Lois,
Perhaps the answer lies in illustrating the followers technique in terms of the
lead. For example, you know that you can show followers technique for
beginning a step to the front, side or back.
If I want to step, with my left foot, to my follower's left, I think in terms
of followers technique.
There is more room if I keep my weight on my right foot, pivot with my feet
together and begin my step forward with my foot while my knees stay together.
Contrast this with the back step where you really think of the leg
straightening.
My point is that a leader who practices followers technique can move so
delicately in close to his/her followers space, keeping her feeling balanced
and musical. I am rambling on. I just like to show, specifically, what your
legs look like when you use great followers technique to take a front step, in
crossed position. Use that movement as a teaser to get them into your class.
At home, I am known to turn on Jackson Browne, for example, and practice small,
delicate steps ... tucking one foot behind the other, fake steps, the step that
I just described, etc. It teaches me to isolate my lower body from my upper
body ... and it keeps followers technique in my "practice" routine.
Hope that helps ... because, while I have never wanted to follow a man for any
period of time, I do spend a lot of time practicing followers technique ... and
I know that women wish the more men would do the same.
I am such a big advocate of leaders learning to follow!! But how do you get men
to
understand this? I have a class on following attended by some leaders who are
really
committed to their dancing, and they are beginning to follow very well and it
is showing up
in their leading. But it is not attended by the people who need it - especially
people who
are teachers, or people who are teaching their followers (requested or not).
How do you get
leaders to work on following?
Lois Donnay
Minneapolis
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