The central dynamic of all partner dancing styles is the communication between two people, a leader and a follower, on the dancefloor. This communication is non-verbal (most of the time!) and rooted in learned dance structures, as well as intuitive inferences. The traditional way this “division of labor” has been determined over the years is that men lead and women follow. However, there are a variety of different reasons that dancers break these gender norms. Obviously, social conceptions of gender roles are changing in all areas of our culture, and dance is no exception. But there may also be reasons, related to personal development of dance skills, that a dancer chooses to learn both roles. While learning both roles may ultimately be beneficial to your dancing, there are pros and cons to consider when deciding if and when to pursue learning both sides of dance partnership.
The absolute most compelling reason to learn both roles is simple: you will be a better dancer if you do both.
As an instructor, it is essential for me to know both roles when I teach. The majority of my students are couples, and obviously I need to instruct both the leader and the follower in the couple. I also need to perform the steps as a partner for both members of the couple so that I can demonstrate and troubleshoot. Additionally, I need to know both roles when I teach an individual leader or an individual follower. Even though I am dancing a follower’s role when I’m teaching the leader, I need to know the opposite role thoroughly so that I can teach the leader how to lead; likewise, when I’m teaching an individual follower, I need to perform the leader’s role on our lessons, but instruct my student in everything a follower needs to know for dancefloor success!
When dance teachers enter formal training, we learn both roles right away! This was no issue for me because I had been interested in the leader’s role from very early in my dance education. As mentioned in my About page, I started taking ballroom dancing classes when I was twelve. I was funneled over to the follower’s side of the room with all the women, as was the norm at that time. I learned my followers’ part, but as the class progressed, I became increasingly interested in what the “gentlemen” were learning. I paid attention to what the teacher was showing them, and when I was practicing at home by myself, I would reconstruct the leader’s role using what I remembered from class and what I had experienced while dancing my own follower’s part. I’m not sure why, ultimately, I had such an early interest in learning both roles. Part of it was probably curiosity and enthusiasm for my new hobby; I suspect I also wanted some agency in my dancing. A teenager in the 1990’s (probably today, too) had very little opportunity to use her partner-dancing skills outside of class. Apart from the Dinner Dance Party (usually held at the Fountain Room on Beulah Road) hosted by my teacher at the end of every 8-week class series, there was no place where teenaged Sarah Catherine could go for social dancing with leaders who had these types of skills. If I wanted to dance these partnered styles, I had to make it happen for myself! That meant leading my friends—and, yes, a few classmates did make fun of me for doing the Hustle at school dances… but I was a nerdy kid, I was used to that! It was actually kind of funny, because they had to DO partner dancing in order to MOCK my partner dancing.
Eventually, when I entered teacher training for my first studio job, I was already mentally oriented toward learning both roles. That’s one of the main things, in my estimation, that sets a teacher’s skills apart from a student’s skills: knowing, dancing and understanding both roles. Think about it… if you only ever lead or only ever follow, then you actually only ever know HALF of every dance element or pattern. Knowing the dance steps from both sides allows you to understand the full dynamic between partners in a way that can never be fully appreciated if you only experience it from one side. Leaders who follow frequently tend to have greater smoothness, precision and control; followers who also lead are prized for their subtlety, sensitivity and efficiency. When you experience both sides, you can more easily calibrate your dancing to a wide variety of partners. Learning both roles, then, gives you the opportunity to “level up” your dancing in a way that is unique. Continuing to take lessons and classes to learn more advanced skills in one role will certainly improve your dancing, but many dancers find that learning both roles teaches them aspects of social dancing they simply cannot learn any other way. If you’ve been dancing for a while and feel stuck, like you’re not getting better despite learning lots of new moves, it may be time to consider learning the opposite role to improve your skills and add finesse to your dancing.
Most followers have had the experience of showing up to a dance social and realizing that they are on the wrong end of an imbalanced partner ratio. Occasionally this happens for leaders, too. There’s no way to predict exactly who will show up to any dance social. Many times, there is a relatively balanced mix of leaders and followers; sometimes, however, it’s WAY out of balance. When you’re on the wrong side of a big lead/follow imbalance, it can be frustrating; you showed up at the event, you WANT to dance, but you’re not getting many opportunities because the people who dance the opposite role are stretched thin. While it’s more common that I find myself among followers on the imbalanced side, I was at a social dance about two months ago where there were a bunch of leaders just sitting around with nothing to do! I did my best to make the rounds and ask as many different leaders to dance as I could, but there’s only so much the dedicated minority can do to make up for the discrepancy. Having the flexibility to switch roles can give you more opportunities to dance at events when role imbalance rears its ugly head. When I am amongst an overflow of followers, I can simply switch to lead and ask a follower to dance. I am always in charge of how much I dance on a given night because I can dance both roles. I must, however, issue a word of warning for all of you aspiring role switchers out there… it does require some guesswork and some intuitive reading of social cues. It may vary from one city or country to the next, but in 2020’s Pittsburgh, the majority of dancers still follow traditional roles. Mostly, the women follow and the men lead. Some women are not comfortable dancing with another woman, some men are not comfortable dancing with another man. Obviously, it varies from person to person, but the role-switching dancer has to be sensitive to the preferences of people in their dance community. I am always cognizant of the fact that some women may be uncomfortable dancing with me. I try to read people as best I can when I’m getting acquainted with them so that I can make accurate decisions about who may or may not be comfortable dancing with me.
While there are some pretty compelling reasons to learn both roles, it’s not the right choice for everyone. I’m always excited when my students show an interest in role switching; I teach and dance both roles, and I am happy to teach anyone how to dance either one or both! However, if you are completely new to social partner dancing as a hobby, I would NOT recommend learning both roles right from the beginning. In my experience, it is important at the beginning of your lessons to choose a role and stick to it for a time. Exactly how much time depends on the individual learner. But in most circumstances, the brand-new hobbyist has enough to learn and to parse while simply dancing one role. My advice is to choose the role, as a beginner, that you will have the most opportunity to use—not only for the functional reason that it will be more practical, but for the developmental reason that, the more you dance, the faster your skills will develop… and the faster you can get to the point where you’re ready for mentally juggling both roles. The exception to this advice is for professional instructors training in a structured environment, like a studio. Over 15 years as a studio teacher, I did see quite a few people enter teacher training as complete beginners to social dancing, and in that context, they needed to learn both roles right away; the key difference is TIME! A professional instructor trainee is entering a new CAREER, not taking on a new hobby. By necessity, our careers and our hobbies get different intensities of our attention and often vastly different amounts of time. With the TIME that most new hobby dancers can devote to learning, it will be counter-productive to learn both roles right away. In the meantime, focus on one role. If you’re interested to learn both, you will discover that there is a time in your future when the mental processing for your dance hobby becomes less demanding (around when your muscle memory becomes more solidly entrenched), and at that time, you have some extra “bandwidth” to devote toward learning the opposite role. Just be sure to establish basic comfort with one role while you’re still learning the fundamentals of social dancing.
Later in your dance learning, you may find your interest is piqued to learn both roles. But you also may find that one role is enough! The vast majority of students I’ve ever worked with feel that they already have their “hands full” with one role. Even when my students do attempt learning the opposite from their original role, most of the time it turns into a brief “side project” that doesn’t go much further than limited lesson-based practice. The only dancers who are fully successful at actively switching roles are the dancers that USE both roles when they dance socially; if you’re not going to use both roles in a functional context, you’re probably not going to be able to extract the full benefits—discussed above—from knowing both sides. If you’re debating whether double-role learning is right for you, it helps to consult a personal lesson teacher who can help you figure out the best way to weave it into your dance lifestyle.
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