Frame & Framework: Nonverbal Communication in Waltzing
An Outline of the 2023 Fluidity Forum Workshop
Neither a waltz workshop nor a metawaltz workshop lend themselves easily to filming, so while other talks are available on youtube, I did at least want to jot down an outline for posterity.
Couples’ dancing is a context that fixes many variables, so others can be maximally fluid. Join a waltz lesson for beginners, with the dual purpose of learning to waltz and identifying the patterns by which dancers communicate. This workshop includes deltoid, shoulderblade, and hand contact with other attendees.
Find a partner, ask them to dance
This fixes ‘lead’ and ‘follow’ roles. Offer to lead by asking someone to dance with your palms up, offer to follow by asking someone to dance with your palms down. Indicate that you’re happy to dance either role by offering one palm up and the other down, and let your partner choose by selecting which hand they take.
We’ll fix a few more things for you: we’ll be walzting; stand in a big circle; we’ll dance around this circle counter-clockwise; start on your outside foot—what does it mean to start on your outside foot? To fix an outside foot, we’ll first need to fix your frame.
Frame
is how dancers communicate momentum through shoulderblade < - > deltoid contact, and is best learned in person. Among many other things, it fixes that the foot that you’ll step with, and that will prevent you and your partner stepping on each other.
Mood and Tempo
are fixed for you by the band. The band will provide variation within reason—in three minute tunes—based on their style, your feedback, the dance community’s norms. But for a lesson, they’re going to play it pretty straight and simple.
Footwork
learned & practiced in person: we learned rotary waltz, after cementing the motion by adapting The Spanish Waltz Mixer.
Reviewing Our State
Ok, so look at us. We’ve fixed
our dance role
our footfalls
our tempo
our direction (as a ballroom and as a couple)
our hand position
All so we can be maximally fluid and responsive to what we care about:
Our Connection With Our Partner and the Music
after plenty of practice, dancers identified how they’d been communicating
through shoulderblade, through hand
through eye contact, through smiles
through musical cues
through footfall force
through resistance
On the Way Out
We practiced inside turns, outside turns, transition to skaters’ position and back, and free spins. I had prepared some dramatic mood- and tempo-shifting music as variation, but we didn’t fit that in.
What (I Hope) We Danced Away With
A shared context with rigid rules enables cooperative improvisation that would otherwise be impractical
Outside of a walzting context, me gently lifting my left hand with the downbeat of a tune could mean a thousand things, or nothing
Inside of a waltzing context, a gently lift of my hand offers you an understood spin-and-catch
Dancing is a rich ‘toy case’ for the study of communication