Dancing Is To Create, Not To Reproduce.

Have you noticed that after you have been dancing a while the same dance style, you have a tendency to stat repeating yourself again and again? At least I have that tendency. There's like thousands of things you can do with your hands and yet I end up doing the exact same styling for each turn. How boring is that?! Similarly, there's thousands of variations of dance patterns and yet I constantly hear leaders (including me when I lead) go: if I dance more than couple of dances with someone I get bored of my own repetition of dance figures. So how do you prevent yourself (and everyone else) of getting bored?

The thing about social partner dancing is that since you change your dance partner constantly, you can repeat the same things over and over again without getting too frustrated of your repetition, because the same things feel different with different partners. The new partner is the new element in your dancing and thus you can fool yourself into thinking that you're being innovative with your dancing even though in the reality you still put that hand to exactly to the same position every single time. Sure, there's nothing wrong with that signature styling of yours, but how about trying something new every now and then?

I got a nice wake up call of my repetition tendency when practicing with Daniel few weeks back. Not only did he tell straight to my face that I should do something new (and kindly reminded me of that as many times as needed for it to get through) but also the way we danced together made me want to explore some new possibilities I had been ignoring before. To be honest, I can't remember the last time I felt so inspired when dancing. I noticed the increase in my inspiration levels when dancing with other dancers too, though my playful attempts to do something out of ordinary seemed to be sometimes regarded strange or amusing. However, this made dancing feel more fun and yet made me think of more ways to move to the music.

Coincidentally (or maybe not?) the following weeks we had quite a different zouk classes; it was not the normal let's-work-on-this-figure/technique, but about finding inspiration. As they put it: if there is a tree full of leaves we can shape it to different kind of forms, but if there are no leaves, there's nothing to shape. I must agree that cutting the raw edges out from a dancer's own way of moving and interpreting the music is a way easier task than trying to put something totally new there; no one can really tell you that this is the way you should interpret the music, nor there is only a one way of doing that. It's how the music (or something/someone) inspires you to move - and that inspiration needs to arise from inside of the dancer.

So what made me suddenly feel so much more inspired back then? Maybe it was the playful atmosphere we were able to create in our dancing that opened my eyes to the fact that dancing is not a serious thing, but rather an exploration or a play between two dancers to create - not to reproduce - something in that very moment for that specific song. Too often I have been worried of making 'mistakes' with interpreting the lead and that has drawn much of my concentration from interpreting the music. On the contrary, if something went 'wrong' with Daniel, e.g. I didn't understand his lead in the exact way he was trying to tell that to me, I could see him getting excited about the situation and of what new possibilities that situation could offer. This attitude made me feel liberated to try out whatever came into my mind since there was no need of being worried of making 'mistakes' - it was just part of the game. In this way we could dance together literally for hours without neither of us getting bored because we both constantly wanted to try out new things. Some things worked while others didn't, but who cares? The point was to get inspired and have fun with it.

One thing that has previously proven to work for me to find more inspiration, it to try out different dance styles. Every dance style has its own interesting tricks, stylings and way of movement and those can open your eyes to some modifications and creations of your own. Not long ago I got a comment that WCS has changed the way I listen to music while dancing not only WCS but also Zouk; or when I was taking voguing classes I constantly tried to put some elements of that into other dance styles. It is like adding vocabulary to your dance dictionary.

Have you heard of the quote 'to be inspired is great but to inspire is an honor'? Certainly, the best compliment I've ever got has been that my dancing has inspired someone. It sounds like a good dancing goal, doesn't it: to be an inspiring dancer both for myself and for others.