Dancing Tiresias

I've been swing dancing for about a year now, and from time to time I'll take classes as a follow - partially to learn the other side of the dance, and partially because we've had too many leads and I don't like standing around (btw, if any women or gender-role-dashing men want to come out and learn an awesome social dance, let me know). Because I've been on both sides of the swing-out, I started to notice something: the dance by and large doesn't come from the dancers.

When you look and see a really cool turn, you might think that the dancers are doing most of the work. But really, a lot of what is going on in dance class is learning to stop doing certain things - stop moving so much in a Lindy circle, stop cranking the follow's arm around, and so on. When I lead and I want my follow to do a certain turn, I simply lift their hand in a certain way. I thought that the follow was still doing most of the work. But then I tried following, and it felt like the lead was doing most of the work - I just followed a relatively simple direction, turned when I had to because of momentum, and kept my arm bent properly so as to keep both of us from getting injured.

So who was doing the work? No one, really. The lead gives a couple signals, the follow interprets a couple signals, both add in a couple things to keep the dance floor safe, but they aren't aware of most of what is going on in the dance. It happens. They are blind to the specific spins and twirls turning around them. A hand goes up, a foot goes forward, and there was a turn. They circle around, the hand supporting the back is removed, and the two are at opposite ends of a rubber band.

Momentum and music and the real dancers.

When we try to see what is going on, we miss it. It's already happening - we just need to know a few key touches to enter into the action. When we dance blindly, we see.