Thoughts and news about swing dancing in Ottawa
Posted by byron on 05.26.10 1:44PM under General
Why is that other dancer getting things faster than you? Winning contests while you can’t even make finals? It might not be talent. It must be just luck.
Swing Dynamite just came back from the Canadian Swing Championships, where over 30 of our team members, teachers, and students came to dance, compete, cheer and party. And every year that I see dancers compete for their first time at a major competition, I see the same secret hope: everyone wants to be that guy or girl. You know, the won who comes in and wins the very first competition they enter. From unknown to rock star in a heartbeat.
Of course, the chances of that are staggeringly low, even for a dancer with lots of true natural talent, because even if your dancing is that good, there’s still luck involved–whether you ended up with the right partner in the Jack ‘n Jill contest, loved or hated the songs they played, or lost your shoe in the fast round.
But beyond that, there’s a lot more LUCK behind “natural talent” than you might think.
We often talk about “talent” as though it were just a question of how much natural coordination and musical creativity you were born with. And that’s definitely an important part of it. But talent isn’t just that.
A lot of what we call “talent” is just what your natural instincts tell you–how to move, how to interpret the music. Some people naturally move more like a Tango dancer, others more like a Hip Hop dancer, and some people move more like golfers or pool sharks. This isn’t actually coordination–it’s simply that out of the infinite ways your body could choose to move, each of our brains starts off with an initial guess as to what’s going to work.
Similarly, we all react to music differently. If your natural instinct is to kick on the downbeat (eg. the 1), then you’re an instant sensation in Lindy Hop and Charleston, but as a ska or shag dancer you’ll need to make adjustments. Some dancers start off hearing the downbeat and upbeat in swing music as equally important, which causes them to seem “off-beat” to other swing dancers. But it’s not because they couldn’t find the beat–they just hear all of them!
Finally, there’s the connection. Lindy Hop has a more rhythmic connection, Balboa’s is very subtle, and West Coast Swing draws it out a lot. If you’re lucky, all of those make sense for each style of dance. But if you’re not lucky, you have a different instinct for how to connect–maybe you draw out the Lindy connection too much, or connect too rhythmically in WCS. It’s not a lack of coordination or musicality, it’s just that beginner’s luck didn’t work in your favour this time.
That’s why the same person could take a while to learn Tango, but learn Lindy Hop in a heartbeat–or the opposite.
The good news is that it’s not permanent by any stretch! All you need to do is to recognize where your instincts aren’t compatible with the dance style that you’re trying to learn, and to be willing to change. In fact, with some hard work your “unlucky” instincts will one day set you apart as a dancer, because you’ll have greater range of movement and interpretation.
Eventually, even the dancers with the most “talent” still have to work hard to become great dancers. Don’t worry too much about being a “natural” or having “talent.” After a few years, the hard work is all that matters.
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Posted by Emmanuel on 03.28.11 10:01 pm
I really like this article / view on things. I very much agree with it. Then again, I’m already better at Swing than I ever thought I would be, and I’m just getting started. It might take a lifetime, but one day, I’ll be even better than you Byron.
Posted by byron on 03.30.11 9:51 am
Good luck with that Emmanuel! It’s all about enthusiasm, fun, AND hard work. If you love swing dancing, love the music, AND love constantly trying to do things better… it just keeps improving!