Freedom For Followers And Other Nonsense

Freedom for Followers sounds great. Three words starting with an f in a row. Together with "leaving space" and "micromanaging the followers movements", we've got a couple of expressions that all somehow suggest that leaders are dominating, taking away liberty from the followers. It's time to see the full-fletched liberation of following in another light.

For those that this is still a gender issue. It is not. You can stop reading. For those that want to know what it is about - the "freedom of followers" implies that followers should do more than just following. It assumes that following is inferior to or less important than leading.

Why We Lead And Follow

Back in the days there was no such thing as leading and following as we know it today. Frankie Manning tells stories on how they told their partners what the next move was.

When Lindy Hop was still small we often shared events with other dances like West Coast Swing. You can read about the revival in a great series of articles called Artistry In Rhythm. A dance is very limited if it consists only out of moves and to have more freedom and probably also inspired from other dances, we started to develop leading and following techniques.

West Coast Swing vs. Lindy Hop

In West Coast Swing the follower decides a lot on what movements she is going for. WCS differs in many aspects to Lindy Hop but the key difference to this discussion is the speed that WCS is danced to. In both dances we speak about fast and slow. Tendency is that slow in Lindy Hop equals fast in West Coast Swing. Slow dancing leaves a lot more space to fill and a lot more time to catch up. If leaders left the same amount of space by not leading in Lindy Hop we would simply be lost. So we need to lead and follow all the time anyway. Now you can start a discussion to what degree things should be lead but this is neither the reason for the problem nor the point of this topic.
Also not the topic are those experiments where leaders and followers switch roles during a dance. There is a reason they stayed at an experimental stage.

It's About Dancing!

Leading and Following are two roles we have added to Lindy Hop so we can communicate better. What we have to keep in mind though is that Lindy Hop at first is two people dancing together - no matter what role they picked in the beginning. Teaching how to lead is a lot easier than teaching how to follow and that is why leaders receive more attention in class; I encourage balance. Both roles are equally valid and don't differ in the difficulty of integrating the role into the dancing.

Following is an art! Stop undervalueing it!

Thumbs up for our fellow dancers that follow!

Is Connection Part Of Leading and Following?

Not long ago someone asked the following question: Is (building up the) connection part of leading, or leading starts once the connection is established? (The question is not about how to connect or lead but focusing on the scope of the expressions). I really liked this question, and thought it might be interesting to more than just some facebookers.

It helps strongly to know how connection is built to answer how you use the word. Thus I'll quickly talk how the way you "create" connection is different depending on your technique. To me, you can seperate leading/following techniques into two big categories. In one you have those, where you have leading and following additionally to your dancing. It's like having a two layer cake. The other group of techniques is where leading and following is already incorporated in your dancing by using movements that are needed anyway.

Two-Layer Cake

From the two layer cake version you can derive both -  a yes and a no to the original question. The no is quite easy to derive. Since both parties know that they are using such a technique they are preparing themselves for dancing by tensing certain body parts, and I've seen instructors tell their students that follow to walk a little back to create the connection, based on a visual lead/hinting "seeing that the other one wants to start". The connection falls a little "out of the sky".
Assuming again the open position as a starter again, a leader could move back a bit to create tention, if the follower then reacts you've got a connection. In that case, it would be part of leading. It also show though that there is no leading without following in this group of techniques.

Eintopf

In the second group of techniques, where the solo body movement which is the dancing at the same time as it is the leading, you can derive also both answers. If the follower is just hanging out waiting for the leader to move, building up the connection is part of the dancing. Now if the follower is starting dancing herself and the leader is too, you have two solo body movements already going on. Adding a physical connection (e.g. holding hands) will have a connection that is created by those two solo body movements and thus not part of leading and following. 

The Answer

Since no matter what technique you use you have a clear nyes when it comes to if (building up) connection is actually part of leading and following. I like being honest with my students and rather give them a complete picture that is colorful instead of an incomplete black and white one, I'll use the word connection accordingly to the situation. Sometimes it is part of leading and following, sometimes it isn't.

How do you use the word connection in class? Comment below!