Quickly, leaders: what’s the best way to make sure that your follower has an amazing dance? If you answered, “Lead all of your cool patterns so she knows you’re a rockstar,” we need to talk. There’s a much better way to create a dance that will leave your followers breathless and gushing. Inexperienced leaders tend … Read more
When you’ve mastered hearing upbeats and downbeats in music, you are ready to bring that skill into your pattern work. West coast swing is a two-beat dance, so all patterns are built on the downbeat-upbeat structure. If all you dance is basic, off-the-shelf WCS patterns, you don’t need to know that structure because the dance … Read more
Lots of dancers love learning patterns. It’s easy to see this on the leader side of the dance—there’s a reason some leaders are referred to as “pattern junkies”—but followers can also be addicted to their play patterns. However, truly excellent dancers learn that patterns are not really the important part of the dance. Instead, excellent … Read more