Movin' Easy Dancewear

Christine Avanti, nutitionist and weight loss expert weighs in on dancing and calories.  She says, “Dancing is a phenomenal cardiovascular weight loss activity.” 

This is nothing new to Dance Boot Camps that are popular with the total go-for-it set.  Dancing is the complete workout accessing every muscle in isolation and in every conceivable combination.

Avanti says that in the 10 weeks of Dancing with the Stars Li’l Kim has lost 2 inches in the waist and 2 inches on her hips.  She uses 1100 calories in 4 hours and if she did that 6 days a week, she could eat 6 pints of ice cream without gaining a pound.

Lawrence Taylor, football player turned dancer, uses a massive 15000 calories a week and has lost 15 pounds.

What is the most frequent comment of the stars staying or leaving the show?

Dancing has changed my life.  It is said in many ways, the best thing that has happened to me, I have gone to the next level, the chance to grow personally, I am hooked on dancing, found new parts of myself, allowed myself to come out, feel more passion, really learn to go fot it, or I will never be the same.

Dancing is a yes, whether from accomplished athletes, seasoned performers in other genres, or never moved before geeks.  Dancing is a doorway to a personal and physical clarity that goes beyond athleticism, beyond tricks and tasks.

In the past, getting to that dance doorway has been a rocky path for men and some women.  Dancing with the Stars has opened the pathways to the dance door.  All ages, genders, hearing abilities, and even people with missing limbs have a new incentive to dance.

Ready to go, many people have been waiting for the excuse to fully commit their bodies to the mind bending exercise of dance.  For others taking the step through that doorway means jumping over obstacles such as false fears about clumsiness and lack of rhythm, or men’s fears of women’s judgement.

Beyond the obstacles comes the learning curve of entering the dance that requires full commitment of body, mind, and spirit.  The brain must be completely rebuilt to connect planning with anticipation with balance with position in space with meter, rhythm, and pace connected with every muscle and nerve connected to large and small muscle groups and, with feeling and passion and the courage to move the entire body full out.

All of that and combine the brain maps for awareness and communicating with a partner or with a group.  Challenge, yes.  Change your life, yes.  Dancing with the Stars tells it all.

Dancing Stars go for the Life.  They get more life by learning to dance.

The stiff learn to relax into the fun of movement.

The clunky sometimes just learn to go where the dance takes them, silly or angry.

The athletic power houses learn to be more of themselves, more expressive, more passionate.  The men expand the possibilities of exuberant movement.  The women discover a femininity they never knew.

Subtle and simple come into vocabularies that were built on athletic tricks.  Bold and gentle are included in the same sentence.

The driven learn the importance of connecting with a partner, really responding to each other, traveling together.

The bull riders learn something more frightening than flying over a powerful animal.  Ty Murry even says, “Everyone can use more Ballroom.”

The cool learn that going for it completely means that what counts is focus every moment.

 Everyone learns to work harder and to smile more.   

Everyone learns because they want more life, more, more, more and dancing takes them there.

Supporting Ginger in Ballroom dancing demands that I show her off and do that with the brightest energy I have.  The Ballroom dancers I admire share a delight of interacting together.  That seems obvious, but I have to make so many shifts to get to that place.

First of course is what seems like a long process of getting comfortable with the style and moves of the dance.  Beyond that, the will to lead is right up there at top priority.  Unlike other dances, Ballroom depends on the man to anticipate, communicate, and initiate every transition in the dance.  Doing all of that with confidence and delight is still not enough.

Crucial yet illusive is the shift to generosity that happens with long term partners.  Looking at a real partnership, there is a glow, a union that reflects attention that not only honors the partner as “hot” but also generously supports their unique flourish.

So far, I am so caught up in getting it right that I have not reached for this stretch.  Before I make the leap though I know that underlying everything I need to be willing to be generous.  That means, I have to want for Ginger that her uniqueness come out.

And whoops, in order to do that, I have to want for my uniqueness, my strength to come out in the lead as well as in the movements of the dance.

This is a commitment that I have needed to make in all my dancing.  The journey has been rich and rewarding.  In improvisational dance, I explored the give and take of creating with other dancers, accompanying each other into a challenging unknown.  In Scandinavian dancing, I loved the sharing of responsibility of man and woman in the “he goes, she goes” twirls.  In Contact Improvisation, I relished finding the sweet spot with a partner and following the flight of where it led us.

Ballroom is the opportunity I need right now to come fully to myself and to enter my relationship with Ginger in a new way.

What is so great about social dancing is that everyone is there to learn, not to criticize.  And everyone is in the same boat of being a little awkward; otherwise they would be in an advanced class showing us their great moves.  What I do first is to look around at how excited everyone is to “get” this.

Then my job is to get comfortable with my dancing. That is a tall order since I major in clunky.  Here are two clues that help.  First, I go through the awkward steps, I count, I stamp, letting my clunk be what it is clunky.  Second, I try to have fun with each partner learning from what they do better than me and adding my little bit to what they do not remember.

Learning those first steps is challenging.  My brain screams that there is no space for this much fun and is outraged that I would demand that synapses wake up from nose to toes.  So what I have to do is be satisfied to catch only the first two beats, left foot-right foot.  Got it.  That’s all I got, left-right.  OK.

I concentrate on what I know.  Then the next time around I add one more beat, left-right-left.  Wow.  I am doing great.  Calm down mind, we are getting it, just reserve a space for this much, ok?  Anyway, you get the idea of how my mind squeaks and creaks as my brain connects.

Basic to remember is that even the great movers are vulnerable just being there to get the next step.  Here is how I learn from the better dancers in the class.  I learn from my partner, I watch and follow the steps of the ones who learn faster, I stand close to the better dancers because they ask the right questions and get the correct step from the teacher.

Next clue is to do what the better dancers do.  They try the step over and over.  When the music stops they take the last opportunity to do it again before the teacher starts talking.  While the teacher is demonstrating, they are doing the step while watching.  While the teacher is correcting one student they are either following the step alone or in dance position with their partner.

Even with all this, anything beyond the basic step goes literally over my head.  So I have to have so much fun with the basic step that my partner is not bored.

Learning dance is the best because no matter how complicated it looks, all it takes is learning one little simple step after another.  When all those simple steps go together, the result is always surprising.

Before learning ballroom dancing, I spent years doing Scandinavian couple dances and Contra dancing which is an earlier type of square dance.  Of course my basic West Texas two step was a main stay.  Using only that basic step, I loved to make it smooth or make the polka fly across the floor without any of the exciting turns that are taught today.

When I started learning ballroom dance, I could not understand why it took so long to get it.  Learning any dance took some real concentration and work for me, but I could not understand why I felt more comfortable with learning the “folk” versions of Country Western, Scandinavian, Early American Contra, and numerous others from Hungarian to Israeli.

These “folk” dances were easier for me because I learned one pattern that repeated over and over.  After several lessons of putting together usually no more than four parts, I could repeat the one sequence and have the entire dance.  So in one song, I got to practice the one step a hundred times. By repetition number fifty, I was beginning to be comfortable.

In ballroom dancing, if I repeat the same basic pattern over and over, it gets boring for me or for my partner.  Why does the repetition of the “folk” versions not get boring?  I think the answer has to do with the purpose and the focus.

The purpose of “folk” dancing is a community activity whereas ballroom dancing is exploring the individual variations that this one couple can explore.  The focus is different too.  The music is main focus in the “folk” dances.  The repetition is for the purpose of experiencing the music.  In ballroom, the music is the accompaniment for a series of movement explorations of partner with partner.  The complexity of these explorations means that a leader prepares the way and takes the couple there.  The communication in the ballroom couple is totally different from most of the “folk” dances.

Can Anyone Social Dance? The answer is yes.  Anyone can social dance.  In one or two lessons, anyone can learn the basic steps for the Country Western two step to Salsa, from ChaCha to the Scandinavian Hambo.  Learn the basic steps and right then and there we can dance to the music.

Some like me will be stumbling to find the beat or acting like a big boy stomping flat a huge mound of dirt.  I have sat and watched many beginner classes and the differences in the way we all move is delightful.  The fact is everyone is dancing no matter what their style of cool or awkwardness.

The biggest learning curve is being comfortable with our delightful differences.  I am the worst example because I can not remember anything beyond the first two beats.  And I really want my partner to feel comfortable which as a beginner is hard because I am wondering WHEN I will step on her feet and I do not let her know ahead of time what I am doing next.

The best dancing times come when I begin to get comfortable with my own clumsiness and just have fun with my partner.

Heidi at Tapestry Dance Academy says:  “We are a home for so many different dance groups now, Uptown Dance, Austin Dance Arts and their Austin Jazz Ballet Company, Backstage Dance School, Nia, Classical Indian dance, Kid’s Acting, the Lindy Project, African Dancing and Drumming, the Austin Tango Connection, Belly dancing, and a Gabriel Roth 5 rhythms group.

  “Tapestry is really conducive to making connections.  Between all these groups there is not a sense of competition.  It feels so good here.”

Breakthrough.  Brain splash.  Little step.  Big step.  Finally I remember a sequence.  The feeling is ecstatic.  Rudy says, get rid of the deer in the head lights look.  Yet deer I am, running into a light that keeps me going.  Cha Cha is the form which is too fast for me to remember piece at a time.  The thought, the move, the feeling, the attitude have to all come at once.

As usual I have to enter as if leaping off a cliff, knowing nothing.  Yet now there are patterns there without the delay of a slow computer.  The delight of dancing as usual is that by entering I override any doubts or fears of getting something right or wrong.  There I am with the dance.  And now the dance is with me carrying the anticipation of what is coming, the knowledge of how to signal the lead to Ginger, and where to go with my whole body.

All of this is very rough and at a beginning stage, clunky to say the least.  Rudy has his work cut out to get me to a new level.  And a now, once more with feeling.

I have been ballroom dancing for four years.  My memory for movement is based almost solely on the kinesthetic feel of how my body moves rather than an architectural matrix or geometric point-line plot.

Verbal descriptions do not stay with me either.  I attempt to write down the steps and cues but I am a terrible student in following them.  So I end up dancing an approximation of what the pattern is like, and you can understand why my dancing would be plodding, tentative at best.

I cannot imagine what it must be like for Ginger to dance with me, my lead caught up in a thousand messages of trying to feel the move and connect in with the memory of where that feeling goes next on the dance floor.

Even with all of this, I love dancing.  The pleasure and brain-body connection are tops.  And I learn new ways to connect with Ginger in every session.  But clunky I am, and I continue to take dancing so that Ginger and I will move together comfortably and have more moments of delight.

At this point, I only have clues to going beyond this clunky state.  My teachers give me the principles very clearly.  They say it, they demonstrate it, they dance with me so I can feel it, and they tweek my practices over and over.

I am making progress, a little each week, yet the clues still go over my head and my body does not respond like I imagine it should.  All of this sounds like basic stuff but here are some of the clues I am working with:

Move the arms as a part of my body-I remember sometimes.  My shoulders and hips seem to relax when my arms get into the act.

Don’t run off and leave my partner-This sounds like common sense except that I work entirely too hard getting the pattern of the feet, torso, and head.  Once I turn to my partner before doing a simple Cha-Cha crossover, I have avoided taking off on my own basically leaving my partner behind.

 Listen to the music-I love music.  I listen.  And when I dance, I leap into some no rhythm land.  The clue now is to listen for a beginning and a secondary section, or a high energy phrase and a lower energy one, basically listening to the return of the familiar part of the tune as the beginning.

Get the feeling-Now is the time to put my whole self into the dance and to connect with Ginger.  OK.

Stop trying to pull my partner around-For some reason, I keep hearing that I need to move with my whole body and let Ginger respond rather than trying to pull and push her to the next destination.

Stop trying to step around my partner-Seems like when I try not to step on her feet, I get more clumsy.   The clue I do not understand is about moving straight ahead with my whole body and guiding rather than trying to push forward.

Hopefully I will put all of this together sometime…