Why Beginning Dancers Need to Learn Both Roles

Years ago I taught the drop-in East Coast class for a college swing dance club. I started every class with a two sentence introduction to leading and following, then asked the class to split into leads and follows. I would add something short like, "Traditionally, men lead and women follow, but you can pick whichever role you feel like."

I thought I was being so progressive. 

About once a month a woman would decide to lead. Even less frequently a man would choose to follow. Without meaning to I was reinforcing traditional gender roles in partner dancing. Three things were going on here.

First, my wording was terrible. I set up the expectation that we would follow traditional gender roles, while giving lip service to freedom of choice. It takes more that a simple statement to upset the status quo. Actual action is needed and that was obviously missing from my classroom.

Second, I was asking my students to make an uninformed decision. An instructor can easily explain the differences between leading and following. However, it takes actually dancing both roles to understand the physical and psychological difference between the two. It's impossible for someone with no partner dance experience to make a make an informed decision about which role they prefer.

Third, I was setting up a situation in which you had to cross a metaphorical picket line to dance a nontraditional role. For a man to follow he has to be comfortable with being the only guy in the follow's section of the class. That's a situation which will last for the entire class. You had to be brave enough to stand out and be obviously different if you wanted to dance a nontraditional role in my swing class. That's hard to do.

Teaching the whole class to lead and follow neatly solves all three problems.

1) Traditional gender roles in partner dance simply aren't mentioned. There are no assumptions regarding who will dance which roles.

2) Everyone has a basic understanding of both roles, so they can make an educated decision every time they step onto the dance floor.

3) Finally, everyone in the class is simultaneously learning both roles so there is no pressure to conform to a specific gender role. Everyone is free to dance the role they want to.

Curious how to run this style of class? Ambidancetrous has a wonderful how-to guide.