matter what, we have something to learn from those around us, and it needn’t be crushing doubt and self-defeatism.

There. Don’t you feel better now?