As promised, I am keeping you up-to-date on my journey through Ballroom Dance Teacher's College.
I always said ballroom
dancing brings out masculinity and femininity. Men and women are just plain wired
to think and behave differently, and that is so evident in ballroom dancing.
Yesterday at Dance Teacher’s
College, we were practicing our rise and fall in foxtrot and the teacher
described the look of the body during the side-together steps as a curved arc. Amanda
exclaimed, “Like a rainbow! A sparkly rainbow!” Jay just shook his head at this delightfully feminine analogy, which brought on a discussion of analogies. When teaching,
you want to try to use analogies that will make sense for who you are teaching
– be that a leader or a follower. Jay says he once used the analogy of a
snowplow to teach a lady, and she responded that he better come up with a
better analogy because she didn’t want to be thinking about snowplowing while
dancing. We laughed a lot at this. Then there’s the analogy of “putting on
the breaks,” which our instructor used successfully last waltz class for
the leaders to warn their ladies of a new directional movement. And apparently,
in another class an instructor had compared some action to punting a football.
I guess the analogies are only limited by your imagination!
Our differences make it so
natural for a man to be a leader and a woman to be a follower in dance. Like in
a relationship between a man and woman, the man initiates and the woman
responds. He’s the one to ask her out on a date, to get down on one knee and
propose. It doesn’t mean he uses aggression on her or that true masculinity
oppresses women. Not in the least. She has the freedom to choose how she will
respond to his lead and initiative.
An article I once read said the husband or
father should always have his eyes on the horizon, while the woman is the heart
of the home. In dancing, the man literally does have his eyes on the horizon of
the room in order to guide and maneuver the woman safely around the floor. The
woman’s focus is on being perceptive to his movements, responding with her own,
and creating beauty within the frame.
This is why it is so dang
hard to switch roles and lead as a woman and follow as a man! Probably the most
frustrating (because it is the hardest) task in dance teacher’s college is
reversing roles. Amanda and I get to lead Jay around the floor, while he has to
refrain from back-leading us and instead, following. It can be a hilarious and frustrating endeavor. It’s surprising how much concentration it takes to reverse roles in dancing with the opposite sex, because your natural impulse wants
to take over.
The point of this exercise is to hone our understanding of the dynamics of dance and enable us to effectively teach both leaders and followers.
Challenges like these are the making of good
teachers!
Christina, oh my, this takes me back to ballroom dance class with my husband before we were married, back in 1990 or 1991. It was quite an interesting time, and there were fewer guys than gals so I had to share, which I really didn't like all that much. :) I have to say, though, I really love what you've shared here about our differences and how they come out on the dance floor. I am so happy we can celebrate our differences, on not feel that, as women, we have to be men to feel worthy. God has given us a valued place in the world. I think the problem comes when the respective roles are used to hoard power over the other in ways that God would not have intended. When the order is right, when we live up to the potential God laid out, it is a beautiful thing!
ReplyDeleteWhat a beautiful reflection, Roxane. You've fathomed the very heart of what I was trying to express in words. Maybe you and your husband will try ballroom dancing again someday? If we lived closer, I would offer to give you lessons!
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