Adventures in Leading (Part I)

So about a week ago, I started actually trying to learn how to lead in blues. I ended up (unexpectedly) diving in face first, since the day after my first real attempt, I had to lead in a so-not-beginner progressive lesson, and the stuff we were doing throughout the class involved a crapload of elements which I had no idea how to lead (being that I couldn't really lead anything at all :P). I don't remember what it was like the first few months I started dancing, but since I can remember, dancing as a follow has involved basically no conscious thought on my part. So I never really pay much attention in lessons, since it's never particularly useful to do so. I just follow, and when something isn't working, I ask questions specific to the problems my partner and I are having. So in this class, in addition to not knowing how to lead anything that all the other leads already knew, I had to actually pay attention and take information into my brain for conscious retrieval. Epic. Fail. Being so unaccustomed to paying attention in dance class, I couldn't help but zone out every two seconds, which made remembering what the instructor was demonstrating impossible. Not that retaining it would've helped me much, since I didn't know how to lead any of the components anyway. Gah. But I tried (and tried, and tried), and it was impossibly hard, and by the end of the hour and a half my brain felt like it had short circuited and melted and was leaking out of my ears, and I wanted to collapse into a crumpled pile on the floor. Like, actually.

I think that's actually the most awful dance has ever made me feel (brain pain FTL!). In any case, I was really frustrated because the kind words of reassurance people were giving me (while I appreciated the sentiment) weren't helping anything. People seem to think that when I say I can't lead or am bad at leading, I mean I can't-and-won't-ever-be-able-to lead or lead well, in a boo-hoo, woe-is-me sort of way. That's not how I feel at all -- I just know that I currently don't know how to do anything, and I want to learn how to do stuff (properly), which requires a) being shown how to do stuff, and b) recognizing when I'm not doing it properly, so I can figure out how to fix it. This is why comments like "No, you're a good lead!" and "You'll be fine!" just frustrate and dishearten me more -- they're not constructive, don't actually help me get anywhere, and make me feel like I won't be able to get the kind of feedback I actually need in order to improve (i.e., hopeless :P).

But moving on... One observation I've made so far has to do with connection and counterbalance. As a salsa dancer, one of the biggest challenges for me as a follow in blues is connecting with my back to my lead's hand/arm. I've been told my closed position following is good (maybe from having done some tango back when I started dancing?), but that relies on connection through the front of the torso and through the legs. Once there's some space between me and my lead, we rely hugely on connection between his arm and my back, and that's something that's totally foreign to salsa -- being in almost constant opposition to one another, and trusting your partner to counterbalance you. (There's exactly one common move I can think of in salsa, called a Coca-Cola around here, that uses this same kind of connection. But even that doesn't require deliberate connection on the part of either lead or follow, since there's centripetal force there creating that connection whether you want it or not.)

This is the same thing that I'm having the most trouble with now that I'm trying to lead: I'm used to handling my own weight and keeping my own balance, and suddenly I have to handle not only my own weight, but also the weight of my follow -- and I have to do it almost all the time, because of the nature of the connection. I practiced leading a bunch in one night, and the next morning I woke up with my entire back and whole right side incredibly sore. (This despite forgetting to counterbalance my follow almost all the time, and almost toppling both of us over repeatedly as a result. :|) I made various semi-joking comments about having to work out if I want to be able to lead, but the fact that other blues leads I know who come from salsa had the same problem when they started in blues tells me that it isn't just that I'm a lame weakling -- the kind of connection in blues is indeed very different from salsa.

When just starting to learn how, trying to lead in a dance you already dance as a follow is like trying to write poetry in a language you've only just begun to learn.

Release me from your Kung-Fu Grip™.

There are already plenty of dance-floor etiquette guides and Top 10 "Do"s and "Don't"s lists out there, but having just been asked to contribute to another one has put me in a bit of a ranting mode, and I feel like posting this here.

I generally don't turn down dances unless I'm about to literally collapse from exhaustion, but there are a few things that make me not want to dance with a guy (even if it doesn't mean I'll refuse him as a result). Things like rhythm problems and a lot of leading-related issues can get frustrating sometimes, sure, but at the same time, the only way to improve on those things is to practice, which means dancing with as many people as you can. And I've certainly had plenty of fun dancing with complete beginners, so it's really not experience-related things that bother me.

The first two things are unpleasant, but not total deal-breakers. (And since my experience comes from dancing with guys, these are about guys, but they could just as easily apply to girls.)

Smelliness is something I really don't encounter very often, but when I do, I admit I try to avoid dancing with the person. I always feel guilty about it though, especially when I'd otherwise enjoy dances with said person. At the same time, I'm also one of those people who's really sensitive to perfume-y stuff (my biggest fear at a concert is ending up next to someone wearing perfume; I can barely breath, and it really does ruin the entire thing for me x_x), so dousing oneself in cologne is also not the answer. Either way, if I find myself trying to hold my breath (or awkwardly turn my head away) half the time we're dancing, I probably won't want to dance with the guy again any time soon.

We all get sweaty while dancing (if you're not sweaty, you're not dancing hard enough!), but guys who *always* end up with their shirts literally soaking wet should consider bringing as many changes of shirt as they need to make it through the night. I know guys who go through at least three in a night -- and the girls appreciate it! If that's not feasible for whatever reason, or if you simply don't want to, fine, but then don't draw the girl into tight closed position; I sweat enough myself, and don't need my clothes getting completely soaked in one dance, just from being held up against a guy's dripping-wet shirt. That said, even that is (more or less) forgivable... but the thing that really makes me not want to dance with a guy is being dripped on while dancing. Yes, dripped *on*. As in, "Hey, is there a leak in the ceiling?" If, by the end of a dance, shaking your head "no" would shower bystanders in your sweat, you need to invest in a towel and *use it* after each dance.

Now, both of these things have nothing to do with actual dancing, and I've danced with people who I would really like dancing with if not for those issues. So even if they'd make me not want to dance with a guy as much, I don't hold it against him and, in fact, may wish he would address the issue so I could dance with him more. This, however, does not apply my last point:

For me, the biggest no-no by far is hand-squeezing. Step on my feet, crash me into people, elbow me in the face -- whatever; I may not like it, and sure it may mean you need to work on control/attention or something (I know I sure do), but at least it's just an accident. As someone who plays guitar and therefore values her fingers, if a guy won't stop squeezing my hands (or at least make an obvious, significant effort) after I ask him to, I will not dance with him again, nor will I feel guilty about it. There's never any reason to close the thumbs down on a girl's fingers (especially when turning her!), let alone keep a death-grip on her hands the whole time. One could call this an experience-related issue, but unlike those other ways in which a guy can injure a girl, this one is completely within his control, regardless of what the girl or anyone else on the floor is doing. And unlike other aspects of rough leading, this one requires no feedback from your partner in order to fix it, so there's no excuse for doing it consistently. Honestly, if all you can do while concentrating on not crushing a girl's hands is the basic step and a right-hand turn, that's all you *should* be doing until you don't need to think about it anymore. I'll take a simple dance over injured fingers any day.

Unrequited dance (cont'd.)

So I pondered some time ago about the symmetry of partner dances and whether there can be a great disparity between how each partner perceives a dance in terms of enjoyment and (of more interest to me) connection/chemistry.

It seems that quite significant a disparity is possible. I find this unfortunate.

In the case where partner A experiences something in the dance that partner B doesn't, I have to wonder whether it could indeed be connection/chemistry at all that A feels, as opposed to enjoyment of another sort.

Not to suggest that I haven't been partner A (I certainly have, many times, at least with respect to general enjoyment), but there's something that bothers me about the idea of deriving enjoyment from a dance in the absence of chemistry with one's partner, especially if it's significantly asymmetrical. A very specific analogy comes to mind, but maybe I'll leave that for another time... In the meantime, I have more to ponder...

More on blues dancing... and (learning) dance of various sorts

I am currently super-hyped about the chance to blues dance again in the (very) near future, particularly after watching a bunch of great videos of blues dancing the other day.

This is the first example of blues dancing I ever saw, and I fell in love with it immediately.

The rest are videos I came across recently. The next couple videos are from the San Diego Fusion Exchange, so maybe they're not strictly blues (?)... but what I love about blues is that it totally doesn't matter. :]

Man, I love how this woman moves (same woman from the two videos above)...

Gah, 1:16 kills me! So awesome...

Love this one. This woman dances likes her limbs are weightless... beautiful. And the song... mm mm mm...

God, I love her lines at 1:28, and what they do afterwards at 1:34-ish. *_* Gorgeous dancing...

I really like these guys too; their style really appeals to me (and their choice of songs doesn't hurt :]):

Their style is pretty simple on the whole, but the overall feel is cool, and I love the little things they do with their feet (what the dude does at 1:25 *kills* me -- so awesome).

But now here's the interesting thing... Blues, this super free-form style, is making me want to learn technique like I've never wanted to before -- even moreso than when I was doing ballroom. In ballroom, it seems, technique is everything, and you really don't get the feel of the dance unless you're doing it properly. [I say this based solely on the eight-or-so months of ballroom I did, which was the first dancing I'd ever done, so I had nothing at all to compare to at that point. Maybe my impression would be different now... Not that I'm not still a Very Inexperienced Dancer, after only about 1.5 years total. Hehe.. So yeah: tablespoon of salt is warranted here, for sure. That is, don't be fooled into thinking that I know (or think I know) what I'm talking about at all. :P All of my dance-related ramblings are just my personal impressions/thoughts based on my own relatively meagre experience.]

So I was really into working on technique at that time. Once I stopped taking ballroom and was pretty much only dancing salsa socially, at first I really wanted to take salsa lessons to improve, but eventually (probably as my following improved over time, and I could at least squeak by dancing passably with most leads) that desire faded and I just wanted to have fun. Although... I suppose that was part of it, and the other part was that, when I hear salsa music, the way my body feels like moving is often at odds with how salsa styling seems to be commonly taught. (Or I just suck too much at consciously controlling my movements to find out, haha.) In any case, I didn't really feel like taking salsa lessons anymore (which was just as well, since I never did get around to taking any :|!), and since then I've been kind of just messing around on the dance floor, doing whatever the music is making me do (which can feel great, but, as I've written before, has actually become problematic).

But back to blues! So I learn about this whole "blues dancing" thing and fall in love with it instantly, since it's all about dancing the music and moving how you feel. Awesome! But seeing more examples of blues dancing, I see how much more can be expressed through it, and (unlike with salsa) I don't have anywhere close to the vocabulary of movement required to express the things I'm made to feel by the music I'd want to dance blues to. It's like being at a loss for words... like wanting to convey an idea to someone but not knowing how to put it, and watching these awesome videos is like reading something someone else has written that says exactly what you wanted to say, way better than you ever could have put it yourself. It makes me really want to improve my vocabulary and precision of movement, so I can say many more varied and nuanced things through dance.

... Too bad the reasons I never got around to taking salsa lessons when I wanted to still apply (and then some). :| Maybe in the spring I'll be able to squeeze in a lesson or workshop here and there...

Unrequited dance

I often wonder about the symmetry of partner dance experiences. Like, to what extent can there be unrecognized disparity between how each person perceives a given dance? For instance, if a very skilled lead dances with a girl who's just beginning to learn, the girl might have a really fun dance while the guy might be pretty bored or even frustrated (and vice versa, in the case of an experienced girl and inexperienced guy). Or aside from differences in skill level... Say if two people have two pretty different styles... maybe person A might like person B's style and enjoy the dance a lot, while B might find A's style difficult to dance with. In this kind of scenario, I wonder whether A would necessarily feel from B their lack of enjoyment, and/or whether this would affect A's experience/enjoyment of the dance.

But beyond simply enjoyment (or lack thereof), what I'm really curious about is connection. Not physical lead/follow connection... maybe "chemistry" is a better word for what I'm thinking of? I'm not entirely sure of what people generally mean when they talk about chemistry between partners, but I think the thing I have in mind (which I've tried before to explain) is something more specific, if not altogether different. It's something like being completely in tune with the other person, really *feeling* them in a way that's not even physical... Not just feeling their movement, but feeling how they're feeling the music -- even feeling how they want to express the way they're feeling the music. For me, occasionally this happens with salsa, but I've never felt such an intense connection with my partner as I have while dancing blues. It's unbelievable, and I really don't know how to describe it other than... intense.

Whenever I'm trying to think of how to describe it, the following always comes to mind: in Dynasty Warriors, two players can perform a special attack together if they each have full special-attack meters and they're standing close enough to one another; under those conditions, you see this crackling electricity-type thing between them, indicating that you can perform the dual attack:

Despite my tendency to see many aspects of life in terms of video games, I find it more than a little weird likening blues dancing to Dynasty Warriors... but it's such an apt depiction of how the connection I'm talking about feels! When it's strong, it is like this electricity... this direct link between each person's experience of the music. (I guess in this sense the analogy can be extended, since I can't imagine that this kind of connection could occur unless both people's individual music-experience-intensity meters are at least close to maxed. :P)

Anyway... Revelations of my gamer-nerdiness aside, I'm so curious as to whether one person can feel as if they have this kind of intense connection with their partner, while at the same time the other person is just dancing normally, without feeling anything out of the ordinary. Or can it indeed only happen when two people are each feeling the way the other is experiencing the music... when this magical kind of synchrony happens... when they're not just dancing concurrently -- or even "with" each other -- but dancing together through the music?

Sorry if I spray you.

I am faced with a bit of a meta-problem. I said before that I want to fix my broken following... or my conscious self does, anyway. My dancing self, I have since discovered... maybe not so much.

A couple weeks after I wrote about this growing following problem of mine, I got to hear (by proxy) what the director of one of the salsa dance companies around here thinks of my dancing, which pretty much exactly confirmed my suspicions (which in turn made me really happy, to know that my perception of things is fairly reflective of what at least one super-experienced lead feels from his end). Specifically, he said that I need to learn to channel my energy and that sometimes my following is disconnected, but, because I have good reflexes, I get away with it (all three of these things are exactly things that I'd been thinking myself). So this was further motivation to work on my following. But I think this is going to be a lot harder than I'd expected, and not for the reasons I'd have thought.

Tonight I had probably the most fun dancing that I've *ever* had in one night (that I can recall, anyway). Toward the beginning of the night, I was dancing with a friend of mine when he noticed my broken-ass following and tried to help me fix it. As soon as he held his hands up, palms-out and fingers splayed, and told me to place my fingertips on his, I was like "Yes! This is going to be such awesome following practice!" And it was -- he not only gave me some general feedback about specifically how my dancing insanity makes it hard for a guy to lead, but helped me practice following more responsively -- more connectedly. It was really great, and I definitely want to do more practice following like that, until it's basically second nature. But I realized, a handful of dances after I danced with him, that I'd completely forgotten about what we'd been working on and was dancing like I normally do (maybe a bit more exuberantly than usual, since I was insanely excited to be dancing after what seemed like forever since the last time...), and I was having a ridiculously fun time. And, later in the night, he asked me if I'd changed my style -- said that at some point he saw me dancing with this other dude, and it looked completely different -- really smooth, or something (as opposed to impossible-to-control-wild-creature-like). But I hadn't been doing anything other than what I normally do, and I told him something to the effect that it depends on the dude. I realized, though, specifically what it is.

I don't remember what it was like when I started, but these days I dance because I can't help it. Like, literally because I cannot contain myself. It's like... It's like I'm like a faucet, and when the music starts playing, the water starts running through the pipes. If I'm not dancing, the pressure builds up and I want to explode. If I'm dancing with someone, the way they dance and lead me sets how open the tap is. If I'm feeling particularly exuberant (or even just if the song is really good), that water is running like mad, and it has to go somewhere; if what they're doing with me allows me to express what has built up inside me, that tap is wide open and the water can flow freely, in a predictable way (i.e., straight out the tap). Sometimes how someone will lead me is very different from what my natural inclination would be in terms of moving with the music, but that movement ends up still being hugely effective means of expression for me -- still provides that same release (or sometimes even more), even though they've turned on a different tap altogether and channeled the water out a different way. On the other hand, if what they're doing with me doesn't open the tap enough, that pressure is still there, and the water starts bursting the pipes and spraying all over the place. *I* feel better, but water ends up going way more places than they expected when they opened the tap; sometimes it ends up in harmless places (if my insanity happens to not interfere or conflict with what they're trying to do as a lead), but other times it sprays all over them, and it's probably not much fun to dance all wet. :|

Here I need to clarify that it isn't in any way a matter of good versus bad leading/dancing, or anything like that -- it just comes down to compatibility in the ways we're each experiencing the music, which of course differs hugely from person to person.

But now I'm not sure what to do. Part of me (the thinking part) wants to improve as a follow, but part of me (the dancing part) just wants to enjoy dancing. There are enough leads who seem to be okay with my tendencies (and who work those taps in just the right way for me) that I can have Most Awesome Salsa Nights like the one I just had, despite my broken following. But at the same time, there are probably plenty of other leads out there who I'd have an amazing time dancing with as well, but whom I'm disinclined to ask in the first place because I don't want to spray water all over them... So I'm definitely limiting myself if I don't fix my following (or at least get over the guilty feeling, hehe).

I guess the best thing to do is just dance how I feel with people I can do that with freely (without spraying), and with others, take the opportunity to channel that extra pressure into concentrating on practicing my following.

Music through movement

I have no self control. It's getting to be a real problem in my dancing, I think, but I'm too afraid to ask any leads about it for fear that they'll confirm my suspicions. Instead, I am going to try to work on it under the assumption that it is indeed a problem.

In general, but especially when I haven't been dancing for a while, I can't control myself. Or, perhaps more accurately, I can't contain myself. If the music is really good, it seizes me by the feet (even if I'm almost collapsing with exhaustion), and I can't stop it. It just takes me on this ride, and I am at the mercy of the music. I haven't seen myself dance in a long time, but I am vaguely aware that my salsa continues to resemble salsa less and less the more I dance, and it's because of this. My friend told me the other day, "It looks like Danielle dancing", whatever that means. :|!

In any case, I'm not so much concerned about whether or not I look ridiculous, because it's absurdly fun (and, really, who wants to sacrifice fun for looking "good"? :P), but it's hurting my following. For the most part, I think (or hope) I follow alright despite whatever insanity the music and my feet are plotting together, but sometimes my weight happens to be momentarily on the foot opposite to the one it should be on for what the guy's trying to lead, at the exact moment that it *really* needs to be on the foot he expects (otherwise I just autocorrect as I go into the move). This is pretty rare, but happened a couple of times this weekend and kind of took me by surprise. I'm not sure how I can avoid this, short of not dancing to the rhythm I'm hearing and instead always sticking to the 1,2,3,5,6,7 (or 2,3,4,6,7,8, as the case may be), and... well, I'm not going to do that.

More common a scenario is that my body (not just my feet) is doing something with the music that's... let's say "suboptimal"... for what the guy is trying to lead. He can still lead it, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it must feel something like dancing with a wild creature that needs to be constantly reined in.

Worse is when the music makes me play with timing, but the dude either doesn't, or does something different/incompatible (timing-wise). Timing incompatibility deals Instant Death to following. :(

Beyond all this, I've become aware that, even when a dance isn't riddled with the above occurrences, I tend to dance with the music. Not my partner. Sure, my dance with the music is subject to constraints (i.e., the patterns the guy is leading), but in general the music forces itself to the forefront of my attention, and it's the main thing I'm aware of. It's incredibly difficult for me to disengage from the music -- to mentally block it out and stop listening altogether. When I do, however, I think my following improves dramatically; I can actually listen to my lead instead of him having to battle the music for control of me. It's such a different experience, listening to the guy instead of the music. I feel his movements and play off them, and it's so smooth... it's really nice. But without the music, it's like dancing in black and white instead of technicolour.

Now and then I have a dance in which I have no trouble dancing *with* my partner while still hearing the music... and it's really, really fun, having that kind of connection. Sometimes these are the rare instances of the guy feeling the music the same way I do, but I think it's more often that the guy just *exudes* the way he feels the music, so I can feel it through him and hear in the music what he's hearing. If that's the case, maybe I can remedy all of these issues not by consciously trying to contain myself (futility!), but by making a point of trying to hear the music through my partner instead of the speakers.

Blues dancing! (and TWO sets of free dance workshops this weekend!)

The other day I heard about something called "blues dancing" for the first time. No idea what it was. So I checked it out on YouTube, and man! I am now desperate to try this myself. Man oh man! I'm sure there must be some kind of structure to it, like with any partner dance (all those that I know of, anyway :|), but it *looks* so natural. Like pure musicality. It must feel so amazing to dance. *_*!

Watching that clip makes me think of something my brother wrote about what his favourite music is: "Whatever music makes me feel like I've just been punched in the soul. IN THE SOUL." Haha... Okay, maybe that quote isn't *entirely* applicable, but I like it. :P Seriously though, when I listen to a really good song, some parts just kill me -- like the climax of an amazing guitar solo... or a trombone just slinking its way in at the perfect moment... or a single, repeated note of a piano breaking a near-silence after a slow dénouement... I only wish I could properly describe the feeling I get. It's a physical reaction: it just grabs hold of me by the heart, and I have to fight the urge to writhe with the amazingness of the music. It's almost like cringing, only really, really good...

Okay, epic fail at describing it, but oh well. In any case, actually *dancing* to those awesome parts of music is even better. Orders of magnitude better. I mean dancing *to* them. Like a build-up comes, and then *pah!* -- you hit the accent, hard, right when the drums do. Soooooo good... Man, now I want to dance -- I was thinking of salsa here (to add the the three different genres of the songs I was thinking of above). Hehe. Anyway, blues dancing looks like it's full of that kind of thing. Actually dancing the music. Estou morrendo de vontade de tentar!

I'd looked around online, right after I heard of it, for blues dancing in Toronto, and didn't come up with much. But (coincidentally?) yesterday I started seeing something about a blues group on Facebook, wanting to promote blues dancing in Toronto! And today they announced that they're organizing a social in January!! :D!! WINNNN! So ridiculously excited for it. :D

Something else I'm excited for is this Sunday: City Dance Corps recently moved to a new location, and they're having an open house with free classes from noon to 5 pm! They're offering a whole bunch of styles, including house (!), which looks insanely hard but also ridiculously fun, and I've been wanting to try it for a while now. If that wasn't enough, I came across another all-afternoon free-lesson event, also this Sunday: the Tré Armstrong Give-Back Free Dance Workshop, which will not only include house (!), but also pop 'n' lock (!!) and capoeira (!!!!). I would wish these events were on different days so I could go to both, but this Sunday would be my only chance anyway: I'm already missing all the Christmas and Boxing Day salsa parties because I leave for Brasil next Monday. :]

Leadership skills

I've been trying to learn how to lead. Through my involvement with iGEM, amongst other things, I have a fair amount of experience with leading people. But *groups* of people. Not individual people, and certainly not while they're dancing. D:

Granted, it was only very recently that I started to try, but man oh man is it hard! Like frig! I think that I would struggle with it more than most follows, because it seems like most follows have at least a vague idea of the patterns they know... i.e., they actually know some patterns, to at least some sketchy extent. I imagine it's fairly common for a lead to ask a follow how to do a certain pattern and for the follow to not know how to teach the lead for it, but as a rule, follows seem to at least know their own steps for things, more or less. And I can *do* quite a number of things... I mean, I've only been at this for a year and a bit, so I definitely still consider myself a beginning dancer with a *ton* to learn, and my technique still sucks (actually, in a lot of ways, it's gotten much worse since I stopped taking ballroom in the spring :(!) -- but I'm at least at the point where, going out dancing salsa, I can follow most leads without too much trouble. But I have absolutely *no* idea what the hell I'm doing while I'm dancing. I don't even know how many times someone has asked me to show them something I just did, and I didn't have the faintest idea what it was that I'd just done. Like, four seconds earlier.

A friend of mine is continually shocked at the extent to which my dancing is devoid of conscious control. And I guess when it's brought to my attention, I find it kind of weird too. But then I think about it, and it's actually very much in keeping with other stuff for me... like for guitar, to show someone how to play a song that I know, I have to just play it myself, observe/figure out what I'm doing, and then show it to them. I don't keep any of that stuff in explicit memory at all, it seems. Only *while* I'm learning a song is my brain aware of what I have to do, and it tells my fingers to do it. But once my fingers have learned how to play the song, my brain is all, "Weeeell, looks like my job here is done!" and forgets the whole thing. Same goes for dance: it's been quite a while since I've been to any kind of patterns class*, but I usually learn the patterns pretty quickly and often end up helping my partner figure out how to lead it. But once we've got it, and *I* no longer have to worry about what it is that we're doing, my brain seems to promptly discard that no-longer-useful information and leave my body to do what it knows how to do. (*I guess I don't like patterns classes because, being a follow (and therefore entirely subject to the whim of my lead), I can't actually use them myself, so I invariably forget them anyway. So I stopped taking them once I no longer had a partner with whom I was learning on an ongoing basis -- it just seemed kind of pointless... But I must be missing something here: so many girls go to patterns classes, so there must be something to be gained by follows by taking them! Some benefit I'm just ignorant of. Someone enlighten me! :|!)

For practical purposes this mindless dancing has always seemed to work well enough for me, but a) there's something slightly disconcerting about having little-to-no conscious control of my body while I'm dancing :|, and b) now that I want to learn how to lead, I have no idea what there even *is* out there to be learned, in terms of what patterns exist -- patterns that I do all the time as a follow.

In any case, patterns classes just gained some obvious value for me, and I think I'm going to start taking some beginner ones with UW Mambo Club next term. I'll just buy a pack of these so the dudes don't try to dance with me:

I'm thinking "Scoundrel", in black.