‘I’m the leader, you’re the follower.’ Does that sentence make you want to grind your teeth? You’re not alone. Many people hate having to ‘surrender’ to another person to make the dance work.
What they usually don’t realize is that the ‘follower’ has a power of her own. The big moves might be mostly up to the leader, but the follower adds the embellishments that make up much of the dance’s personality.
In this article, we’ll change the way we look at ‘leaders’ and ‘followers’ on the ballroom dance floor. And find out the playing field is a lot more level than most people realize. Let’s start by looking at how the definitions have changed over the years.
Leading and following: Not what we think they mean
It’s important to realize that we are not talking about women obeying men here (at least, not anymore). Applying that definition to leading and following today is like thanking someone who calls your performance ‘awful’ (it used to literally mean ‘full of awe’, or ‘inspiring wonder’). There isn’t even a requirement on which sex leads and follows anymore.
Today, leading is more synonymous with ‘guiding’, while following is more like ‘interpreting’. The leader initiates a move, then stays with his partner and moves with her though the pattern. The follower receives the lead, then expresses it in a way that fits her personality.
True, this is planned out in advance if it’s a performance, but in a social dance, if you are holding out your hand to lead a turn and she decides to arm style instead, it’s up to you to adjust to her.
A game of mutual trust
When a leader and follower start dancing, they are entering into a tacit agreement: the leader gives the follower comfortable, enjoyable leads, and in return they don’t steal the show with their own styling. In other words, the leader is offering a better dance together than the follower would get alone.
Yes, the follower gives up some control over the dance. In return, he/she gets the increased power, connection, and teamwork that comes with moving in unison with another person. If the leader breaches the agreement by showing off at their partner's expense or causing harm, the partner is within their rights to leave him in the middle of the dance.
The leader is the coat hanger, the follower is the coat
I can always tell when there’s a good leader on the dance floor: The follower looks amazing. That’s because the leader’s job is to show off the follower. If the person leading is the strong sturdy coat hanger, the partner is the beautiful coat presented to onlookers, as if to say: ‘this is MY partner! Look how gorgeous they look!’
In some ways then, the follower gets the more fun part of the job, because they get to show off! The leader provides those opportunities, and the follower potentially makes themselves look worse if they don’t respond to them.
A note on body image
Let’s face it: some of us don’t like what we see when we look in the mirror. And we feel even worse when we let a partner - usually of the opposite sex - get near us. Understand that, while standards are stricter in the competitive dance world, most social dancers do not dance with you solely based on how flat your stomach is.
They dance with you based on how you MOVE, how you CONNECT. And that has nothing to do with how you look, believe me. One of the ‘lightest’ followers I’ve ever had the pleasure of dancing with weighed 300 pounds. But she carried herself so well I didn’t feel any of it.
The bottom line is, both sides gain more control of their own bodies, not each other’s. In the next article in this series, we look at the more technical details of how the follower can move in unison with her leader.