Learning to lead and learning to follow are both challenging in their own ways. Anyone who is accustomed to doing one role and decides to switch usually has an eye-opening experience. Leaders realize that the delicate balance of RE-activity necessary for following is trickier than it appears, and followers gain an appreciation for how leaders must orchestrate a mental “juggling act,” keeping a bunch of different things in the front of their minds all at once!
To a great extent, most of the skills necessary for each role become muscle memory over time. Through practice and repetition, the physical and mental demands of both the leader’s and the follower’s role become more “automatic,” happening without much thought. Dance is a muscle memory activity, just like learning any sport, how to play an instrument, or how to drive a car. If you’ve ever learned how to type on a standard QWERTY keyboard, you may have experienced this phenomenon. As I type this article, I am, obviously, intentionally hitting particular keys to form each word, and yet, if I were thinking purposefully and separately about hitting each individual key, it would be a laborious and plodding effort. I remember when I was first learning to type, it WAS a laborious and plodding effort… but after practicing for long enough, it became easy! My fingers flicker from key to key, working automatically without my having to devote any mental direction to them, beyond simply thinking up what I want to say.
Most skills in dance are like that too. With enough time and practice dancing particular patterns, rhythms, sequences or actions, it will seem just to happen automatically. You will be amazed at what you can do without really having to think much about it.
There is, however, a critical exception. There are two items necessary in the leader’s thought process that can never enter so deeply into muscle memory that they happen automatically without thought. These two things always require a conscious effort of directed thought from the leader. They are simply a matter of ordinary memorization, but that is also why they require consistent upkeep as part of a leader’s role.
They are the catalog and the gateways.
The CATALOG is simply the list of elements or patterns the leader knows how to do. These vary in size, length and complexity, depending on how the leader thinks and/or how the leader has been taught. If you learned your catalog from a standardized studio syllabus, chances are the items in your catalog are medium-sized or long. Beginner patterns tend to be shorter, more advanced patterns tend to be lengthier—when I talk about “long” or “short” patterns, I’m talking about the amount of musical time they take up, i.e. how many beats, measures or phrases they fill. Some leaders are more elemental in their internal mental construction of the dance, knitting together clusters of foot actions that are only a measure or two long. Many leaders, however, learn longer patterns or sequences that go on for many measures of music. In certain circumstances, a leader may work to memorize a sequential routine of choreography that lasts for an entire song! This latter option is really only practical for a performance (like an exhibition routine or showdance) or a presentational dance (like a bridal First Dance or parent/child dance). When you’re dancing on an active dancefloor with a variety of other people, each doing their own thing, it is unwise to try executing a three minute memorized routine with zero room for variation. Having a wide variety of shorter memorized patterns gives you the flexibility to adapt to the changing conditions around you on a moment-by-moment basis. It’s like building a structure with Lego bricks; if a bunch of shorter patterns in your catalog can fit together in any order, no matter which one comes first and which one comes next, you can build your dance on the fly.
No matter how long or short your “bricks” are, they ultimately form your catalog. The advantage in having shorter or smaller bricks is that you are nimbler in making decisions about what comes next, and potentially more creative in stringing together clusters of elements in new and different configurations. Some standardized patterns can become predictable or cumbersome over time, but if you’re leading on an element-by-element basis, you are creating your own dance patterns off the top of your head. The downside is that you have A LOT more items in your catalog and a lot LESS time to decide what you’re doing next. If the “bricks” in your catalog are longer, you potentially don’t have as many to remember (though, everyone ends up with lots and lots of patterns on an advanced level), but the longer they are, the less flexibility you have to change up the game plan when unexpected things happen on the dancefloor.
The GATEWAYS are the other facet of your dancing that will never become automatic muscle memory. Accessing your catalog will have you asking yourself: “What moves do I know?” and your next logical question will be: “And how do they start?” Those are the gateways! In my experience, if your catalog is full of shorter to medium-length patterns, your muscle memory will take over and do most of the work once you recall what items you know and how they start. I see this phenomenon at work whenever I teach a student who has taken a hiatus from dancing—while it’s never ideal for your learning and advancement to take a hiatus, sometimes it’s unavoidable. Injuries, surgeries, and other life crises sometimes take dancers temporarily away from their dance learning. The good news is that everything already in your muscle memory is pretty easy to retrieve. The problem is that your catalog and your gateways are NOT muscle memory.
Back in 2020, during the pandemic, we all experienced an enforced hiatus from dancing at my old studio. When we reopened after the shutdowns, my students were all coming back from a dance hiatus, all at the same time. Most people came in the door full of warnings that they remembered nothing, and I would surely have to start over with the beginner curriculum! A lot of this was exaggeration, but many of the leaders I taught were sharing a vital thread of truth. They didn’t remember their catalog or their gateways, and that left them mostly powerless to compose a dance beyond the basics. Because they didn’t remember what moves they knew, nor how to start those moves, they had a imposing obstacle standing between them and MOST of their muscle memory. Luckily, I knew that their muscle memory had not disappeared, only those two “conscious memory” items.
In most circumstances, as soon as I prompted my students with the “gateway” of their favorite steps, their muscle memory snapped into gear and delivered the rest of that pattern. I’ve seen this happen in different types of circumstances, including when students return from a dance hiatus AND when they’ve been dancing actively, but simply let a certain pattern drop out of their repertoire. It’s always fun to refresh an old favorite move… I call these the “Greatest Hits”! It can be a super fun lesson to go back in time and remind students about their “Greatest Hits” steps from beginner and intermediate lessons; usually it’s only the catalog and/or the gateway they’re missing, and then the dance move is instantly back in action!
It is important to understand, as you grow and advance as a dancer, that you will learn a lot of different moves, some of them for the sake of variety, but many for the sake of advancement. Learning moves that are progressively more challenging is necessary to refine your skill-set. Imagine that you are walking into a sky-scraper. Some moves will act like the elevator and take you up to a new floor, that is, a new level of difficulty in your dancing. By learning to do something that is hard in a different way than all your other moves, you will develop more advanced skills. Each time you learn a move like this, imagine taking the elevator up to a higher floor. Other moves you will learn simply to add variety to your dancing. Those are like walking off the elevator to explore the rooms on that floor. You use the skills you already have to add moves that look different and provide greater variety to your dancing. You will learn dance moves of both types, and you will not be able to remember every single one all the time. I hear frequently from leaders that they’re always wracking their brains trying to remember more dance moves from their catalog. It’s a very common and perfectly ordinary part of being a leader. Memorization of dance patterns or elements is one of the main challenges in learning to lead. This “conscious recall” activity will always be a part of your job as leader. If you don’t remember all your moves, it’s normal, and perfectly okay! Some moves—specifically the ones that took you up the elevator—already did their job. When you learned the move originally, you learned the essential skills it contained. You still have those skills, even if you don’t remember the original move.
That being said, if you’ve been dancing awhile, you probably have a treasure-trove of erstwhile favorites buried in your muscle memory, just waiting to be refreshed. This is where it pays to have a personal lesson teacher who has been documenting your lessons. A new personal teacher may be able to find a few of these hidden gems, as well, by going back through many popular steps from previous levels. A lot of dance students find it helps to take their own notes, and keep a record of new patterns they learn so they can have a written form of their catalog to consult while practicing. While there are many ways to aid in the recollections of your catalog and your gateways, it helps to be aware that keeping this information fresh in your mind and ready to use on the dancefloor is something that requires consistent upkeep. I have discovered that many leaders are simply relieved to know that “memory maintenance” is a common burden; ALL leaders struggle to remember their catalog and their gateways. Many find it comforting to know how this aspect of learning and memorization works and that it is common to everyone else who dances lead. As a leader, you will have to find a way to remind yourself—or find a personal lesson teacher who can help remind you about all the “Greatest Hits” of your dance catalog and how they begin, so that you’re ready to activate all those favorites whenever you hit the dancefloor.
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