Notes on the art of following
on the dance floor; through life
setting the scene
Sunday morning with a dear person. The room is basking in a warm, soft light. Have you ever witnessed this tone before? It seems different, special, or maybe it’s just the sweet feeling of having nothing to do. You put your favourite music on, the groovy rhythms you both adore. You are moving gently while you are making coffee. Silly moves, laughs, suddenly the two of you are dancing together. At first, each of you have your own way of moving, your own patterns. But hey, look: your moves started to synchronise. Even if you are still moving differently, you are hitting the same bits. You’ve created a connected space that fits both of you. It’s the groove space. Don’t lose the groove.
If you are staying there for longer, something else might emerge. One of you might feel the desire to initiate a move, to directly affect the way the other is moving. If the other is fully tuned in, they will follow, all while remaining in the groove zone, connected to the music.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
This natural leader-follower pattern is the basis of most partner dances of the world, such as tango, salsa, waltz, polka, west coast swing, you name it. The gist of these dances, especially in a social context, is that partners don’t need to learn any choreography beforehand - they can effectively just groove on music and follow the conventions of the dance style. Two people can meet for the first time and dance on a song they’ve never heard before, and they can do beautiful and crazy moves that look (and feel!) perfectly smooth. What makes this even possible?
I believe the magic ingredient is the art of following. This subtle art is not only for the follower to master. It’s also for the leader. And for us all, going through life.
My learnings come from the perspective of a salsa follower. If you go to a salsa class, you will notice the directions focus on the leading. The teacher explains some moves, the leaders learn how to do them. As the follower, you see what’s the expected outcome. For example, you’re going to turn twice now. You see it, you do it. But on the dance floor, things are very different. You don’t see what you are supposed to do, you are going to have to feel it. And in fact, there is nothing you are supposed to do in the first place.
Photo by Jakob Owens on Unsplash
an effortless conversation
The dance is an effortless conversation. One leads with clear intention, the other is aware and reacts accordingly. Notice how your partner communicates through their moves. Make sure they can hear you through yours. Maybe you need to speak a little louder than usual. However don’t try to mask your accent - your unique ways of showing up.
A good leader will make sure the dance is a dialogue, rather than their own monologue. They will give you a chance to say something back. They will ask you questions. They will then update their lead based on your answers.
No answer is wrong. If they wanted you to turn, but you didn’t feel it and you didn’t do it, it’s fine. It’s all good; you keep on dancing. You keep communicating with each other. Discovering each other.
a mistake is not a mistake until you cringe at it
Your body didn’t do the turn because it didn’t feel it. Maybe the lead wasn’t clear enough, or maybe your mood was asking for something different. But your mind noticed and it told you something like: Look, he wanted you to do this, and you didn’t do it! How bad! How CRINGE!
A mistake only becomes a mistake once you label it as such. If you cringe, you stop the flow. If you don’t, you get the chance to write the ending of your move. This is the same principle that governs jazz music, or any kind of improvisation art. I will let Miles Davis say it:
It's not the note you play that's the wrong note - it's the note you play afterwards that makes it right or wrong.
non-doing, yet not non-doing — wu wei
One of the biggest blockers of a follower is anticipating the next move of the leader. You guess somehow, through the signals you’re getting, that he’s probably gonna do x move. So you think about it, and your body will automatically tense up in anticipation of the move you predicted. But maybe the leader wanted something different, and suddenly it becomes really hard to follow what he intended. You tried to do something, while true following is a state of non-doing.
However, this state of non-doing by no means implies passivity. In fact it requires the highest level of active awareness, in which you are fully immersed in the present moment, and you are able to react in the most natural way, without getting in the way of yourself. While fully anchored in the now, there is no space to predict or to judge. Your body, rather than your brain circuitry, will do all the work for you, in the most effortless way. This is the Taoist principle of effortless action, or we wei, as this quote from Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching describes it:
The Tao never does anything,
yet through it all things are done.
The act of following does not imply lack of creativity. Rather, wu wei is the source of true creativity. There are so many valid ways you can follow in a dance, and letting your body decide which one of them to choose for you will surprise you with the most creative choices and impressive, unintentional styling.
technical mastery
Graceful following cannot unfold without technical skill though. The first time I’ve been on a salsa social, I didn’t know much salsa. I thought to myself: it will be easy, I just have to follow! But I didn’t know how to. I was getting confused by the rhythms, I couldn’t find ease in my body, I was tensing up unnecessarily. To allow yourself to gently and effortlessly follow, you have to be confident in the execution of the basic steps and understand the musical patterns.
embracing uncertainty
To be able to follow, you have to get really friendly with uncertainty. You don’t know where this dance is gonna take you, and you can’t control it. There will be moments when you feel like you have no clue what is going on, but you have to trust that exactly the right thing is happening - the thing that makes most sense. This is an exercise of acceptance. Let go of any expectations. Accept that out of all the infinity of possible movements, this exact one is happening right now. Enjoy it!
leading as following
As a follower on the dance floor, you can notice two very distinct kinds of leads: a type that feels rigid and a type that feels soft.
With the rigid type, you can follow everything, but it feels like there is no space for you to say anything back - all is fixed and decided by the leader. There is no entropy. A friend might see your dance, and he would tell you how amazing it looked. But did it feel amazing? Not so much. It felt like the leader danced with himself only, and you were just a mere instrument.
The soft lead, on the other hand, feels like you are equal participants in the conversation. And it’s not just a feeling, it’s the truth. The dance becomes an object you create together. In this case, the leading becomes in fact following the follower’s responses. As the leader, you find yourself in the flow, connected to your partner and the music, and you feel like you don’t need to think at all about what moves to do next - your body knows better. You just follow.
It goes without saying that, both on the dance floor and in real life, the best leaders are the soft leaders. They are not dictators. They are deeply connected to their followers, and decisions come to them naturally, without the need to exercise any force. Tao Te Ching explicitly talks about the effortless ways of leading, devoid of control and fixed plans.
The Tao nourishes by not forcing.
By not dominating, the Master leads.
If you want to be a great leader,
you must learn to follow the Tao.
Stop trying to control.
Let go of fixed plans and concepts,
and the world will govern itself.
through life
Modern life aggressively tells us to do stuff. To make empires, to lead, to grind, to make money, to buy, to sell. And while I do believe we have the ability to achieve so much in this life, I think living life happily is closer to the act of following. Life has so many parameters we cannot change and in order to navigate life gracefully it’s important to accept them as the lead of life, and follow with our best an most creative move.
This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t change. In fact, change comes precisely from following your truth, your internal state. So many frictions are born when we show resistance to what we really believe and feel deep down, when we are afraid to lose control, to simply follow. The action that serves us best is always the one we choose when we are completely in tune with ourselves and our surroundings.
So go learn your steps, let go of cringing at yourself, embrace uncertainty, trust your natural responses and let yourself follow!
Until next time, I’ll leave you with the iconic tango scene from Scent of a Woman (1992), where Donna learns the art of following.
No mistakes in the tango, darling, not like life. It’s simple. That’s what makes the tango so great. If you make a mistake, get all tangled up, just tango on.