M&E 005 : Matching Energy

Thank you for covering this topic. As a leader, I’ll often find it’s a huge issue when I’m dancing with two different categories of followers:

1) Beginners
2) Intermediate dancers who are learning about styling

Beginners rarely have the skill and certainly not the experience to know how to match the leader’s energy level, so that’s no surprise. It’s the intermediate dancers who disappoint me in these situations. They should have enough experience and skill to match their partner’s energy, but they’re so focused on trying out the new thing they’ve learned that they don’t pay attention to their partner at all. When this happens, I feel like quitting mid-dance because in my view, the follower is so wrapped up in their own world that they could be dancing with anyone. If you’re making me feel irrelevant to the dance, why should I bother continuing to dance with you?

I’ll routinely try to counter manic energy by going far in the opposite direction, and I’ll get mellower and quieter while they get wilder and louder. I’ll even bring the dance down to nothing more than a basic step…until it becomes obvious that this isn’t making any difference, as the follower keeps doing whatever they want. When all these solutions have failed, is the onus on me to give up and just match manic intensity of my partner?