Rolfer, Dancer, Teacher




Examining Effects of Active Choice In Following




















Comments on: "Following as Active Choice: An Experiment in Wording" (8)

  1. Lew Shiner said:

    I think this is implied in what you’re saying, but I am reminded of Jason Laughlin’s admonition in tango to “lead, follow, follow through.” The idea being that the leader’s role is to make a suggestion, then pay attention to how the follower interprets that suggestion, and then react to what the follower actually did rather than what the leader may have imagined the follower would do.

    • Yep, it’s sort of a modification and building off of things. I do make some mention of the leads needing to pay attention to the follows, but for the most part I haven’t had to say much about it. Clearly stating that the follow has an active choice about how to interpret the lead seems to be unconsciously building the expectation in the leads that they have to be ready for things to not always go a specific way.

  2. This is great. I teach following as 50% of a team partnership, and over the past couple of years, tweaking wording, changing process and other little shifts, I have noticed even beginners picking up concepts, movement and confidence so much faster than ever before. I endorse your study 🙂 The bogus data is very helpful, too. Lends credibility.

  3. Tiffany Bennett said:

    What a wonderful explanation! I wish many of the instructors who are primarily leads would take this approach to teaching!

  4. Lara Bideyan said:

    I wonder the follow’s experiences with leads who did not take those classes, especially in a social dance. I am aware we need to start to teach this from somewhere but I think the follows might have unexpected problem with leads who do not expect follow to tweak with the rhythm or the move.

    • What I generally tell leads and follows in class is that my first goal dancing with someone is to make it not suck for yourself or your partner, and if it doesn’t suck, then work on making it awesome. When introducing new material, I generally tell students to try it this way first and on the social floor, if it starts to make the dance suck, then feel free to ditch it and figure out what does work in service of that first goal. Basically trying to build in the idea of adaptability which most people can relate to just from their general daily social interactions.

  5. I have also been playing with exactly this for the last two years. Wording choice does make a significant difference and I can confirm your bogus data. Follows do exhibit more confidence, it allows for dance partners to have a constructive conversation when a move doesn’t work out, and both partners are less distressed if/when a move “fails”. I’m very excited to learn I’m not the only one who has been doing this experiment 🙂 Yay us for allowing follows to feel like half of a whole!

  6. Jäger said:

    The way I have often taught it is that Leads are leading a movement, but are following the music, and following the Follow. The Follows are interpreting the leads (small L), interpreting the music, adding their own flavor, and telling the Leads where they want to go. Lesson number one always involves telling the Leads that if a Follow goes running off into some direction, even if it is all the way across the dance floor, their number one job at that moment is to match the Follows movement. There is more to it than that, but I’m just boiling it down here.
    I find it strange that 13-15 years ago, this seemed to be the common way of teaching, but I have not seen it taught by other instructors since, maybe 10 years ago. What happened 10 years ago that everyone suddenly forgot that there were _two_ people dancing?

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