Love thy partner
Summary of several phone conversations:
If the goal is to improvise a dance with a partner, one needs to gain a unifying unconscious understanding of every subtle clue of intention in the partner's body movement. Call it connection for brevity sake. In order to achieve connection, the partner has to be the focus of intense attention. He (she) is what you think about and try to feel to the best of your abilities - not you yourself or any other number of distractions. Concentration of this kind is difficult and demanding, but the reward if well worth the strive. Ability to connect is a skill that needs to be painfully learned, built up and perfected, it is not an innate quality that can be found ready for use.
The co-dependence of the partners in the dance creates a wide range of consequences. One of the most dangerous among them is the rapid deterioration of skills and technique if one dances a lot with mediocre and/or poorly trained partners. The only way to stave off the degradation is to have someone at a much higher level assess and correct your skills on a regular basis.
Given the amount of effort required, is it any wonder that there are few good dancers around and little hope of becoming one of them any time soon?
Can't write it in my own language - likely a funny corollary of learning to dance in English speaking environment.
If the goal is to improvise a dance with a partner, one needs to gain a unifying unconscious understanding of every subtle clue of intention in the partner's body movement. Call it connection for brevity sake. In order to achieve connection, the partner has to be the focus of intense attention. He (she) is what you think about and try to feel to the best of your abilities - not you yourself or any other number of distractions. Concentration of this kind is difficult and demanding, but the reward if well worth the strive. Ability to connect is a skill that needs to be painfully learned, built up and perfected, it is not an innate quality that can be found ready for use.
The co-dependence of the partners in the dance creates a wide range of consequences. One of the most dangerous among them is the rapid deterioration of skills and technique if one dances a lot with mediocre and/or poorly trained partners. The only way to stave off the degradation is to have someone at a much higher level assess and correct your skills on a regular basis.
Given the amount of effort required, is it any wonder that there are few good dancers around and little hope of becoming one of them any time soon?
Can't write it in my own language - likely a funny corollary of learning to dance in English speaking environment.