Ballroom Dancing in a Hip-Hop Generation

Ballroom relationships - harder than real life?!

2007-02-26T23:29:00.001-05:00

It was toward the end of Fall 2005 when I was looking for a new partner. I asked my coach Gunnar to help me and with his usual wit and the desire to make fun of me he replied, "Why didn't you ask me something simpler like finding you a girlfriend or a wife?!"

He was right. At times, finding a good partner in ballroom dancing is much harder than the real life. Well, for some, there's nothing more real than dancing itself!

The craze for the cool

2007-02-24T08:58:00.001-05:00

"Dancers are an admirable bunch of people. The way they work. The stress is extraordinary. It's a difficult career. I think it's hellish; the fact that they are over the hill as they're emotionally maturing. That calls for a terrific strength of character." ~ Lady D. MacMillan

One of the things that remain constant in ballroom dancing is people's craze for learning "cool" moves. I know this well as I used to be like that some time. In fact, that was one of my motivations to join ballroom dance team at UMass; I wanted to learn more moves than what they taught us in the club. Later as I started competing, I wanted to learn more moves because that would make me win. Every time I didn't make it in the finals, I would attribute it to the others knowing more moves than I did. The coaches and veteran dancers kept telling me that it wasn't what we were doing, but how we were doing them mattered the most. I wanted to not believe them, but experience brought me down to the reality.

In the time that followed, I learned the importance of doing something well than doing a lot with lesser quality. I realized how easy it was to learn a "cool" move, but how difficult to train my body to shape for that move. And this wasn't just about techniques as many competitive dancers believe. My coach Gunnar told me about three levels: learning steps, learning techniques, and shaping your body. One can easily learn steps of say, silver level Waltz in a day; one takes a few weeks to learn and practice techniques for those steps, and it takes months to shape one's body to silver Waltz. How many of us think about this? Surely not the most of the beginners. In fact, in my experience I have seen this factors as a determining of the maturity of a dancer. Many "advance" dancers who are still crazy for cool moves are not mature enough and on the other hand, I have seen some beginners who are more "responsible" to their dancing.

What makes even serious competitive dancers drift toward learning more and more moves than working with their techniques and training their bodies? Simple reason, which is well-studied in psychology: principle of least effort. As noted before, training one's body takes a long time, whereas new steps can be learned in a session and one can see the "progress" immediately. After all, we're in this for fun, right?

I know about some East European and Russian studios where they teach their competitive dancers the "hard way" - drilling, drilling, and drilling. Take one step and just keep doing monotonous drillings to bring it to perfection and train the body. It's no surprise that they make it big in the world ballroom dance scene. On the other hand I know a lot many people who have "laid back" attitude for dancing. Of course they have lot of fun, but I don't get surprised when they realize their limitations. Learning cool moves is different than looking cool (alright, don't get started on the semantics now!).

Finally it comes down to choices. Nothing is bad, but each has its pros and cons. Going out for social dancing and doing cool moves is surely fun, but don't be surprised if you don't become a world champion. Being hard on you for training your body and doing boring drills instead of learning new moves may not make you socially popular, but have patience and down the line you are likely to get more attention on the floor even if you're doing basic moves.

We are all tools

2007-01-27T09:18:00.000-05:00

"The truest expression of a people is in its dance and in its music. Bodies never lie." ~ Agnes de Mille

Rachael Borini, a veteran dancer and a good friend of mine at UMass, would use this expression everytime we would do silly things, "we are all tools." And we used to do silly things quite often!

I want to use this point from a different view paraphrasing it "we are all instruments". It is not an unknown fact that for dancers, their bodies are their instruments or tools. More so for the ballroom dancers, who also touch the social aspect of dancing in quite an extraordinary way, their bodies become walking, talking billboards. And bodies never lie.

The other day I was waiting for the bus and I started dancing around a little bit to kill the time, and save myself from freezing in that cold, windy evening. There weren't many around there, but I still tried to hide away from everyone in order to keep away from annoying anyone. As the bus approached, somebody came up to me and asked what kind of dancing I was doing. I was surprised and a little embarrassed to know that somebody noticed that I was doing some kind of dancing even though I wasn't doing anything clear per say. It turned out that she was interested in ballroom dancing, but could not find out where to go and what to do. I tried to give her as many pointers as I could. Now I would look forward to seeing her on our Monday night social dancing.

This wasn't an unusual case. At UMass, I have seen such things all the time. In Fall 2005, we lost our regular dance space and were literally on the streets. This was one of the biggest downpoints of UMass Ballroom Dance Team, but there was a brighter side to it. Now that we had no particular space to dance, we were dancing all around the campus - any time, any place, that we could find. We became much more visible and people became more aware of our presence. This wasn't limited to the campus. Most of us were so bold, confident, and crazy that no matter where we went, we would break out in a dance without thinking who's watching and what they would think.

One time as we were stuck in a traffic jam, Lindsay and Jackie got out of my car and started dancing at the corner of the road. The cars behind me started cheering and honking for them! Many venues around the area were quite familiar with our flaring attitude about dancing. One of our favorite places was Route 9 Diner. As we walk in after a hard day/evening's work out, the staff would shine up seeing us. They knew we would not only eat there, but also laugh, dance, and do crazy things. After all, we were all tools!

Why do I dance?

2007-01-20T00:15:00.000-05:00

"I don't want people who want to dance, I want people who have to dance." ~ George Balanchine

One of the questions I like to ask in my first class with newcomers is "Why do you want to dance?" Of course, not everybody is bold or honest enough, but the answers and their patterns are always interesting.

Majority of guys don't have a clear or convincing answer. They remind me of myself when I was a rookie. If anyone had asked me the same question that time I might have said "'cause it's something that I haven't done before and I wanted to try", or probably with a little more honesty, "my friend dragged me here." One won't be considered very presumptuous for thinking many guys join dancing for girls. That, though, wasn't true for me. On the contrary, I wasn't very comfortable with being in a close proximity with "strange" girls - one of the reasons I had issues learning Waltz! Nonetheless, I have seen enough number of cases where a guy joined dancing to meet girls. Some time back at UMass when I was pairing up our newcomers, one guy came up to me and asked if I could change his partner since he didn't think she was "cute". Not very surprisingly, he quit dancing the moment he found a girlfriend.

Girls, on the other hand, usually have better and clearer answers. Many of them have also been previously exposed to some sort of dancing like ballet, jazz, tap, etc. I still see girls whose one of the motivations would be to meet guys, but I tend to regard that as just a natural pattern.

I also like to ask the same question once the newcomers finish their first semester, provided they continue dancing. The answers at that stage are much better and enlightening. From the initial fuzzy stage, many transform to saying "I love dancing", "It's so much fun", and even "I can't stop dancing." This is when I start getting a better idea about who's going to stay and who would leave soon.

I think it is important that dancers ask themselves the reason why they are dancing. I can identify three major categories based on the answer to this question. Each category is like a stage and each stage is a subset of the next stage.

I like to dance - these are usually social dancers. They enjoy dancing, but would not compromise much in their lives for it.
I want to dance - these folks are more definitive than just occasionally doing some dancing. They want to learn and do more. Given enough motivation, opportunities, and environment, they would train for competitive dancing.
I have to dance - these are hard-core dance lovers. They cannot survive without having a good doze of dancing. They would not only learn and train, but make dancing an integrated part of their lives. Hats off to these people!

When I teach dancing, nothing is better than having somebody from the last category. These people are self-motivated and much more disciplined than casual dancers. They are also "contagious" in that they inspire others too.

As far as I go, I disovered long back that I HAVE TO dance! :)

Ballroom - better than football

2007-01-10T00:19:00.000-05:00

I still remember the first time I met Matthew Ashby. It was the spring of 2004. On a charming early morning of a Saturday, UMass team was looking for the ballroom competition venue on Yale campus. It was my second competition and I had transformed from a casual dancer to a little more serious. While most of us were trying to locate the ballroom, Matthew came out of nowhere.

"Follow me." He knew what we were after. Who else is crazy enough to be wondering around with backpacks and cloth bags on an early Saturday morning on a college campus?! More likely, he could recognize us as he was also carrying the similar stuff and looks; he too was crazy!

Because of his friendly nature, I connected with him pretty soon. The whole day we were not only dancing, but also talking and joking around. As an advance dancer he was very kind to offer some helpful tips to a rookie like myself.

The next I saw him was at the MIT competition, which is usually the biggest competition of the year. While one gets lost in a huge crowd, especially newbies like me, Matthew dug me out from the haystack. Once again, he gave me some useful pointers on my dancing. This slowly became a tradition. Every compeition Matthew and I both would look out for each other. I'd ask him to watch me dancing or he would do it anyway. And then he would give me some feedback on how much I had improved from the last time he saw me and then what I should work on next. He was one of the friends who saw me growing up as a dancer.

And I remember there was one time when out of ordinary, he asked me to watch him at a competition and give feedback on how he was doing! I found it very flattering, but only little later I realized that it's nothing to be bragging about. This is how we do it in ballroom dancing. We help out each other without pride and prejudice - just like Matthew did for me. I also remember the time when I competed against Matthew. I can't remember what exactly he said, but I sure remember that he was proud of me for making it there from the rookie that he saw the first time. I was proud - not so much for making it there, but having an honor of dancing with Matthew.

In this regard, I consider ballroom dancing much better than football. Dancers don't win by bringing somebody down. They help out each other even if they are competitors. As Robert Lipsyte wrote in USA Today article, "Compared with football, a profession that lures many overweight delinquents, ballroom dancers are trim and civilized. The men seem unafraid, unlike football players, of having their manhood challenged, even though the women are capable of doing everything a man can do, and doing it while traveling backwards." He further says, "Dancers are my heroes, and I find sadly comic the bogus macho of those big-bodied boys who dance only after they knock someone down."

Dancing and self-realization

2007-01-03T11:31:00.000-05:00

Those who are born dancers would probably not realize how dancing shapes their lives, but the rest of us do experience this. To keep things simple, I would just talk about the physical layer. One of the first things I that happened to me physically, was the realization of some of the muscles and other body parts that I never knew existed in my body! "What? There are balls in my feet?" "What you mean my arms are not connected with my back?" "Use my inner thigh muscles to drag? Where are these muscles? In my inner thigh? Where's there?" The list can go on.

One of the other things that happened was the awareness of my posture. I started realizing how bad my posture was and actively corrected it. My best friend Bernie was also the best dancer on UMass team. He had given me this "homework": sit and walk with good posture - shoulders down, chin up, etc. Since I used to hang out with him all the time, he had many opportunities to critic on my posture (which mainly involved yelling at me in German tone - "where's your homework?" and punching my back or pushing my shoulders down). He also gave me some other "assigments" like practicing standing on my toes while waiting for the bus to work on calf muscles. I changed my office chair's setting so that it can no longer recline even a little bit.

It took me a while to develop the habit of being in a good posture without even thinking about it. Some of my friends who knew me before I started dancing did notice these changes. I'm not claiming I achieved perfection, but I do know that I've certainly changed.

In the time that followed in which I got opportunities to train others, I was told the similar experiences by others. Being a witness of their progress, I have also seen them from being a complete unaware about their posture and body parts to the point where they have a good realization of such things. Of course, one can easily escape this kind of training and changes. But I think it's really worth letting dance change your life.

The best compliment

2007-01-01T15:59:00.000-05:00

Long back I asked my coach Gunnar what was the best compliment that he ever got. He told me that as a dancer the best thing you could ever hear was when somebody comes up and tells you that you inspire them to dance.

I never forgot this little thing. I still believe, and try to live up to the philosophy, that the best thing I could do as a dancer is to inspire others to dance.

Together we win

2006-12-31T11:10:00.000-05:00

At UMass, it was the Thursday before MIT Open 2006 comp - the last day of practicing for the last comp of the year. I had spent almost the whole day in Totman, little for my own practices and mostly for working with others. Throughout the day people were walking in and out for practices. We all knew this was the last chance and we wanted to give it our best shot.

Toward the end of the day I was exhausted and so were the remaining dancers there: Paul, Lindsay, Big Jackie, Aliki, Clayton, and Dana. They were working on latin/rhythm dances and I was trying my best to give them some last minute pointers, though I knew that we can't change a lot now so close to the comp. I was out of ideas and wasn't sure what more I could do for them. At that moment something magical happened, or rather, started happening. Paul and Aliki were dancing and others were resting. Suddenly they started cheering for Paul and Aliki, and not just any "normal" cheering, but really pushing them to go full energy (including some explicitness, which I won't describe here!). They encouraged Aliki to look up and realize how hot she was and it worked like a miracle. I had been trying hard to make Aliki do the same, but was never successful and now without any of my "pep talks", she was doing what I would have loved her to do all along!

They got exhausted and as they rested another couple got on the "floor" and the rest of the two couples cheered them the same way. As I also participated in this elevating cheering, the trend continued couple after couple. Suddenly at the end of the day in that foyer, there was a high rise in the energy. Suddenly they all forgot their pains and exhaustion and really danced like they meant it! I watched everyone in awe - in a way they are competing against each other, but here they were - supporting each other, realizing that more than anything, they are fellow dancers and there is no better way of being a better dancer than to help and inspire other dancers. And may be they didn't realize this, but I could see the result of that wonderful practice at MIT comp. They all did awesome dancing.

I had hardly any role to play in this, but as a leader and a teacher, there's nothing better I can expect to do to others than to make them independent, make them aware of their abilities and talents. This incident taught me a lot and I hope others also learn something from this. Ballroom dancing is not just about being individually good; it's about working together with fellow dancers and getting better together. Nobody loses in this, it's a win-win situation.

Now I'm away from this amazing team where such miracles used to happen, but from such an experience (and many other), I feel very confident that my beloved team would keep having such magical moments.

Teaching vs. training/Teacher vs. coach

2006-12-31T10:53:00.000-05:00

I can identify two streams in ballroom dancing; one can actually argue that they are true in most of the sports. These two streams are teaching and coaching. While many times they are connected and difficult to distinguish from each other, we often find a very strong evidence for either of them and absent of the other.

Teaching is what is found most of the venues and times. I won't try to define teaching, but hopefully as I talk more about training and coaching, the difference and definitions should become clearer. I believe most of the studios and schools mainly focus on teaching for the most part and do very little on the training aspect. Teaching ususally involves introducing new material - steps, dances, or techniques - or revising and practicing already learned material. Training, on the other hand, shapes a dancer for that material. Training may not even involve any kind of dancing. Doing Yoga and Pilate could be part of training that would help a dancer shape his body, but doesn't teach anything about the dances that he would eventually be performing.

A coach differs from a teacher in the similar way. He would focus more on the training of the athlete than simply teaching him stuff or helping with the practices. Now we can all look to our own classes and practices and evaluate for ourselves if we are being taught or trained; if we have teachers or coaches. Once again, these things may be interconnected, but to the least, we could find out what are the proportions of these different parts. I believe for a serious competitive dancer, training on top of teaching and coaching in addition to teaching, is absolutely necessary.

Ballerina and Ballroom

2006-12-01T15:58:00.000-05:00

There are two clear groups that I can identify among ballerinas: those who love doing ballroom and those who want to stay away from it. The former group is easy to understand. Those who have done ballet for a reasonable amount of time in their lives, would naturally be able to understand some of the basic concepts of ballroom such as how to be balanced, how to look graceful, how to do pretty arms, etc. The other group consists of those who got sick of doing "too much ballet". They now want to break out of it and do the booty-shaking dances, viz., latin.

Ballerinas also face different issues while training for ballroom. You don't have to worry about teaching them the beauty, grace, and balance parts of ballroom, which are very difficult for others. However, ballerinas don't easily accept the idea of depending on someone for the movements. Their training has taught them to be independent and thus, the whole partnership idea and being led by somebody would make them uncomfortable. Once they get over these issues, there is no holding back for them!

Ballroom, eh?

2006-10-13T13:37:00.000-04:00

Most of the people don't even realize what ballroom is. Almost every time I teach a beginners class, I ask this question, "so what are the ballroom dances?" and invariably I get answers like rumba, cha-cha, salsa, bachata, merengue, and so on. I smile in my smirky way and as if I'm revealing a big secret, I would tell, "well, here's a news for you - rumba is not ballroom; cha-cha is not ballroom; salsa is not ballroom...". And then I tell them the only ballroom dances are waltz, tango, foxtrot, quickstep, and viennese waltz. Most of the other names that they said were actually latin dances. Being beginners, they are surely forgiven for this "misunderstanding", however, more than half of the non-beginners also make the same mistake. Many of them don't even do any ballroom dance and they call themselves ballroom dancers. I can't go around telling them that just because they are dancing those dances inside a ballroom doesn't make them ballroom dances. Many good studios explicitly state that they do ballroom and latin dances, whereas many others would just call themselves ballroom dancing venues while teaching and doing cha-cha and salsa (and even lindy hop and west coast swing and what not).

So what's a big deal about it? Is it just the name? I don't think so. People should realize that ballroom dancing is a whole different deal than latin and other forms of dancing. If you are doing only latin dances, then you may not even encounter the issues of actual ballroom dancing. The lessons and values learned from ballroom and latin dances differ at many points and one needs to recognize this.

The generation gap

2006-10-10T22:14:00.000-04:00

You can call me old fashioned, though I'm in late 20s. The reason while I could allow you to call me old fashioned is that even I'm in my 20s and thus, belong to the "current young generation", I'm far from being a part of the hip-hop culture. It's not that being a part of hip-hop culture defines one to be a member of the young generation, but its my resistance to this culture and advocacy of some "old values" that put me at a distance from this young generation. Later I may put things more politically correct way, but for now, let me bluntly say that I just don't see the point of those degrading-to-women lyrics, sexually provoking dances, oversized shirts, falling down jeans, and many such related things. In short, I clearly don't belong to the hip-hop generation.