Joyful Bumbler

While I have many major ‘aha’ moments in swing dancing this year, my first showed me how poorly I understood another’s perspective. In this situation, I was attempting a new move with a skilled partner, and we were unable to perform the move. When we asked our teacher for help, he led my partner in the move easily and gave specific feedback on what I needed to do. However, this didn’t make sense to me in the moment.

Later I practiced the move on my own and walked through the steps and motions to discern my error. Eventually, I tried to perform the move from the follower’s perspective by responding to the motions I would give as the leader. Immediately, I discovered the exact moments that caused my follower to fail the move.
                Never in my life have I so distinctly been able to understand another’s experience as I had at that moment. It required me to physically take off shoes, put my partner’s on, and then walk in her steps. Amazingly, this alone fixed the problem. When I led the move on several new followers, they all performed it correctly. Applying this principle to many other situations in my life, many could have been solved easily if I could have seen it from another’s perspective.

My second ‘aha’ moment in swing dancing this year occurred through watching others social dance. More specifically, it was watching experienced leaders dance with new followers that I had just danced with. I knew that they did not know much about swing dancing because I had just talked with them about our shared lack of skill. However, when they danced with the experienced leaders, they looked like they had been dancing for years.
                Over their years of dancing, the leader was able to cause his inexperienced follower to perform at a level that was far above what she perceived possible. I sat there in wonder and began to imagine the same situation in the workplace or school. Amazing leaders empower their followers to achieve things that they never believed to be possible. I want to be that leader.

My third ‘aha’ moment occurred while out social dancing again. I had seen a very skilled follow and wanted to dance with them. While beginning to dance, I was unable to find the beat for the music, which makes it impossible to dance to the song well. My partner tried to show me it, but I couldn’t hear her. The dance for that song was a disaster even though my follow was quite skilled.

                After that dance, I sat down and just began trying to listen for the beat in the music. I was shocked to find that it was far faster than I had expected. Immediately, I realized that I was unable to hear the beat in the music because I had an expectation that limited my listening. From that moment, I stopped listening for the music that I expected. Instead, I simply listened to the music and allowed it to show me its beat. How many other things have I been unable to hear because I was expecting something else?

Before this class, I knew that giving constructive feedback was important, but I did not understand how critical it truly is. In swing dancing, if your balance or footwork is off and you continue to perform the move in improper ways, over time it is quite easy to seriously damage your body. In addition to this, it also makes the move you are performing far more difficult than it needs to be.
                If I don’t give feedback to someone in an area that I believe could help them, I am showing how little I care about them. Perhaps that feedback could save them years of feet pain or help them finally understand how to perform a move correctly. If I don’t tell them that because I am worried about how they will react, I show that I am more concerned about not being in a potentially awkward situation than helping another grow.

Body language is critical in dancing. Prior to taking a dance class, this seems extremely obvious to me. However, I understand now how difficult signaling your intent with your body is. Many times throughout this quarter I have misled my follow by either unintentionally signaling a move or signaling it and then changing my mind midway. This has caused my partner to either misstep or perform something I did not intend.

                Through reflecting on this, I discovered that the root cause of this is a lack of intentionality from me. Often, I do not know the next move I want to perform. While this is passable for solo dancing, it is disastrous when someone is focused on trying to discern my intent for the next move. I can imagine many other areas in my life where similar confusion arises from my lack of intention.

I have desired to be involved in a motivated, excited, and friendly group for much of my life. I have been surprised by finding that group in my swing dance class. In the early days of the class, it seemed like everyone in the 40-person class genuinely wanted to be there. I was also impressed by how many different friendships I formed early on as well as how comfortable I felt around all of them. When I spent some time trying to figure out why this was the case, I came up with a few key reasons.

                First, while I initially thought that the teacher was just a good, fun teacher, I realized that everything that he did had great intent behind it. From the jokes he made to the method of teaching the group, everything came from his experience on what worked most effectively for the group. I have learned many different methods for teaching a group from watching him.

                Second, the physical contact that occurs in dancing naturally fosters friendship. I had never realized the degree that physical touch broke social barriers. It is quite easy to talk to someone if you have danced with them before.

                Third, everyone benefits from helping each other improve. More than any other class that I have taken at UW, this is the least competitive group I have been in. Surprisingly enough, this class also learns quicker than others too because the students are happy to help each other.

I have been amazed this quarter by how much a positive attitude impacts everyone involved in any situation. Now, I don't mean just a small smile kind of positive attitude. I mean a face-splitting grin with bright neon yellow shorts kind of positive attitude. When I am in that place mentally, it doesn't matter how good or bad my partner or I are doing because I am having a blast no matter what happens. If we succeed, awesome! We did great! If we mess up the move, then I just found something funny to laugh about.

Learning happens so easily when making mistakes becomes fun. People are able to make mistakes, which will always happen when learning is occurring, without the focus being on their mistake.

College has been extremely disappointing to me in several regards, but one of the biggest has been how absolutely uncreative it is. I am studying mechanical engineering, and I can count on my hand the number of times that creativity was encouraged in my classes. It has become so ingrained to me that I don't need to have any imagination to do well that I boil my classes down to recipes to apply.

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Swing dancing has breathed fresh life into my heart in regards to this. I was out social dancing one night, and had a normal dance with a stranger. I can't put my finger on exactly what it was, but something about that dance unlocked my creativity in swing dancing. It was the first time I had ever imagined creating my own moves or improvising in the domain of swing dancing. 

From this class, I have discovered the kind of mentor that I desire at this stage in my life, and it doesn't include them teaching me a skill or anything along those lines. I am seeking people, irregardless of age, position, gender, etc., that have a treasure of insights about life that they have gained through their specific domain.

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My teacher from this class is a great example. He has a deep love for swing dancing and has searched for life secrets from dancing for the last 8 years. One of my favorite parts of this class was the times that I would just hang out after class with him and ask him questions for about half an hour. I learned so much from my time with him. It's one of the reasons that this learning experience has so many competencies.

I value growing in love above every other competency in this entire portfolio. There is no comparison to me. From the very beginning of the quarter, I have known that this was a very special class. It became a well of joy to me. Any irritations or frustrations I had would just melt away while I was dancing with everyone. It didn't matter if it was 80 degrees in that room and we were all sweating like crazy or that I had just left a class that was a constant source of frustration, I knew that I would leave swing dancing full of joy.

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While I believe I experienced this the most out of everyone in the class, I certainly wasn't the only one that did. I can think of several others who genuinely loved every day of class, and they helped cause the class to be the most supportive and friendly group I have ever belonged to.

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I must continue to learn dancing simply because of how much life it gives me when I do it. Swing dancing makes me a better person. Of that I am sure.