Creative collaboration is the deepest, most evolved form of partner dancing. It's profoundly generous, kind, playful, forgiving, and egalitarian. Leading & following are no longer assigned roles, but are principles of communication that both partners use freely. You dance with your partner using all your dance skill and vocabulary; no one is in charge. To make that work, you both have to pay exquisitely close attention to each other all the time; you both have to stay awake. Nothing can be taken for granted. It's a glorious, connected, utterly delicious way of dancing together; no other kind of dancing comes close.
It takes a lot of preparation: learning your own part, learning the other part at least to some degree, and learning to dance collaboratively, particularly in regard to your own more familiar part. For those who feel well enough prepared to start giving it a try, we teach a 4-stage process you can use to evolve your dancing organically, starting from regular lead/follow partner dancing and moving toward creative collaboration. This page is a brief outline of the preparation and evolution.
Learning creative collaboration is an adventure, an exploration; one of the best tools to hone your sense of adventure and explorer's mindset is to keep learning new dance, keep pushing past whatever you're already comfortable with. It's especially valuable to enter a new world of dance that foreign to the dance you already know. If you can, take classes with a like-minded partner, and as you learn new dance, try to learn at least a little of both parts. Entering a new world of dance is so very humbling, particularly if you're already well established in some other dance world, and that's also valuable for aligning yourself with the possibility of creative collaboration.
Eventually you need to have the other part well enough that you can dance it freely; no matter how skillful you are in your own part, you can't be a creative collaborator unless you can dance either part, as the moment requires. Don't bother with a role-reversal workshop; learning the other part takes the same kind of patient and persistent work that learning your regular part did, and a one-shot workshop won't help with that. Regular ongoing classes in the basics of your favorite dance are a better use of your time & money. You might consider taking a class in reversed roles with a partner you're comfortable dancing with, if you feel shy about dancing with others of the same gender.
To understand the deeper essence of leading & following, look at the relative positions of arms & hands in the embrace. The lead's right arm is below; the follow's left arm rests gently atop that arm & the lead's shoulder/upper back. The lead's left hand is open, palm up or diagonally up; the follow's right hand again rests gently in that open, upward embrace. Leading comes from below and rises, providing a foundation. Following rests gently within that foundation and articulates it.
The lead stands strong on the floor and extends the solidity of the floor upward through the strength in his (or her) core. The follow also stands firm while simultaneously resting very lightly (essentially weightlessly) in the strength of the lead's core; she (or he) is buoyed by the lead's strength and free to articulate movement that the lead has founded. Both partners contribute both elements - foundation and articulation - but the lead provides just a bit more of the foundation and rootedness of the partnership, and the follow provides just a bit more of the extension and articulation of that foundation into the air.
The lead provides a subtle but solid column of support that his partner can settle into. The lead provides loft, lifting from the floor through his or her torso and maintaining a solid strength in that, but using the arms and hands with great delicacy, only suggesting a move and then waiting to receive the follow's response to that suggestion. The follow provides a subtle tether back to the floor, always (or almost always) holding all her own weight, but also dancing very subtly down through her partner's torso into the floor. A creative follow receives the moves her partner suggests, and is then free to form, refine, or reinvent them.
Think of leading as extending an invitation, rather than pushing or pulling or cranking your partner; think of following as responding freely to the invitation: accepting, declining, or creatively moving the dance in a new direction, sort of like accepting with value added. Let your leading be sensitive, and free of domination; let your following be creative, and free of submission.
To lead collaboratively, never shove or crank your partner around. Remember that this is play. Never try to move your partner; move yourself, invite your partner, and be happy with whatever response you get, playing with your partner rather than insisting she do as expected. Gentle pressure can be part of extending an invitation, but it should always be quite gentle, not at all strong enough to move your partner off balance; that's shoving. Gentle pressure is simply part of how you communicate your suggestion, your invitation, and your partner should be free to move herself in that direction, or not move, or move in a different direction. Whatever she does, respond to her movement and stay with her: the lead follows the follow's response.
To follow collaboratively, don't obey your partner and don't struggle with him. Instead, receive his lead, his suggestion, and do everything you can to make a dance out of it by actively responding to it. Dance yourself; don't wait to be moved. It's not his job to move you. But responding is quite different from obeying. If what he's suggesting seems right to you and you like it as is, take it and run with it; give it extra oomph. But if you don't like his suggestion, if it seems somehow wrong, e.g. risky or overbearing, feel free to decline: not going there, sorry. You don't need a reason to decline. If you have your own idea to add to his, or a way to take his idea further, make your own creative addition.
It takes years to learn how to lead and follow collaboratively; you begin by learning set moves, and learning how to do set moves with a partner. Lots of people stop there, thinking that's all there is to partner dance: learning your part, and learning to make it coordinate smoothly with your partner's part, like clockwork.
Your arm connection with your partner - your frame - is not for moving your partner around. It has 3 purposes: communicating ideas and suggestions back & forth, stabilizing the spatial relationship between your 2 bodies, and offering support for your partner's voluntary movements. The lead moves from his center and that movement radiates outward via his arms, communicating with his partner. It's the lead's job to know, without thinking about it, what kind of step will fit the music, how much weight his partner has on which foot, and what kind of step will be easy and natural for her, and then to follow whatever step she actually does take.
The follow simultaneously feels the the lead's movement within the frame and sees her partner move; she grasps the intent of that movement and moves in response. The frame helps coordinate & stabilize the partners' independent but connected movements, and each partner offers the other firmness and support as needed to make the movement easier. The lead invites the follow to move in a way that suits the music and is easy and natural for her, and is ready to offer support to make that movement even easier; she can choose to accept the support or dance entirely on her own, perhaps in a different direction without her partner's support. The follow's possible responses to a lead's suggested move are yes, yes and I'm adding something else to it, or no, I'm not gonna do that.
A light touch is more conducive to collaboration. Beginning dancers typically prefer a heavier touch, more strength in the frame: beginning follows want easy-to-read direction, beginning leads want clear feedback and stabilization; beginners tend to rely on each other for help with balance. The longer I've danced, the lighter my touch has become. A heavy touch is fatiguing, and can easily feel overbearing. Common sense would dictate using no more force or pressure than necessary to communicate back & forth and dance together; unnecessary pressure just wears you out, and the arms & shoulders often get especially sore. Feel it out with each partner; aim to err on the light side, using just the amount of strength needed to communicate and keep the dance going.
Almost all leading & following is mediated through the arms (and eyes), because that way either partner (particularly the follow) can easily opt out of a move by simply relaxing her arms. The lead's right arm is around his partner's back, but a skilled lead is always very gentle with the right arm unless the follow voluntarily puts her weight into that arm for support. A skilled lead will never push or pull with his right arm; he'll use only gentle pressure, suggesting a way for his partner to move on her own.
Don't use your strength to move your partner, use your partner's strength to move yourself. This is one of the great secrets of a good lead/follow connection, equally true for leads and follows: use your connection to move yourself. The only time you move your partner is when your partner asks for it by giving his or her weight and/or balance to you, in effect saying "Here, sweep me along!" To do that for your partner, have the strength of frame ready to offer him or her to assist in any given movement. As you feel that movement begin and the frame strengthening, as your partner commits weight or balance into your arms, respond to that and give your partner the best possible springboard for whatever he or she is doing.
Full-on creative collaboration is pretty advanced dancing, but we've developed a 4-stage process any dancer can use to gently and organically evolve in that direction, starting from ordinary lead/follow partner dancing:
This is the goal, this is creative collaboration: dancing together, using lead and follow as principles and ways of communicating without assigning roles to people. Both partners use both principles, freely and fluidly; no one is in charge of the dance. You respond to each other as lead & follow in a fluidly shifting relationship: no assigned roles means you both have to pay exquisitely close attention to each other all the time; you both have to stay awake. You respond to your partner not from a role but simply as an equal, a fellow human. We are 2 humans connecting and playing with each other, rather than 2 roles playing defined parts in a defined hierarchy.