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There are few activities that are as versatile as dance to explain skill development. And you need not even dance to learn the steps.

With any complex activity, there is a range of skills required in order to do it well and mastery requires all to be at a very high level. But before we can master anything, the basics are necessary. Dance is a fantastic way to understand how these components come together.

I dance Salsa, Bachata and Kizomba and each has their own style, variations and divergences over time but all have common aspects with just about all other dances.

**Steps and patterns**

When you first go to a dance class, they are likely to teach you the basic step. This is often what the dance centres around and nearly all variation is born from it. This is the vocabulary of the dance. The words available for the conversation and the grammar.

**Rhythm**

This is the fluency, and style of the dance. For example in Salsa, the style and feel of the dance changes significantly depending on whether it is danced on the 1, 2 or 3 beat. Look at it like presentation style. Timing is everything here.

**Leading and signalling**

These are couple dances so the man leads the woman (typically) and an experienced follower can quickly tell the level of the leader in the first steps. To be a good leader, the motions must be soft, firm, sharp, solid... Yes, it isn't easy and much of it is learned through trial and error. Not only that, each follow is different and adjustment is required.

**Following**

The job of the follower is not easy either. My wife is a very light follow and my lead is a 'little messy' but because she knows it and has experience with it, she can adjust for it. That takes skill. A good follow on the dance floor follows the mistakes in the lead and generally, this can maintain flow even though not 'correct'.

These are the core components of most dances and there are many, many smaller parts that have large effects on the dance itself. Posture, head position, eye contact, hand holds, flexibility, foot work, shines...

Now everyone starts as a beginner in this life yet each may be predisposed to different areas and are more inclined to develop those they enjoy and ignore or leave undeveloped the other points.

For example in Finland, the way they learn most things is from the technical aspect and they spend a lot of time learning patterns. They generally have the view, the more you know the better. Observe and you will see many fancy moves, not in time with the music and a clunky lead that either forces the follower into position (painful)or mis-signals and the follower ends up in an unexpected position. For the step-based follower, they generally assume what the next step will be and will move before any impetus has come from the lead and often they are wrong. How this looks on the dance floor is awkward and messy. 

The rhythmic-based lead can look good but without the steps, looks to be dancing with themselves or at least, dancing a different dance than their partner. There are some more musically inclined people that hear the slightest variation or instrument in the music and move with it, but do not translate it through to their partner. The follower that does this is near impossible to lead as they move randomly.

There are those that lead brilliantly but do not have the steps or rhythm. They essentially move their arms while the follower dances and the very light follower that does not know steps or rhythm just floats about the dance floor in a nice, smooth walk.

To dance basically well, no core component can be ignored completely. All need to reach a certain level however while learning, it is understood by all that this has to take place. The problem comes when experienced dancers have foregone aspects of their role. For some, they have the steps, the rhythm but their lead is bad, others rhythm and lead, no step variation.    

Very experienced dancers can tell nearly everything from the way their partner dances the basic step, the way their posture shifts and the weight travels from foot to foot. In those first few steps, the follower can now the level, confidence and probable likelihood of a good experience or not and the lead can understand how complicated they can get, how fast they can spin or free they can move.

As I said earlier, the dance is a conversation and it takes two to work in unison, understand each other and trust each other yet, they may never have even spoken together before. This takes skill on both dancers part and in the first few steps they feel each other out for strength and weakness. For those few minutes, they are partners that have chosen to work on a project together.

When people dance, it is a translation of the music into movement and those that do it well tell the story of the sounds they hear. Sometimes it is flirty and full of fun, sometimes passionate and sometimes bitter sweet but each has a role to play and in order to play their part well, they have to spend the time investing deeply into it.

Dance is a brilliant tool for understanding the components of learning any skillset and I ill add some examples hopefully over time. If one breaks any new hobby or job into the core components first and makes sure they build a strong foundation, all of the variation, the style and possibility has a leg to stand on.

If you haven't tried to learn to dance, give it a go. It is fun and there are some great people to meet and an endless supply of music and variation to learn. But be warned, you can travel the world going from congress to party and start basing travel plans on dance opportunities. I know.

Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

The picture @momone took in Paris and we were dancing on the banks of the Seine. We happened to run into one of our dance addict friends. She spends several months of the year travelling the world dancing and had just come from a Salsa festival in Barcelona to attend a Bachata festival in Paris and was then moving on to another in Portugal. She travels so much dancing I am not even sure which country she calls home anymore.

 

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