Protect Your Partner

Part 2 of Awareness

As said before, your fundamental responsiblity when dancing is to protect your partner.

• Protect your partner from you and other dancers
• Protect the other dancers from you and your partner

That means protection from footsteps, collissions, elbows and falls. While most of the responsiblity for this falls squarely on the shoulder's of the leader, dancing is a partnership and it takes both parties to make it work.

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The first part of protecting your partner is selecting a spot on the dance floor. What makes a good location? Amount of room available? Surrounding dancers and their level of control? Quality of surface? You and your partner's ability and style of dance? Obviously, its all of these and more. Anywhere can be a good location if you are aware of the situation and take these factors into consideration when dancing.

Finding Room

The amount of room available is usually the primary driver -- you want to find a spot where you will have room to move. However, if that comes at the price of dancing near a couple who is all over the place, it might not be a good bargain. You have to make a determination as to how much monitoring and avoidance the spot is worth. It can be better to dance next to the most in control dancers with only a little bit of space than to dance in a big space next to a wild couple.

Edge or Center?

In some locations, you have a big open floor of a completely uniform nature and everywhere is more or less an equally good choice. Club settings or big events like socials or congresses present a lot of challenges as the floor can be packed. Advanced dancers often choose the edge of the floor for the simple reason that they only have to monitor people on one side instead of all around them.

Quality of Surface

The quality of surface can also make a big difference. Wood is generally the easiest surface to dance on, but conditions may vary on different sections of the floor. Maybe some spots are sticky and hard to turn on and others are slick and easy to slip on. Dancing on tile, cement, parquet and other surfaces always should factor into where and how you dance. Take into consideration the ability of your partner, what kind of shoes she is wearing.

When the floor is slick:

• Leaders, make sure your partner is stable enough - not slipping and sliding.
• Followers, don't push or pull or lean on your partner and keep your momentum in check.

Often you will hear people talk about dancing with one's "core" - this is a way of developing not only better styling, but better stability.

When the floor is uneven:

• Leaders, LOOK DOWN. Don't turn your partner where there are divots, holes or transitions between surfaces -- especially of your partner has on heels.
• Followers, if the floor is difficult for you to move on, tell your partner.

Defense

You need to play "good D" on the dance floor. Especially for leaders, this means watching everyone around you and making sure they do not collide, step on, trip, elbow or poke your partner. All those things happen and when they do, it is at least 50% your fault.

If someone invades your space

• Get their attention
  If it looks like they are about to run into you or your partner, put your hand very lightly in between the whoever is about to collide and most of the time people will check their momentum as soon as they feel something.
• Get out of the way
  If you can, move you and your partner out of the way or simply stop where you are. For example, if you were about to do a cross body lead, but another couple enters your space, try changing to another step or staying in place and doing a shine. You can still play it cool while things get crazy.
• Catch those arms and elbows
  If you are really following what is going on around you, sometimes you can literally see the elbows coming or going. Put a hand right there to catch them.
• If you and your partner invade someone else's space
  It happens to everyone at some point and the solution is to stop right then and there. If you have too much momentum going -- that is going to be very hard.

Partnership

It literally takes parnership to be in control. Leaders can not lead someone who does not partner with them when dancing and followers can not follow someone that does not guide them. Sometimes that partnership can be very fluid and easy going and sometimes it has to be more rigid - that is a matter of advancement and compatiblity. If conditions are crowded and there is little room for error, you stay close and keep lots of connection with both your frame and control of the hands. If both of you are comfortable with those conditions and very flexible, you can take advantage of areas of the dance floor as the traffic ebs and flows.

Just as the leaders need to have their eyes open the followers need too do the same. There is only so much one person can see at a time.

Shine On

Not a lot of people do this, but if you are creative and have a good arsenal of shines and body rolls that you can knock off in close quarters, its a great way to get out of having to do lots of cross body leads. Not to mention, you can always bump up the sexy dance level by focusing on dancing close and connected instead of turn patterns -- we forget sometimes because we have so much emphasis on the technical but this is the heart Salsa.

Previous: Be Aware <--> Next: Dance In Your Space

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