Does it look good, does it feel good, does it WORK?

It is natural in dance—as it is in life—to think of things as black and white, either-or, right and wrong; but things are seldom so clear cut. In our dance lessons and classes, we are always seeking guidance, and it can be tempting to enshrine the answers we receive as definitely RIGHT, casting everything else as clearly wrong. But dancing doesn’t work that way.

Social dance is—above all—an art… but also in some ways, a science. It involves the freedom to be creative and expressive, but we must always be experimenting, figuring out what works and what doesn’t and how to take the skills we have and make them better. The activity of social partner dancing has both artistic elements and technical elements, and because of the latter, it is easy to fall into the old scholastic trap of thinking there must be a right answer and a wrong answer. But because social partner dancing is experiential, improvisational and interactive, there is no cookie-cutter standard that works for everyone in all situations. 

My students hear me say this all the time, over-and-over, to the point where they are probably sick of hearing it… but whenever someone seeks a definitive or clear-cut answer from me, whenever a student or dance partner chastises him- or herself for being “wrong,” it bears repeating. 

There is no RIGHT or WRONG in dancing. 

There is only the following set of questions by which you can measure your dancing:

Does it look good?
Does it feel good?
Does it WORK?

If the answer to all those questions is “Yes,” then there’s not much for a dance teacher to complain about. Unless you’re trying to win competitions, there is no greater objective standard for your dancing. And, of course, these questions are much more SUBJECTIVE than any imagined measuring stick of right and wrong. Let’s take some time to explore each of these questions so that you can understand how they relate to your dancing. 

DOES IT LOOK GOOD? 

Obviously aesthetics are very personal, and they are evaluated differently in different contexts. It’s sort of like how you decide what to wear when you get ready to leave the house. The jeans and T-shirt you put on today might stick out as looking terribly underdressed at a black-tie wedding, but alternatively, the jeans and T-shirt will look great while you’re playing pool at the neighborhood bar… likewise, if the groom wears his tux to a baseball game, he’s going to look goofy for being so overdressed. In the same way, you have to ask yourself, how do you want your dancing to look? Where are you going to be dancing? And what aesthetic makes the most sense for those events? 

Are you dancing in a competition, exhibition or performance? That’s where you want the most formal, most technically demanding dancing and the fanciest styling. Virtually everywhere else, even at a black-tie wedding, you’re going to want a more relaxed aesthetic. Social dancing does not require strict technique and elaborate styling; in fact, in some social situations, you’re better off without it. The question then becomes: how do you WANT to look? The average dance student answers that question with some variation of: “I want to look like I know what I’m doing.” To me that sounds like: confidence and competence. The good news is that it’s pretty easy to look competent (and confident!) doing partner dancing. What creates that look is less about adding flourishes and more about getting rid of oddities, paring things down to an aesthetic that looks fundamentally comfortable. 

As a teacher, one of the first things I look at when I’m assessing the visual quality of my students’ dancing is comfort. If dancers look comfortable, chances are they are having a good time and confident in what they’re doing. If something they are doing LOOKS uncomfortable, chances are that it also FEELS uncomfortable, both to them and to their dance partners. If I can smooth out those rough edges so that the dancers look and feel comfortable, then they’re going to look good as a result. Some people want to look good in a different way—typically in a way that requires some sort of advanced styling. That’s wonderful, and I’m happy to add those stylistic accents, but it is important to be solid in that basic, comfortable mode before worrying about anything extra. No matter what, looking good starts with that basic, clean dance aesthetic and grows from there. Either way, the answer to your first question: “Does it look good?” is an entirely personal decision, and a good teacher will help you to reach that goal so that you can look and feel your best on the dancefloor.

DOES IT FEEL GOOD?

This question can be a trickier one to answer, in part because muscle memory is always a factor in dance. That’s because anything NEW that you’re learning will feel inherently less comfortable when you first learn it, than it will after you’ve been practicing it regularly for a span of time. Still, even despite the mental and physical effort of writing new moves and techniques into your muscle memory, your dance moves should not be painful or overly burdensome. If a dance move you’re doing is notably uncomfortable—and not getting any better after regular practice—it needs some troubleshooting.

Most often, I find this question relevant to lead/follow interactions. When any particular two partners dance together, certain moves, patterns and actions may be more or less comfortable. If it’s a one-off or once-in-a-while partnership at a social dance, it may not be worth troubleshooting in depth. But if you’re experiencing discomfort with certain actions while dancing with a regular partner, or if you experience the same problems while dancing with MOST partners, it merits some attention. Make a note of what feels off or uncomfortable and ask your personal lesson instructor to help troubleshoot. These types of “felt” interactions are difficult to refine in a group class format—personalized attention is often necessary to address them. 

Similar to the “Does it look good?” question, “Does it feel good?” also has a very personal component that can vary from person to person. Does your dancing look and feel the way YOU want it to? Your dancing might look perfectly fine, but you want it to look differently. You dancing might be perfectly comfortable, but you want it to have more flow, more movement, more precision. Personal goals most certainly figure in to the answer when you ask yourself these questions. “It looks good, but I want it to look better,” or “It feels good, but I want it to feel different,” are both perfectly legitimate answers to these questions. But they are extremely individualized and personalized answers that are much more nuanced than: “Is it right or wrong?” 

DOES IT WORK?

This one is the ultimate question. In THEORY, a dance move might look terrible and feel uncomfortable, but still work fine… however, it seems inherent in the concept of “IT WORKS!” that a dance move should also feel good and look good if it’s working well. In social dancing, nothing—technically—is off limits. You can do anything you want, as long as you can make it work. Make up your own steps? Mix multiple dances to the same song? Dance fundamental elements with different timings? It’s all fair game as long as IT WORKS! This includes making sure you can communicate it well to your partner, and it’s IDEAL if you’re doing it on purpose (though, happy accidents definitely have their place in good dancing!). But you are perfectly welcome to violate any “rules” you’ve been taught, as long as you can make it work. In reality, there are no rules, there’s only good dancing. Anything you’ve been taught that sounds like a “rule” is actually a dance floor observation that’s been communicated to you. Contrary to popular imagination, dance teachers don’t sit around a conference table deciding what’s counts as good dancing. All of the patterns, techniques and styling we teach are things that happened FIRST on the dancefloor. Good dancers did cool things that matched well to the music, and everyone who watched them said: “Oh, wow, that looks great!” And after watching these good dancers, people were motivated to figure out what they were doing that looked so cool and worked so well. Good dancing happens because good dancers do it! Learning to dance is simply the effort of trying to replicate what other good dancers have already done. If you’re creative enough, you can invent cool things to do on the dancefloor. Everything you’ve ever learned from a dance teacher is a tool in your toolkit. You can use them to create anything you want as long as…

It looks good
It feels good
And it WORKS!
 

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