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Every Man’s Survival Guide to Ballroom Dancing

CHAPTER 14

Step Patterns

No move is too tricky, no spin too excessive. For my partner.

John Hayes

The primary focus of most dance classes is step patterns. You’re fed patterns and then more patterns. Whatever is taught in the way of technique and styling is usually done in relation to the pattern being learned. You’d think Moses had patterns on those tablets.

While patterns are important—it’s mostly through step patterns and styling that one dance is distinguished from another—I’ve always had an edgy relationship with them. You see, I’m certain I’ve forgotten at least 99.9 percent of the patterns that I’ve been taught. Patterns, shmatterns.

Yet I still love to learn a new, fun pattern.

Step patterns combine foot positions and direction of movement with a rhythm pattern (rhythm patterns are covered in Chapter 6—be careful not to confuse them with step patterns). Step patterns essentially define the bigger motion a couple makes moving around the floor. Other labels you’ll hear include pattern, step, figure, and move. Move is a fun word, a bit of slang, something to use in casual conversation—as in, “check out that move”—although it can be used to label any action, such as a styling move or a syncopation with your feet.

Learning simple patterns at the beginner-level should be easy, but a pattern is the point where everything comes together—movement, timing, rhythms and the lead and follow—so it can get hairy at times, especially for beginners who still have trouble finding the beat. When learning a new pattern I always make quick mental notes on the following:

1) What’s the rhythm pattern?

2) Do I step forward, back, left or right? 

3) What are the foot positions?

1.    
   

2.      4)  Where does my left hand go? My right hand? 
   

3. 
   

4.      5) Is my body parallel or angled to my partner? 
   

5. 
   

6.       6) If there are turns, do I turn left or right?  Do I turn my partner left            or right?
   

7) Is there anything special about the lead? 

Still, I’ve sucked in some nasty hairballs over the years.

Every dance has a basic pattern, also called the basic, the primary pattern that distinguishes the dance. The basic pattern is usually the easiest pattern and the first one taught. Each dance also has many additional patterns that fit the dance and these may or may not have the same number of beats as the basic. In fact, patterns can be any number of even beats, although most patterns are six or eight beats long, sometimes four. That took me a while to understand and my ignorance is now so obvious: if you can’t find the beat nor count the music, the number of beats in a pattern is meaningless. (A related discussion on why some four-beat patterns are really eight-beat patterns is in the Advanced Info Alert in Chapter 9.)

Advanced Info Alert  Patterns can be extended. For example, you can turn a six-count step pattern with one spin into an eight-count pattern by adding a second spin. That’s the kind of stuff you need to be able to do at the intermediate level.

Some good news. Just as different dances can have the same rhythm pattern, different dances can share the same step patterns. The box step, an easy and popular step that gets that name because the footwork creates a square, is not only the basic step for both rumba and waltz, but it’s often used in fox trot. Most patterns in salsa also work in mambo and cha cha. Perhaps the most popular of all patterns, a basic underarm turn—leader lifts his arm, follower goes under it—is found in some form in most dances.

I’m always on the hunt for versatile moves that can be used in more than one dance. I also look for patterns that are easy to remember and, especially, easy to lead with a new partner. Followers tell me all the time that they like simple choreography as it gives them time to work on their things, like styling and syncopations (footwork). To a follower, a dance packed with complicated, fancy moves, especially if the guy doesn’t lead them well, is not fun. It’s exhausting.

Through the years, over and over, my experience is that some partners are much more work than others. Some partners are effortless, as if they give me energy and I can dance for days, and some partners make me run my butt off. I think I know why: it’s the concepts of adjusted pattern and absolute pattern.

A good dancer executes a step pattern a little differently with each partner. When you learn a new step pattern without a partner, in its pure form, that’s what Skippy Blair calls the absolute pattern. To make that pattern work with a partner requires some subtle changes, which results in what she calls the adjusted pattern. This tweaking always needs to be made to accommodate the uniqueness of each partner; that is, every partner dances differently and you should dance a little differently with every partner. However, don’t try too hard; Skippy says to think absolute and let the body naturally adjust. If you don’t adjust, your dancing will seem overbearing or disconnected and, to make the dance work, your partner is forced to do extra work. Ideally, both sides should contribute to making it work and both sides should make whatever adjustments they feel need to be made. This won’t always happen but it’s best to still do your part.

The creation or choice of a pattern and how you string patterns together is called choreography. A string of patterns is often called an amalgamation or a routine. Choreography is our job, guys, and it can be a challenge: I don’t know how many times I’ve gone out for a night of dancing with, say, six patterns remembered from class, only to promptly forget five of the six the moment I step on the floor. Even after you remember patterns, there’s a skill to matching patterns with the music, as well as a skill in choosing one pattern that will flow into the next. Group classes are a good way to learn new patterns and good teachers will choreograph the patterns to flow and match the music.

Speaking of choreography, I make a distinction between two types of choreography. First, there’s planned choreography, which is what you would see at a performance or a competition. For the beginner, I also consider choreography to be planned when, dancing socially, you take all the patterns you remember from class and string them together in a long, encyclopedic routine without any regard to the music or your partner. You repeat this routine for every dance.

Then there’s spontaneous social dancing, which is the choreography you do automatically, without thinking, and it’s something you’ll see only at a social dance (one exception: “Jack and Jill” competitions where your partner and the music are unknown). Spontaneous social dancing is unplanned; you put stuff together as you go along, on the fly, as you respond to what’s happening in the music and with your partner.

For me, the planned choreography of performances and competitions lacks freshness and the element of surprise. Also, performances and competitions often lack a real dance connection because the follower always knows what’s coming. This type of choreography does not require true lead and follow. On the other hand, spontaneous social dancing is raw, instinctive and requires a real connection. When I was a beginner, I could only replicate the routines I learned in class. As I got better, I became more spontaneous and was better able to match my step patterns and styling to whatever came my way. Eventually, you improvise; you make up stuff and make the dance your own. I think that’s the goal of a great social dancer.

I find watching spontaneous social dancing far more interesting than watching performances and competition. Take the highest ranking competitive dance couple in the world and I’d much rather watch them dance socially—say, at midnight, surrounded by other couples so they think nobody’s watching, so they let their guard down and they take risks and try new moves—than during a competition. That’s dancing on the edge.

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