I’ve said to myself so many times that I want to work more on my dancing. My wife/dance partner and I tried setting aside times for practice, but they rarely took place. Why? Because during most of the practice sessions we had a fight. As a result, we found excuses not to practice.

Practicing dancing with a partner can be emotionally hard. Why? It takes two to tango! She can’t follow it right unless I lead it right… well, the tendency is to think I can’t lead it right because she is not following it right – so we blame each other.

However, we recently had a breakthrough. I turned to successful dancers, and learned techniques from them. We changed our system, by structuring each training session to help us focus and filming the session in order to get a neutral viewpoint. This led to one of the most successful training sessions we ever had.

Once you have it, don’t lose it

My friend Carl Nelson’s post “How To Succeed – A Simple Story” motivates you to work hard. If we can get ourselves to work really hard, we can achieve amazing things. When we’re motivated to do the work we should do whatever we can to keep that motivation strong. It’s therefore important to learn what motivates us and what discourages us from hard work. In simple terms, motivation comes when your reward matches your effort.

There are two areas you can look into in order to make this happen. First, learn how you can use your situation to your advantage. Second, know your strengths and use outside expertise.

Self help

Creating new habits that build on top of old ones.
Carl mentioned in his article that he is working hard on his writing by reading at least one book every week. I always wanted to read more books, but never found the time. Since I discovered audible.com, I easily read a book a week by listening to audiobooks while commuting, walking my dogs or cleaning my house.

Preventing procrastination.

We naturally avoid stress. If stress is part of a bigger activity, we might avoid the entire activity to avoid the stress. However, if we realize where stress comes from, we can find ways to remove it from the activity. Just like my wife and I focused and recorded our dance training to avoid fights. To read a full article on the topic, please visit my blog: http://www.danceopensdoors.com/?p=100

Get help

Learn from the best.

After a couple of serious relationship crashes, I decided I wanted to get that part of my life handled. So, I learned from dating gurus such as David DeAngelo, and after some months I started to see improvements in my relationships. Not too long after that I got married. Something as hard as finding your partner for life becomes easier once you learn how to search better ; )

Work to your strengths – delegate the rest

Every one of us is wired differently. I recently read a book by Tom Rath – Strengths Finder 2.0 – that helped me discover my strongest talents. I could use my talents to make any hard task an easy one, simply by changing my approach to the work a bit. One of the biggest changes my wife and I made in the way we run our dance business is to understand what we do best. It takes me about 5-10 minutes to type up a first draft of just about anything, but it takes me about 3 hours to make it “perfect”. My wife has the exact opposite talent: it takes her 3 hours to get the first draft up, and only 5-10 minutes to get it “perfect”. If we collaborate on all the writing, we have a win-win situation.

By turning your situation to your advantage, and getting outside help when you need it, you can

make “Hard” easy, then do a lot of it!

Yours,
Ali

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Did not win!
The first price at the Jägermeister-dance competition went to some booty shaking girls : /

But 1000 thanks for all your support
It’s been really flattering to get your emails.
Love,
Ali

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Hey guys, a few weeks ago we entered a competition at a club where they put you in a tiny box and let you dance to random music.

The winners get a trip to New York to visit some of the clubs there. We want to Lindy Bomb those places

Here is how you can vote for us:

1. Click on: http://www.youtube.com/user/jaegermeisterdance.
2. Click on the left orange button that says “Ich bin über 18″ (= I am over 18)
3. On the next page click the middle button that says “Abstimmen”
4. type “7364″ in the search field
5. hit “Los” to search and find our video
6. click on our video to watch and “LIKE” it!

Last we checked we were on 3rd place. Please help us win. We need at least another 50 votes within the next 3 days. You can vote once a day

Swingingly yours
Ali & Katja

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In today’s article I’d like to talk about two other characteristics that make your dancing more attractive: Skill vs. Style.

To me, when it comes to developing an attractive dance style, they stand in opposition. An attractive dancer should demonstrate equal amounts of technical ability and individual style. Note that I am not saying a “good dancer”: if you manage to copy amazing dancers well, you are an amazingly good dancer too. It’s just that you won’t be an attractive dancer. I’ll present research further down that explains why!

First, we need to distinguish between what is technique and what is style. Can you make that distinction?

Test yourself!

How much of what you are doing is technique-based, and how much is style?

1. Can you contrast your movements? Can you take any aspects of your dance (e.g., bounce, tension, stretch, tempo, posture) and turn their volume up and down?

2. Can you stop and go at any time? Can you slow down or speed up at any moment?

Don’t just play with the black and white extremes, but try all the gray in between as well.

Excellent technique is like having an entire factory with tools and equipment. You should be able to build anything you want. Lack of technique is like building a house using only a hammer.

Here are some of the things excellent technique allows you to do:

* You can comfortably lead/follow any move you want.
* You can comfortably dance these moves to any tempo you want.
* You can instantly change your movement if you need to match the music or simply avoid bumping into someone.

To improve your technique, I recommend you take a lot classes from teachers who foremost share their technique and not their style. Take what ever they say, and go over the above tests. Finally, practice until it becomes a natural part of what you do.

Style!

It take courage to express individuality. When you express your individuality, you’re exposing your likes and dislikes. Copying another dancer’s style is like wearing their clothes. When people see you dance, they actually see them dance.

The decoy effect in action!

Dan Ariely, a behavioral psychologist, presented a fascinating experiment in his book “Predictably Irrational”. Dan’s experiment tested if decision-making could be manipulated with the presence of a decoy. He showed pictures of two people. When asking people to vote who they found more attractive, each got about 50% of the votes. He then manipulated the pictures to create less attractive decoy versions. He again asked people to choose who they found more attractive, but this time they could choose between the original two and a decoy of one. The results? When people had a decoy, they selected their more attractive counterpart. Why did they choose this way? Relativity helps us make decisions in life – not necessary good decisions, e.g. jealousy and envy – but decisions nevertheless.

What does all this mean for us as dancers? If your style is the “decoy” equivalent of someone else’s style, you simply make that person more attractive.

Play with this thought for a second: Do we decide who is the best dancer by counting how many “decoy” dancers they have?

Back to the first question: How to make your dancing more attractive:

Learn the techniques first. More importantly, get your knowledge from a variety of different sources. Many teachers don’t distinguish between their technique and their style; you have to learn to distinguish them yourself. While practicing your technique, watch yourself in the mirror or film yourself dancing. What combination of techniques match your personality best? Are you a high energy dancer, or do you like it soft and smooth? It’s important to note that better technique also allows you to create different styles to different music, or even different styles depending on what kind of place you are dancing in (is it slippery? crowded?).

See what works best with your body, your temperament and your surroundings.

Please respond on the discussion board under: Attraction: some have it and others don’t?.

/Ali

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In the next couple of articles, I will write about how attraction plays an important role in dancing and how we can develop an attractive dance style. There are many characteristics that make up for an attractive dance style. This is why it’s such a difficult topic to teach. Here are some of the characteristics that I think make your dancing more attractive: considerate, macho, skilled, courage, mirroring, humor and sexual tension.

Today’s article is about finding the balance between being a considerate dancer and being a macho dancer:

Becoming a considerate dancer is very good.  As a considerate dancer, you show compassion and love. The considerate dancer makes sure their partner has an enjoyable dance by not creating any “inconsiderate” situations. The considerate dancer thinks about how their hand is placed: not too low, high, light or hard. Eye contacts are established only briefly, just to quickly read if we are doing anything that could be inconsiderate. The considerate dancer adapts and changes their movements to make sure the partner moves in a way that is comfortable for them.

A macho dancer is overly aggressive and insensitive to the partner. We look at macho dancers and see that they are strong-willed and force their way through a move. As a macho dancer, you are strong. You hold eye contact just a bit longer. This means that you put in movement that demands higher tension and moves that are more sexually loaded.

A key aspect of building an attractive dance style is to take the best from both worlds, and balance their dosages. From an energy point of view, you can think of macho dancing as a tension builder, whereas considerate dancing releases tension. Attraction is the emotion that is created by releasing built-up tension. If you start recognizing this description, it’s because you already read my articles “Humor on the dance floor” – and “Use humor to build courage in interacting with others”: http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=187845060956&topic=11323

Have you heard of the saying: a laughing woman is halfway in your bed? It’s because laughter is caused by the energy release built up by tension. It’s a matter of how much tension you build up vs. how much you release that makes the difference between friendly laughter or a sexually loaded emotion. Katja and I taught a series of classes on this topic where we showed how we can use certain moves and techniques to play with different levels of tension and release to create laughter, attraction or sexual tension.
What do you do to make your dancing more attractive?

Share to grow,
Ali

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Hey guys,

I just found this video where the fantastic dancers, Peter Strom & Nina Gilkenson, demonstrates humor on the dance floor.

The humor technique is the simple, but always adored: Establish a pattern = ask for high-fives at specific moments. As soon as your partner learns the pattern, in this case two times. Break the pattern by pretending to go for a high-five but then remove the hand. It’s actually a classic high school joke that was put into a new context.

Great job Peter&Nina.

Cheers,

Ali Taghavi

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Better Dancer: The Digital Dance Journal

/…/ The series will consist of articles on how to become a better dancer through the examination of learning process, creative process,and performance improvement. /…/

I found this article hitting very close to our current conversation about learn to train better. Here is the link: www.thedancenomad.com

Enjoy!

Ali

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In their book “Influencer”, Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny and David Maxfield wrote that if we determine only a few VITAL behaviours and change those, problems will topple like a house of cards. For example: relationship scholar Howard Markman demonstrated with over 90% accuracy, which married couples will stay married 5 years after the test. He simply looked at how the couple handled conflicts. The vital behaviours he looked at were patterns for destructive arguing: Escalation, Invalidation, Withdrawal, and Negative interpretation.

• Escalation occurs when you say or do something negative and your partner responds with something negative.
• Invalidation occurs when you subtly or directly put down thoughts, feelings, actions or worth of your partner. Invalidation includes an element of belittling or disregarding what is important to your partner, either out of insensitivity or outright contempt.
• Withdrawal can be as obvious as getting up and leaving the room, or as subtle as tuning out or shutting down during an argument. Avoidance reflects the same attitude or reluctance toward certain discussions, but with emphasis on the attempt to not let the conversation happen in the first place.
• Negative interpretation occurs when you interpret the behaviour of your spouse much more negatively than he/she intends the action.

If your discussions and practice sessions often end up in fights, it is very likely that you, probably unconsciously, have adopted one of these behaviours.

Here is how Katja (my wife, dance partner and business partner) and I, are intending to establish new behaviours to better practice together:

1. If one of us notices something, he or she will try to first find out if it was an isolated occurrence or a real pattern and only address it when it is a persistent pattern.
   Critiquing a single occurrence is unjust to your partner, who might have done it right 99 times while you pick out the one time he or she missed something.
2. We will film our training sessions so that whenever one of us wants to point out good or bad habits, we can point it out on the tape instead of trying to re-create the situation.
   When attempting to prove a point, it is very tempting to exaggerate a little bit to make the lead or movement you demonstrate more visible. The problem is, that even a small exaggeration can easily be interpreted as an insult, as your partner surely doesn’t want to associate him- or herself with the exaggeration. This is also true when teaching to students… avoid exaggerations to prove your point. Instead film and point it out, or offer alternatives that could be picked up as new habits.
3. We will follow the rule of improvisation: Always say “YES”, when your partner suggests to try something. Experience it couple of times, then rule it in/out.
   This links in to the “no discussion” policy I mentioned in my last article. Trying things out instead of discussing them can make your training time much more effective.
4. As suggested in the previous article: Be more purposeful when practicing, so that both partners are working towards the same goal.
   We decided that we will pick a topic for our training sessions before we start. The topic can be either something she wants to train or I want to train or something we both need to work on. If I want to work on something, she will try her best to make it happen and the same for things she wants me to lead in a certain way.

Even when talking about our vital behaviours it was very difficult for Katja and me not to fall into the escalation, invalidation, withdrawal or negative interpretation. I believe that one reason is that no one ever teaches you how to work together with someone else on a single topic. During most of our life and career steps, we perhaps learn how to teach, or to be a student. In university, we even learn how to work in teams. But even that is mostly about  breaking the project down into small pieces, then delegating each piece to a team member. It’s rare that people actually get trained to work together with two or more people at the same time on the same task.

Practicing dancing can be an excellent way to actually work on how to discuss and work together with another person.

Here are the methods experts propose:

1. Find the few vital behaviours that you want to change
2. Use positive deviance: find out how others solved similar problems, or look at occasions where you did not have those problems. What was different?
3. Experiment: do more of what works, and change what did not work. It’s trial and error!

What’s interesting with vital behaviours, is that – since they are vital – more people than just me and you do them. That means, if you find something that works for you, please share it with us! Your contribution can help save more relationships!

Cheers,
Ali

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Dancing with your life partner is both a blessing and a curse!

The blessings are obvious: you always have a partner to practice with and it gives you the opportunity to bond even stronger and spend more time together. However, it is sad how experienced dancers often say the same thing: “We can’t train together BECAUSE we are a couple! We fight ALL the time!”

I thought I had the answer to this problem after reading a book about status transactions by Keith Johnstone. In his book, he describes that, consciously or unconsciously, we challenge each others status in every communication. This often leads to the quarrels. Unfortunately, I quickly realized that there is no quick fix for this problem. With this article, I hope to initiate and promote a series of experiments and discussions on how to train dancing together with your partner.

Recommendations by Andreas Olsson and Joana Ekeström (dancers from Stockholm):

Use a practice diary and fill it with:

1. A common long-term goal and several milestones. E.g: Let’s say that you want to showcase your skills in competitions. Set a long-term goal such as “In two years time we will compete at the Ultimate Lindy Hop Showdown”. Milestone 1: Enter a competition every second month throughout this year. Milestone 2: Place in the finals of important competitions by next year.
2. Discuss and write down each of your (both yours and your partner’s) strengths and weaknesses. With this list at hand, it becomes easier to set up detailed schedules.
3. Choose a topic of the month, e.g. musicality, posture etc., on which agree to work on. The topic is probably inspired by step 2.
4. Keep track and comment in your practice diary during/after every session. What did you work on, what was difficult? Any aha moments? A side comment by Andreas: Some days, when we feel good, we can take it easier on following these “rules”. But, on frustrating days, we follow it religiously.

Talking about our strengths, weaknesses and goals can provide the opportunity to plan and design the training sessions in a win-win style. Once you created such a “contract”, it becomes much easier to get back on track if the discussions start to heat up and turn into fights.

Recommendations by Keith Johnstone

From: IMPRO: Improvisation and the Theatre

“/…/The actors would suggest a way of doing something, and if they started to explain, Brecht would say he wanted no discussion in rehearsal- it would have to be tried. /…/ I’ve known political theatre groups in Europe which should readily cancel a rehearsal, but never a discussion. My feeling is that the best argument may be a testimony to the skill of the presenter, rather than to the excellence of the solution advocated. Also the bulk of discussion time is visibly taken up with transactions of status which have nothing to do with the problem to be solved.”

Katja and me tried the “Impro: don’t discuss, just try” method last week, and actually found it quite relaxing and powerful. However, there are still many valuable points that can be learned in discussions and arguments. So, perhaps this method can be used sporadically or during a specific period of each training session.

My next experiment is to try both recommendations together. First create a practice diary according to the steps described by Andreas and Joana. Once a framework is established, stick to a “no discussion” policy.

I’m curious to learn how you deal with “dance/relationship fights during training sessions”, so please feel free to try these methods and share your experience or tell us about your ways of handling it.

Cheers,

Ali

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In today’s society, we learn not to express our anger. When we’re angry, we are told to count from 10 to 1 backwards and turn the other cheek…  But does that really stop us from being angry? Does it really take us only 10 seconds to shake that feeling of wanting to retaliate or find another outlet for that angry energy? We seem to have forgotten that some of the greatest people in human history, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, just to mention a few, were at the same time some of the most angry people in history.

Dance Opens Doors is all about using dance as a means to understand and practice different psychological concepts. Before rising to the level of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we need to understand and practice their method of anger management in our everyday interactions. This is where Regina comes into the picture.

I want to share a conversation/argument that took place after our last Monday class in Heidelberg between Regina and me. Our Monday classes are followed by a couple of hours of social dancing organized by, among others, Regina.

During the party, I was thinking:

What’s this music? I can’t dance to that… hmm, no DJ, and the music is coming from an ipod nano… I guess I can switch to my music [lack of empathy].

So I switched to, what I like to believe, was awesome  music!

Regina [stressed]: Hey, how rude, I spent a lot of time preparing this playlist for tonight [asserting herself].

Ali [realizing my lack of empathy]: I am sorry, you are right, and I should not have changed without asking you. Let me switch back to your playlist.

Solution [Win-Win]: How about we share our ideas about music, perhaps we can play a bit for every taste during the parties in the future.

As we are far from experts in anger management, we reached our win-win solution after about 20 minutes of hefty discussions back and forth.

What are our choices in an “anger” situation?

Let’s stick with the example of Regina and me:

Regina could have simply let me play my music and save her playlist for another occasion.

What would have been the effect of this choice? Do you remember Isaac Newtons rule: “Energy Cannot Be Created Nor Destroyed”? Anger is a form of stress triggered by negative emotional energy (hurt). This energy has to go somewhere. If Regina had chosen this passive approach and not acted on her anger, the angry energy would have been stored inside her as a feeling of sadness. This sadness can express itself as some form of resentment towards me, or even worse, towards swing dancing.

Fortunately, she made the decision to act and confronted me. Once this decision was made, she again had the choice between two different approaches. We know very well that reacting with aggression can cause even more anger.

Reacting with aggression, Regina would have tried to hurt me, e.g. by talking badly about me [win-lose], or by deciding not to have empathy for me in the future. At several points in our discussion, we were close to going down that road. Fortunately, we both had good presence of mind, and were still able to direct our thoughts towards the win-win approach. As both of us care deeply about our dance scene and friendship, we managed to channel our anger towards the well-being of the dance scene.

If something is not the way you’d like it to be, express yourself and act on it! Keeping it inside will only result in sadness and depression. When you act on it, show empathy for the other person and spend your energy on finding a win-win solution. Perhaps you print out the anger chart and keep it in your wallet to remind yourself about your options when you get stressed by someone.

The anger chart presented in this article was taught to me by Dr. Paul Drobransky in his amazing program called “Mind OS”. You can follow Dr. Paul on his blog: www.doctorpaul.net/blog/

I will continue with more case scenarios next year.

For now, I hope you have a great holiday and a happy New Year!

Regina, thank you for asserting yourself and showing the willingness to find a win-win solution.

Happy Holidays & New Year to everyone!
Looking forward to blog & dance with you in 2010!

Ali Taghavi

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