Following: theory, practice, and lavender coffins

I've been thinking about my following (in a dance/Lindy hop context) a lot over the past few months. I reached a certain level round about September where I had taken all the classes in the normal series from the Jam Cellar, and it had come to a point where I was responsible for my own improvement. I didn't have instructors telling me things to improve on every week, and I had to figure out on my own where I wanted to take my dancing. 

I did some reading online, and decided "interesting shapes" was my missing piece between intermediate following and advanced following. I became fixated on my arms, on jutting my hips during the rock step, and on trying to develop "feminine lines." I have lots of thoughts on why that was not a good direction for me (some of which I wrote about in my "Dancestravaganzaaa" series), and those will just have to wait for another time. In the meantime, I'll just say this: fuck feminine lines, I just want to DANCE. 

(A version of this was originally posted to the r/swingdancing forum, and was mostly written between 1am and 2am after an awesome night of dancing.)

I've basically distilled my (current) overall following philosophy down into two main points:

Point 1: Mirroring (+10%)

I'm using the term mirroring here instead of matching (though they are really similar) because I learned about this concept in a non-dance context first.

Mirroring and matching are pretty basic follow tactics. Mirror the lead's frame. What does the lead do with their arms? Where does the lead want the tension to be, and how much? Where is the lead's center? Mirror the lead's musicality. How much footwork is the lead doing? How is the lead reading the music? A good follow should mirror and react to all of those things.

Also, especially in Blues, I tend to try to respect the tradition from which the lead is coming. People who feel like lindy hoppers, I'll follow more like a lindy hopper. If the lead feels like a ballroom dancer, I'll adjust my frame. Same with Tango and Salsa-- I feel like it allows me to better follow the moves they throw in and also creates a better experience for the lead.

Now the +10% part. Basically, to communicate effectively with someone, you can mirror them: smile for smile, srs business handshake for srs business handshake. This comes naturally to most people. What comes naturally to me, and is another tool for communicating even more effectively, is mirroring +10%. Other party in the conversation is smiling? Smile a little wider. Other party is telling a joke and giggling? Laugh out loud. Other person is frowning? Neutral expression. 

In the context of dance, this happens in two ways. One is energy level-- I try to always be energized in my dancing and always pushing, just a little bit beyond what the lead is giving me. I find it really amps up the dance for me, even if occasionally I'll get a comment like "Whew! Do you ever stop?"

BUT! If I'm dancing with a lead who also gives a +10% and the song is rocking, our dance can build and build on its own energy until we're whirling around on the dance floor and nothing else matters. 

The other place to use the +10% concept is skill level. If I'm dancing with a lead who is below my level, I'll try to insert a few very basic stylistic variations that won't throw the lead off, but will get them used to a follow doing a thing. A couple of minor swivels, a small kick here or there, etc. I feel like one of the reasons follows have it easier than leads is that leads rarely get the chance to learn from follows, whereas follows are led in more and more complicated moves all the time, forcing us to adapt. I try to be the best follow* I can be for every dance I dance, and sometimes that means a little bit of on the fly schoolin' for the beginners.

Oh, also, if you look thrown off by a fast swing rhythm, you best believe I'll have a strong pulse in the beginning.

*First and foremost I try to be the best dancer I can be.

Point 2: Be water.

Are you ready to get deep? Why the hell not, it's after 1am for me, I just had a great time at the dance, and I'm in the mood to ramble some more. The other day, I saw this clip: 

It was illuminating. Lee says, "If you try to remember you will lose. Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless. Be water, my friend." That's how I try to follow, as best I can. I try to be water.

(There's been a lot of talk over the years about analogies for following and how they are often bankrupt. This one is no different. It's just how I think of it, and, for the record I think the same can be said of a good lead, except initially the lead is only "formless and shapeless" until he or she hears the music. Then the conversation begins and we both begin to transform ourselves into that which is not water.)

I try to be the most honest follow I can be, and that means not anticipating moves. It means interpreting the music within the structure the lead sets up. It means being able to react as quickly as possible to a new concept a lead introduces or switch directions as soon as the lead "mentions" it.

In a very basic sense, it means that I will Charleston with you for the entirety of "Lavender Coffin" even if I know that it's a terrible idea. It means that I will try to follow the rhythm you're interpreting, even if I can hear the downbeat and phrasing much better than you after a year of dancing and ten years of percussion and music instruction.

HOLY CRAP I love this song.

At its best, social dancing is a conversation between two people and the music. Each one brings different philosophies, styles, and ideas to the table, and hopefully each one comes away satisfied. When a dance feels like it clicks (for me, at least), it's usually because the way we interpreted the music was similar, our dancing styles lent themselves to each other and improved our conversation, and, here's the kicker, I didn't have to work very hard to make sure that happened. I didn't have to think about interpreting the lead's frame-- it was obvious. I didn't have to worry about my stylings messing the lead up; it was clear that they wouldn't. I didn't have to figure out a discrepancy between the musical phrasing that I was hearing and what the lead was telling me to do.

One last point: for me, a dance clicking is a different feeling between blues and lindy. With blues, it feels a little bit like neither of us is actually leading-- we're letting our bodies and our connection create the interpretation of the space and it's all kinds of counterbalance goodness. With lindy, a dance clicking is like the most fun day at the carnival ever. It's me getting to really grind into my swivels during the exact right chorus, it's us being playful with the music, and it involves a ton of movement and motion and preparation and followthrough. I laugh a lot when I dance lindy, and it's because of the energy and playfulness and just plain delight I find inherent.

Dancing is life. Good Lindy hop is indistinguishable from sheer joy.

Introducing! Lexie's Five Star All-Star Books! And! Gail Collins Explains Feminism and I Eat it Up!

I use the reading database and social network GoodReads religiously. I treat it as an external record of my reading history: I have tracked every book I've read since graduating college five years ago. I read at a rate of about fifty books a year, and it's sometimes difficult to keep track of everything. 

My favorite aspect of GoodReads is its star rating system.* I realize other services use the same, but recent reports have suggested that those reviews are, um, mostly made of lies. (Amazon, I'm looking at you.) To ensure more or less consistency in my reviews, I have the following criteria for determining my star rating: 

One star: disliked the book actively or didn't finish it due to boredom or disgust.

Two stars: meh. My time could have been used better, but I didn't stop reading it.

Three stars: I'm not sorry I read it, but I won't read it again.

Four stars: I might reread it in the future.

Five stars: I will actively recommend the book to others.

So now it's Money Where Mouth Is time. Check out the Five Star All Star Books tag to see the Books Lexie Thinks You Should Definitely Read, No Really, Soon.** Also check out my Audiobooks tag for audiobook reviews (which are difficult to find if you don't subscribe to Audible, I guess).

When Everything Changed: The Amazing Journey of American Women from 1960 to the Present, by Gail Collins

This is an incredible book. Hands down. It should be required reading in high school. Gail Collins has both written the definitive history of feminism in the second half of the twentieth century, and collected a remarkable oral history from those who lived it. 

There are so many amazing things in this book. At first I was riveted by the description of life for a woman in the 1960s, a life my grandmothers, mother, and aunts lived but I never quite understood. It is at once so foreign (Sandra Day O'Connor was told there were no legal jobs available to her-- except secretary? Unbelievable!) and familiar (then, as now, women's bodies were public property, to be glorified and shamed by others). 

Although I count myself as a well-informed feminist, there were certain things I just didn't get. Why did the ERA fail? Just how many bras were burned? (The surprising answer to that last question? None.) How did the young generation of feminists in the 1970s interact with the still-living suffragettes? 

So much of modern feminism is concerned with women "having it all." I find this discussion a bit tiresome-- both men and women have to make sacrifices to balance work and life. I have found the discussion in mass media of women "having it all" to be not helpful. Why is the focus solely on women? Where are the working dads who are trying to make it work? Instead of lamenting that we can't have it all without a nanny to raise the kids when we're busy at work and good subordinates to count on when we're busy with family, why don't we take a hard look at our work culture, and, moreover, our own goals to decide what is really important to us? Isn't it, I don't know, greedy to expect that we should be able to have it all? Isn't all of life a balancing act? We only have so much time and so much energy to devote to everything, and at some point choices must be made.

So when articles like The Atlantic's recent [thingy dingy omg] come out, and all my Facebook friends light up with indignation at the Professional Woman's Lot In Life, I roll my eyes and turn to the next page. 

Collins broke it down for me, though. Reading the aggregate history of women in the modern workplace made it easier to for me to accept and understand that the issue of "having it all" is still geared predominantly toward women. And more than that, I gained a real understanding of how lucky I am to stand on the shoulders of the women who came before me. AND how much work is still to be done.

That's not to say the book is mostly about "having it all." Collins goes into all aspects of life, from work, to family, to home, to school, to coming-of-age. She follows the lives of several women, some of whom became important voices in the feminist movement and some of whom have just led interesting and ordinary lives.

Plus, the book is absolutely riddled with amazing little factoids. Did you know that all divorces had to have one party at fault and one "wornged" party until fairly recently? If both parties were cheating, for instance, both parties were at fault and therefore no divorce could be granted. Oftentimes you needed a witness to the "crime" of infidelity, so a cottage industry of professional mistresses arose, simply so they could be caught in the act in super-contrived scenarios. Crazypants!

So yes. If you're a woman, read When Everything Changed. If you're a man, read When Everything Changed. If you count yourself as neither, read When Everything Changed. It's the most important book of American history I've read all year, and it's a really engaging read. 

Read it if: You're at all interested in the history of gender. If you're a woman. If you're a man. If you identify as neither.

Lexie's Shelves: read, non-fiction.

The author is: awesome, down to earth, and funny.

Things that bugged me: There was a lot about "having it all," which I still kind of have a problem with. See above. 

*My second favorite aspect of GoodReads is its "shelves" system. It allows me to gather books into categories I choose, plus I get to name them silly things. I have shelves for "books-my-mom-would-like" as well as "fun-to-read-on-public-transportation" for those books with scenes that are probably a little too steamy for the Metro (but whatever, I do what I want). I also have categories of mystical beasts from "everything-i-read-is-about-vampires" to "zombies-are-the-new-vampire." I can keep track of the non-fiction I've read and the YA books I've read. 

**Possibly not so much a "series" as "I was super bored on the airplane and decided to write a book report." It's a toss up.