Finesse, Not Force with Rock 'n' Roll Dance
Posted by: Gareth on: 00/00/0000 Category: advice-tips
Grace is better than grunt in Rock n Roll dance. Use finesse!
Wildly flinging your weight around in a neatly controlled fashion is a contradiction in terms. Doing it in in time to music is a forlorn hope for most people. Every expert in every form of physical pursuit from origami through to heavyweight wrestling will tell you that it is how you use your body that counts, not simply how much force you apply.
Dancers move with grace and style. Finesse is implied in the essential fact that dance is a form of art. Sheer force is more the method of the brute than the ballerina. If you want to impress on the dance floor, you need to know the difference between fine technique and merely throwing yourself about.
Male leads need to realise that it's more the skills of the neurosurgeon than the demolition labourer that make them a great dancer.
For a woman, a simple rule is that her weight should almost always be downwards rather than outwards. While it remains downwards, she and her partner will remain well in control. Flinging your weight outwards requires energy to achieve and further energy to stop yourself. This means extra energy expenditure without adding anything sensible to the dance. It risks losing control, over-balancing and looking untidy. Most importantly, it risks strain injuries through the shock of using yours and your partners arms as a brake. Men and women who dance in that fashion often manage only a few songs before needing to sit down and rest. That means they don't get much practice.
Female finesse
A woman can act like a spindle, spinning around while moving laterally across the dance floor. The technique of doing this must come from the legs rather than launching the upper body into the move and hoping that the lower body will somehow manage follow where it's meant to go. This takes practice to achieve, but it's not too hard to master for women with reasonable dance aptitude. It looks elegant, stylish and well controlled. Frankly, until a woman has learned the art of spinning on the spot, she ought not to be performing more than one turn or spin in succession. Men working with novice ladies need to be mindful of that.
Finesse for speed
Dancers often need speed. This comes as much from compactness as it does from motion control. It must be remembered that an untidy dancer who ends up travelling twice the distance of a tidy one must travel at twice the speed to arrive at the same point in the same length of time. This usually can't be accomplished so timing suffers badly.
Beginners most often attempt to gain speed by putting a lot more energy into the moves. Their dancing founders in a flash. It can resemble more a wild flail than a Fandango. The knack of generating speed comes through moving your body quickly rather than more energetically. In fact, fast Rock 'n' Roll when executed well doesn't actually require much more energy to perform than does medium pace dancing. This again, is finesse, not force.
Male finesse
Men should remember that launching a woman forcefully into a move can her to lose both balance and her self-control. Women should generally be self-propelled. In Rock n Roll dance, when the lady turns, the man can simply give the woman a cue to turn, then leave it to her to perform the move.
That doesn't mean that gentle help can't be given with some moves, but unfortunately 'gentle help' means so many different things to so many different people. If men observe their partners carefully they can get valuable clues as to whether or not the lady requires any muscular assistance from her lead. Some do, but many don't. Since women have to adjust to each different man they dance with, it's not unfair to expect that men should make some adjustments to suit the style of each lady.
Remember, finesse the move, don't brute force it. And here's a great tip for the guys - it just might help you 'finesse' the special lady you've had your eye on for a while.