Have you ever wished you could be perfect? Do you cringe every time you make a mistake?
Let’s talk about that. Chances are, it’s holding you back and suffocating your confidence.
This post is a letter to myself, one I badly needed to receive about six years ago. It addresses my struggle with both the dance scene’s expectations of and my inner need for perfection.
I’ve always known that perfection is not actually achievable. But intellectual knowledge apparently didn’t stop my deep seated desire for the appearance of perfection, and all the angst it brought me.
Sadly, I forgot to go back in time to give Past Rebecca this letter. So I’m giving it to you instead.
- – -
Dear Rebecca,
So, you wish you could be a perfect follow, eh? I get that. I’ve spent my whole life trying to obtain perfection, pining after it like it’s a drug.
Rebecca from way back, trying to get perfect skin.
I know what you’re thinking deep down.
You think everyone will like you if you follow perfectly.
That no one will ever be displeased dancing with you.
That you’ll finally feel accepted.
Or maybe you think that by the time you’re perfect, you’ll have total confidence. And then you won’t care what the naysayers think of you. Unfortunately, if you continue clinging to this mirage in the desert, it will take you a long time to find the truth.
Let me explain what the future holds for you:
Those women you call rock stars? I know they look perfect to your untrained eye. To you, they have an aura of infallibility. Their creativity appears to fit flawlessly into the structure they are given. Virtual mind readers! Or are they?
One day, you’ll begin to notice all their flaws, the last minute decisions, the “Oh shit!” moments on their faces and in their bodies. Once you begin seeing them, you won’t be able to un-see them. Every dance you watch will be reduced to a collection of mistakes, no matter the skill of the dancers. You’ll think, “They aren’t as good as I thought they were!” rather than accept that perfection is the wrong metric.
These people you obsessively watch on Youtube are walking imperfections. They never do a movement precisely the same way twice. They’ve spent years training, not becoming perfect, but developing compensations for their natural asymmetries.
But failing to realize this, still you will strive. One day, you’ll reach a point at which you follow as well as your idols. You’ll find you almost never mess up, that the lead nearly always has a pleasant time. Unfortunately, you’ll be dissatisfied many nights, wondering why this does not make you happy. Worse, there are still people who don’t ask you to dance!
A hollow victory that sits motionless in the pit of your stomach.
Heirloom tomatoes: Flawed, but oh-so-delicious!
But you know what that feeling is? It’s your first inkling that dancing is something much more than a process of attaining perfection.
Two realizations will settle upon you:
- The ideal of perfection is not just impossible, it’s boring and a time-waster.
- Even worse, you’ve been using it as an excuse. All these years you’ve have been searching for perfection, when deep down you needed to face your fear of being you. Ouch.
Learning lindy hop is an inner journey toward confidence and self understanding. Many teachers will harp on your mistakes and weaknesses; few will have the gift of identifying and encouraging your strengths. Discovering and honing these unique qualities will be mostly left up to you. What is your voice? What do you uniquely add to lindy hop?
After years of ironing yourself into some false image of perfection, answering these questions will feel like skydiving without a parachute.
Yikes. Best to begin now!
Throw your attachment to perfection out the window. Replace it with a zeal for excellence, and decide what that means for yourself. Take lessons from instructors who praise your hard work and show you the way to better practice. Find friends who share your passion and support your creativity. THEY are your parachute.
Perfect following is a myth. Stop striving for it as soon as possible. Only then will you be able to do your absolute best; then you’ll be the perfectly imperfect YOU.
(Spoiler alert: You turn out pretty awesome and figure a lot of shit out. Stop worrying so much.)
Sincerely yours,
Rebecca from the Future
- – -
Follows and leads, do you feel pressured to be perfect? How have you dealt with this?
Please leave a comment below. There are lots of other dancers who can identify with and learn from your experience.
Photo credit: Jackie Alpers (tomato)
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{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
Excellent post, Rebecca, and equally applicable to leads. I think that I tend to strive for perfection only in competition, which is a whole different ballgame. The rest of the time I strive for excellence rather than perfection. Excellence includes the graceful recovery from flubbed movements as much as it does solid execution of those movements. In some ways the graceful recovery is more fun than perfect execution, thus a lot of my “syncopations” (i.e. losing my balance and then recovering).
Also, that video is awesome.
Do you find that trying to be perfect in comps holds you back? I think it does for me, and I’m curious if you have a different (more successful) perspective on it.
I don’t think it particularly holds me back. Mostly it just means that in comps I tend to steer away (to the degree that I can think clearly and plan at all) from leading things that I’m either still trying to get right in general or that I don’t feel very confident that I can lead successfully with my particular partner. The latter isn’t really about partner skill level as much as it is about their style, movement, styling/variation tendencies (if I know them), with how I tend to connect with this person and how we are connecting and interacting during the comp.
When I’m social dancing I do a lot more experimenting and a lot more screwing up. I’d like to say that competing makes me harder on myself than than I would otherwise be but, really, I’m like that about my dancing anyway. I don’t really have any expectation of placing in the comps I enter, for the most part, anyway, so I don’t get as insane about them as some can. I do them mostly for fun and because I tend to make new friends in every J&J, whom I might not otherwise have met or danced with.
I’ve learned long ago that pursuing perfection was foolish. Speaking as a lead, I don’t worry about that at all, though I can see how follows might worry about that.
No, my fear is not about perfection. I am deeply afraid that I’m *boring*. That thought is always sitting there in the back corner of my mind whenever I ask someone to dance. Am I interesting enough to dance with? What if she finishes the dance unfulfilled and she goes off and tells her friends, “Don’t dance with that guy, he’s really boring. He just does the same things over and over again.”
What I envy of other dancers is their creativity. Yes, they have good dancecraft and fundamentals, and yes, that’s important in pulling off lots of sweet moves, but I know I can eventually get good dancecraft and fundamentals with practice. What blows my mind is when they do a cool variation — inevitably of a move that I already know! — at the perfect point in the music that makes me wonder “Why couldn’t I think of that at the same moment?!”
I know a lot of other leads share this same fear. For a lot of beginner leads, this weighs especially heavy on the mind. “I only know a basic swingout and a single turn. Why in the world would anyone want to dance with *me*?” Unfortunately for me, I haven’t yet outgrown this fear, as I aspire to dance with more and more interesting and creative folows, hoping that I’m interesting and creative enough for them to want to dance with me again.
So I watch good leads do their stuff on the social dance floor. I take classes where instructors put serious time into showing footwork variations and the like. I watch YouTube videos of performances and competitions and see all these people doing creative things to the music. (What do audiences cheer most in competitions? It’s not the perfectly executed swingout. It’s some perfectly timed silliness, styling, or “flair” that is right in line with the music!) I watch other dances and cherry pick ideas and stylings.
And then I hit the dance floor myself, and do the same moves I’ve always done. I’m in a creative rut and my mind goes into autopilot. Adding new ideas to my bank of moves and stylings is coming at an extremely slow pace.
Someone can teach you technique. Someone can train you to be better balanced on your feet, to keep your center underneath you. Someone can show you cool ideas that you can implement on the dance floor. But ultimately, you and you alone can only make something interesting happen on the dance floor. That’s the worst part. I have no one to blame but myself for this.
I find that my “creativity” in leading comes from knowing possible next steps from where I am. For example if I time it well and my follow is sensitive to pressure I can interrupt a turn and indicate my follow go backwards. This could be a variation of a thing I know already, I just took one possibility out of many, which is not the most used of possibilities.
Related, When I work on my solo movement I often start with one stock jazz move and tweak it, one small thing at a time. Each tweak could be thought of as a variation. Some are much more obvious than others.
I tend to run in circles. I dirty my dancing, learning lots of moves, then I clean and do less and less of them, resorting mostly to basic moves and some ‘flair’ moves.
On a dirty cycle you focus on placing as many different moves with the music as you can. Better if they fit with the music, but don’t shed a tear if it doesn’t.
On a clean cycle just play with the music. Use syncopation and those moves you can use without thinking, those that you used so much in the dirty cycle that have become engrained in you. Maybe also a move or two of those learned during the week but not much, just enough to not forget them.
When you dirty again, but you feel better, because you have practised so much musicality that you can feel much better what can work in each moment. You don’t need to think about musicality and can focus on the moves.
Don’t rush your cycles, but keep rotating. I’ve been cleaning for about a year and I really needed to change to a dirty cycle, so I’ve started one of those. Have fun!
I love the concept of “clean” and “dirty” cycles in dancing. Thanks!
John, I have never once told someone not to dance with someone because they are boring! I have the memory of a goldfish when it comes to dances, and anything more than an east coast basic keeps me happy. My favorite dancers are the ones that are comfortable, and make me smile! You do both of those things :) That being said, if you want to spice things up I’d say the best thing to do is pick one move or variation and do it at least once per song all night. It’ll become habit and you will start to subconsciously do it!
John, I don’t know about every follow, but I really enjoy simplicity as much as or more than I love complexity in my dancing.
There are times when I am dancing as follow that I wish my lead would just lead some simple basics in between all the tricky variations, or would just lead that one interesting thing several times in a dance so I could really enjoy it (especially if it was really fun the first time but it caught me unaware, so I feel like I missed out on the fullness of it).
As a follow, the basic stock moves are the ones where I feel most comfortable dressing it up- adding flair and syncopation, trying new stylings, expressing my own voice. When the lead’s emphasis is on complexity and tricky, flashy movements intended to impress me, I often feel my focus shift to simplifying my own movement so that I can be available for whatever my lead has planned next. And sometimes I’m so focused on ‘where do I need to be right now and what connection does he need from me’ that I miss out on the fun of dancing.
By contrast, I cannot recall a single time that a dance ended with me feeling that my partner had somehow bored me. It didn’t happen when I was a raw beginner and focused on trying to figure out how the dance worked and what skills I had to develop to make the dance better. It didn’t happen when I was an intermediate dancer and fascinated by all the flash and complexity that the dance had to offer. And it doesn’t happen now.
For me, the simple moves within the dance are my comfort foods. The simple moves are what bring me deepest satisfaction. A complex move is like going on vacation, with all of the adventures and misadventures that entails. Simple moves are like coming back home to my own warm, comfortable bed each night.
There is room in my world for both.
Talia, I completely agree with you on this point :)
Welcome to my life, John. I often joke to people that while each follow only dances with me a little, I have to dance with me all the time and, if nothing else, I get bored with what I’m doing.
One thing that I’ve found has helped me a lot in this area has been trying to think more directly about how I interact with the music. This particular idea is adapted from a class taught by Adam Speen at All Balboa Weekend last year. Imagine that your feet are paintbrushes and that, as you dance, you are painting the feeling of the music onto the floor with them. I’ve found that just this idea has opened up a lot of spontaneous footwork variations and play that hadn’t been manifest before. While the footwork idea here may be more Bal-applicable than Lindy, I think it presents an interesting approach to creating variety without relying on preset figures or sequences. Just typing this out is giving me ideas for Lindy – perhaps trying to feel the shape of the music (I’m one of those 3D spacial people) and reflect it in the shape and movement of my body. Typing this, I think “well, of course you should” but I haven’t tried approaching whole songs with that as my primary interface to the music and my partner.
Something that has helped me was reframing the goal. Is it possible to be the perfect follow or lead for every person you dance with? Of course not. It is like thinking that you will be best friends with every single person you meet. Most of us know and accept that good friends are the exception and not the rule so we are excited when we meet people we click with and don’t waste energy trying to connect with those who we don’t have anything in common with. Once I decided that was ok and normal, my anxiety about leading and following decreased considerably. The friend analogy continues to work well when you think about how good friends react to mistakes you make. They are generally forgiving and supportive, just like a dance partner that you click with. When you fumble something they smile and say hey, you’ll nail it next time. The ones who cringe and judge aren’t people you want to be friends with, unless you are into that.
I used to want to be perfect in my dancing, but when I realized that seeking perfection detracted me from enjoying swing dance, I stopped wanting to be perfect and instead became more self-aware of the music, my rhythm, and connection. Being self-aware and remembering the great feeling of swing dancing when I was a beginner dancer helped me realize why I started dancing in the first place. The mental chatter of wanting to be perfect is too much and very unhealthy. As Plato said, “the enemy of the good is the perfect.”
I recall dancing with an apparently perfect follow once. She was an American in London. When I pulled, pushed, twisted, or made any other such movement she moved with that movement so perfectly, so absolutely at the same pace and vector, that there was no physical sensation of her at all. It was like dancing with a sensory deprivation tank. It was both an odd and an empty experience. I never had anything from her on which to build. She contributed nothing to the sequence of moves. Normally, I am to a great extent following my follower. If she fails to follow my intended lead, and heads off in an unintended direction, I happily follow her and make of this new opportunity what I can. I will do this in a way which I hope suggests that that was the direction I had intended all along. A dance with a perfect follow is like a conversation with someone who does nothing but agree with you all the time.
Dance for yourself, for your partner, for the music. Never judge yourself, never judge your partner. Relax, enjoy the experience for what it is, not what you want it to be. Life isn’t a competition, even if you are in a competition. It’s fine to think about how you could be a better follow, a better leader, a better person. Asking the question is the first step. But what is better? More interesting, mote graceful, more in tune with the music. Better is whatever you want it to be. But don’t forget to enjoy today. The only questions you should ever ask is “did I enjoy the dance?” if not ask “what could I have done to enjoy it more?”
No one is perfect, everyone makes mistakes.
However, we continue to strive to be the best that we can, although we will not be perfect.
What we do NOT want is to resign to the mentality that we will just accept our faults and make everyone accept them, instead of trying to improve.
For example, if I am a rough lead that makes a move uncomfortable to follows, I should strive to learn how to improve my skills instead of thinking that “this is me, this is my style, accept me for who I am, accept me for my imperfections”
Good point. It’s a tough balance to find, isn’t it?
Most excellent!
I’m a lead. To me the perfect follow is one that can improvise a good solution to a lead that I totally blew. She can make it look like the perfect lead.
Dance first. Lead/Follow second.
I’d rather dance with a partner who is a strong dancer and weak follow than a partner who’s a perfect follow but weak dancer.
Oh, and good dancing makes the lead/follow part WAY easier.
As a lead I want to be ‘better’ but the problem is I dont actually know what that ‘better’ actually is. I’m like a child who just wants to be better!! This post and some of the comments have resonated with me and I really just need to establish what small small improvement steps I need to make whilst continuing to get the enjoyment and excitment I currently do out of the dance.
Wow, this is an excellent post. I dance argentian tange for 2,5 years now and I so totally understand your letter. I always say tango is learning a person the lessons of his/ her life, but you have to wanna learn the lesson. Lot’s of people I see indeed try to follow as perfect as they can, but instead of being a better follower, they are losing themselves and losing the connecting with their partner and the music. Well.. hopefully they can be skydivers in the future aswell ;)
Rebecca, this is beautifully done. I realized awhile back that how much I enjoy dancing is directly, inversely proportional to how much I’m stressed about it. Knowing that doesn’t stop me from stressing, though, and I still keep doing this cycle of striving for perfection, failing, getting frustrated, giving up, deciding I don’t care, then having fun for awhile until I start to think I need to be perfect again. I especially appreciate the point you make about focusing on your strengths. I try to do that for others when I’m teaching or just dancing socially with beginners, but I never think to do it for myself. Thanks for the excellent post :)
It’s funny that you write an article like this today! Yesterday, I went to an awesome workshop on musicality where the teachers focused on groovin’ to the music. The goal was to dance something that looked like lindy hop or solo jazz, but without any physical connection and any moves. It was a dance we were making up as we hear music. We made a jam where one person in the middle ‘challengend’ another one. There was no couple lindy hop dancing, but people were extremly creative. Guys fished in for girls (and the opposite), when I turned on myself the girl did the opposite, we both hit the break at the same time, guys teased each others, etc. It was 100% improvised and people cheered on a lot. We didn’t have any physical connection or previous knowledge on solo dancing. The only thing we were doing is moving to the music and maintaining a good eye contact. It was loads of fun!
The reason the teachers did this exercice is because they wanted us to focus on dancing, instead of technique. (like how to do the perfect swing out) They say that if you focus too much to be perfect, you lose the spirit of the dance and you seem stiff. And that’s how I just broke my fear of being imperfect. I don’t care about being perfect. I like to say that in lindy hop, there are no mistakes; only new moves!
Of course, I’m not an advanced dancer (and I don’t want to be one!!). And, I don’t want to go to serious competitions. All I want is to dance socially… I actually love follows that do something different and even break my lead just to have some fun. (like the slow pass-by where the follow moves slowly under my lead, which I never ever lead) Lindy hop is a game. It’s not serious!
I find that social dancing is the best way to avoid perfectionism. “It takes two to tango”. When you are training alone, its a very clean environment, so perfection seems within reach. When you dance with a partner it gets more difficult, because its difficult to tell who is bringing the “imperfections”. Once you go social dancing, all bets are off. Here there are other dancers, a lack of space, angry waiters, drunk tourist and all sorts of stuff that keep you from being “the perfect” dancer.
You can of course blame all of them for you imperfections. Changing between training under “perfect” conditions, and dancing at social event gives you the impression of yourself as a dancer.
As a photographer and creative sole mistakes when creating lead to a new way of seeing. I think that in dance, “mistakes” give us new moves to play with. The challenge is to relax and play with it and not judge “it” as a mistake.