"Just" Follow

"Just Follow"

They tell you to hold your arms a certain way... move a certain way.... do this... do that... wait, no, not that this..... Everyone has a different idea of the rules or an interpretation of someone else's rules.... I have found that as you grow as a dancer things change meanings, take different shapes, and morph until it just clicks. More and more, for me things are just clicking into place and its like seeing "the light." In my opinion, following is a much different, arguably a more difficult, thing to master than leading. Because after all, when you're leading you're providing the overall framework for the dance to take place. To me, the joys of following are what "just follow" is. I don't think of it as some kind of role I'm put into but a challenge to perfect and hone my abilities to interpret what a lead is asking me to do through moving his own body. Also it seems that the path to being a good follow is to learn to trust your own following abilities. There is a good chance that if you're paying attention to "just follow"ing and something goes wrong, the lead has set you up for it somewhere. Some of this will sound more like Tango than Lindy or Blues, but I believe it still applies. I think that when it comes down to it, in many partner dances there are these same conceptual threads that are woven through everything. They may exist in slightly different constructs but the language of dance seems, in my experience, to be universal. I'm going to categorize my points by using my Connect-Oppose-Release-

Momentum categories that you know as well as a few others that didn't fit but still are a part of the equation. These things all apply whether or not the movement that was attempted happened successfully or not. Follows should follow regardless if the lead is flubbing up or not. Do what you felt that you should do - good or bad. Leads can't learn otherwise.

Connect

• Frame

• One's frame should only be as tense or engaged as absolutely necessary to complete a given movement. Extra tension in your frame can cause problems elsewhere or prevent a leader from doing certain movements. Extra tension is more of a hindrance.
  
• Although I know it's self-preservation to some degree to hold a bit of extra tension when dancing with less experienced leads but when dancing with a lead that's good enough to be trusted you have to be able to get rid of the extra frame.
• You must always be seeking some kind of connection. Even if you're moving freely, you are searching for that connection and want to make it possible to re-connect with your leader again.
• What's better: to be a heavy, light, stiff, loose, etc follow?
• In my opinion, you have to be it all. Follows must have a dynamic frame that can match the leads frame at any given moment. Mastering this will lead to a whole new world of possibilities within a partnership. Being a dynamic follow really gives the leads room to lead all sorts of amazingly musical stuff that aren't even set pattern movements but random freezes and other really awesome things. I realized this after dancing with Skye for the first time. The reason he looks jerky is because his arm is loose when he doesn't need it, but when he needs it, he engages and if you match that engagement, really kick ass things can happen. Its exceedingly difficult to have dynamic frame 100% of the time, but its really the idea of dynamic frame that needs to be understood because the practical part of having it is just knowing about it and trying to have it. The more you try, the more often you'll succeed in having it.
  

Oppose

• Waiting
  
• Waiting really is two things, maintaining the connection with the lead that's been set up. If there's counter-balance, keep counter-balance. If theres compression, keep the compression. And wait for the next thing.
  
• There's a slight time-shift delay to following. You never want to be exactly in sync with the lead.
  
• Stretch

Release

• Its super important to not think during or after the release. You need to go with the flow of the lead here. It's at this critical stage where your brain really wants to assist the lead to make the dance go well. Things will go much better if you're able to control the impulses to help out here
  
• Don't anticipate or cause the release. Wait for it.
  

Momentum

• Continuation
  
• You need to continue both your linear and rotational momentum to its fullest, until you can't continue anymore. The continuation often persists during the lead of the next move and thus also causing a slight delay in your follow.
• Acceleration
• You always want to continue as you were doing when you were sent off. If you don't keep the same velocity as when you're let go from the lead, then he's less likely to pick you back up successfully.
• Trajectory
• You don't want to alter your trajectory. You need to continue in the path you were left in so that the dance can continue fluidly
  

Fluid Motion

• This goes with both horizontal and vertical movement. Even if you're pulsing really heavily, you need to make each vertical pulse fluid.
• The movement that is between the steps is where dancing actually happens. You spend a great majority of the time while dancing going from point to point.
  
• Both leads and follows need to focus on this because if the lead doesn't focus on fluid motion, the follows are less likely to want to dance with him and same goes for follows.
• Leads also need to be fluid to be sure to pay attention to the follows body mechanics.
  

Balance

• Stay over your own feet.
  
• Having good balance. See above. If you're over your center and your center is over your feet, you're pretty much guaranteed to be balanced.
  
• Caveat: If the lead takes you off of your center.

Dynamicism

• Matching the leads pulse on the fly will not only make it look like you're more in tune with your leader but you will be more in tune with your leader. If you find yourself pulsing a violently different rhythm than your lead then the best thing to do is to have much less pulse and picking his rhythm up the next available opportunity.
• See above about dynamic frame
• You want to be the kind of follow that can match anything that the lead is doing at any time. You want to be so in tune with everything that your frame is perfect for any movement, that you're so relaxed that dancing is effortless, and that you can do anything. This is the holy grail of following.
  

Stretch

• If you master waiting and opposing you'll find yourself getting a lot more stretch to your dance. It takes those two things working together in harmony to achieve proper stretch.
  

Style

• Style is anything that is done outside of the construct of leading and following.
  
• Styling is perfectly acceptable so long as it is a style that can be removed if need be.
  
• Follows can style any part of their bodies that is not currently being used for following.
• Caveat: If the styling interferes with the leads ability to actually lead you then it becomes less of a style and more of a situation of degrading technical ability.
• Once a follow learns to divorce her feet from her upper body a whole world of fun footwork comes available to her, however, this has a few catches.
• Catch 1) The follow needs to be certain that her lead isn't adversely affected by her footwork choices.
• Catch 2) The follow needs to have the skill to abort any footwork she's in the middle of to follow the lead should he chose to veto (or just not notice) your footwork.
• Comment 1): Sometimes leads will notice your cool footwork, pick up on it, and lead something that flows directly from it or chose to duplicate your pattern in his feet. This is okay.
  
• While doing stylings, pay attention to your lead and never stop dancing (like saying "I'm done, your turn.") You'll find that leads like to pick up on follows stylings and make them organic with the next thing that he leads and if you drop the idea altogether, you break the flow of the dance. (Yes, i realize it sounds like I'm contradicting myself.... but I'm not. I swear.)
  

Rules & Breaking them

• These points aren't meant to be dogmatic or anything they're observations based on my experiences and what I've deduced from others experiences.
  
• Common Rules you'll hear:
• No Waterskiing
• Waterskiing makes the follow heavy and uncontrollable also violating the concepts of balance.
  
• don't back lead
• This limits what leaders can do in a dance. Follows shoot themselves in the foot with wanting dancing to become more interesting so they back lead while not realizing that their lead can't lead interesting and cool stuff when the follow is controlling the dance.
  
• don't anticipate
• Anticipation also limits what leads can do, and how dynamic things can be in your dance. If you anticipate you can't stretch or delay.
  
• Don't "fix" something that appears to have gone "wrong." oftentimes it was completely intentional. "fixing" things also limits the dance because if you reacted differently than expected, then before you notice enough to "fix" things, the lead has already realized you're in a different place than he intended and he too is dealing with the situation.
  
• Simply put: It's not the follows problem. He either meant it or its his job to fix it.
  
• My thoughts on rule breaking
• One really needs to know and master the rules before they can break them. In fact, I don't know if its ever OK to break a rule specifically but bending them is acceptable in many cases. The key here is learning where its acceptable and how much of a bend you can put in the rule without hugely affecting the rule.