Lead and Follow - The Secret to Dance Partnering

The most difficult thing to master in ballroom dance, salsa, tango, swing, latin - or any other kind of partner dancing - is not the steps. It's the interaction with your partner!

"Lead and follow" is the secret to getting two partners dancing smoothly together. It's simply impossible for two people, dancing in close contact, to move as one if they're making their own decisions, choosing their own timing and doing their steps independently. They must coordinate their moves perfectly - and for that to happen, one person must be in charge.

Politically incorrect it may be, but the convention is for the male to be in charge (the Lead) and the woman to follow. If you were wondering why the Antonia Banderas ballroom movie was called "Take the Lead", now you know!

If you're a ballet or contemporary dancer, I can hear you protesting already - there's no such thing as Lead and Follow in your world, yet you dance with a partner all the time! But there's an important difference between performance dance styles and social dancing. On stage, you learn a set routine and dance it with a partner who knows exactly the same steps as you do.

Dances like tango, salsa, swing and even ballroom are, first and foremost, social dances. At social functions, men and women need to be able to dance with complete strangers, who went to other dance schools and learned different steps. If they try to do their own thing, there's little chance they will mesh - but if both have learned the techniques of lead and follow, they can dance comfortably together, even though they've never met before.

As a dancer used to dancing solo for most of my life, learning to follow was especially tough for me - but it's not easy for any woman! After all, you go to class and learn a set of steps - so when it come to practising them with a partner, you naturally want to dance them exactly as you've learned them. So it comes as a shock to find that's not what you're supposed to do.

Instead, you're supposed to wait for your partner to tell you when to do each step. He may do that by pressure with his hand, or by shifting his weight or even making a hand sign - but whatever the signal is, you must follow it instantly.

If he doesn't give the signal, you do nothing. If he gives the wrong signal, you forget what you were expecting to do, and follow the new signal instead.

It's hard, especially in this day and age, to surrender so much power to a guy. Especially if you're in a beginners' class and the man isn't giving you clear signals. Which brings us to...

The Lead - usually the man - has a much tougher job than the Follower. Sure, it takes skill for the Follower to read the signals given by the lead and react to them with split-second precision, and she often has more complicated steps to execute.

But it's up to the Lead to remember the choreography, if there is any - or worse, to make up the whole dance on the fly, from his repertoire of moves, to whatever music is being played - and then transmit his instructions to the Follower clearly without saying a word!

That's why the female stars on Dancing with the Stars have an advantage - because their professional male partner is responsible for dictating the steps. They don't have to remember the choreography - they just have to respond to his direction. Whereas the male stars will lose points if it's obvious that the female professional is Leading them.

Male beginners are often timid about taking control, especially if they're not 100% sure of the steps themselves. Unfortunately, that means female beginners give up trying to follow and start dancing their own steps, so the men aren't forced to learn to lead - and it becomes a vicious circle.

At the other extreme, some men think "leading" means "shoving"! That's another difficult skill for the Lead - learning how much pressure is enough, and how much is too much.

Mastering lead and follow well takes time and effort. It's easier if you have a regular partner, because you can learn the right give and take together. It can be very frustrating to learn how to follow, then go to a salsa class and find yourself dancing with men who won't give you a lead! Equally, it's annoying to learn how to lead, then go to ballroom class and find your female partners resisting your direction.

In both situations, we tend to grin and bear it out of politeness - but in your own interest, it's worth plucking up the nerve to say something to your recalcitrant partner.

After all, you're not only helping yourself - you're helping your partner, and all the other people he or she is going to dance with in future!

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Text copyright Marisa Wright. Turn photo by Jim Moore.  Dancing with the Stars photo by CoreyAnn.