What's in a word?
- Leader: the person who leads or commands a group, organization, or country.
- Follower: a person who moves or travels behind someone or something.
(Oxford dictionary)
What are words for?
What do they mean to us individually?
How do we put them to use?
In my opinion, words help us understand concepts and things that would otherwise be difficult to grasp. At the same time, they enable us to communicate and express ourselves to others, and to organize our thoughts and feelings, among other things. They're like little folders that grant us fast, easy access to what we know and what we hope to know or understand. I make no claim to define what words mean. By contrast, as someone who dances with a partner, I’d like to draw attention to two specific words and consider exactly what it means to use them:
leader and follower.
For years I’ve struggled inside and faced my own hypocrisy, trying to understand how to have a real dialogue with my partner while dancing. A dialogue in which of us could express ourselves freely and equally at the same time. One which we were both listening and being heard. I’ve had many the long discussion on each person's role in the partnership, what open leading and active following mean, what's authentic versus what isn't, and what you can and can't do. At the end of the day, the lines were always blurred because each individual found evidence to support the opinion they were defending. We’ve spent hours professing that partner dancing is about dialogue, that we can get to a place where we can both fully express ourselves within our respective roles and where there exists a perfect balance.
I’ve taken and taught classes in which the follower was simply a means for the leader to execute the move—hours upon hours dedicated to how the leader drives the dance and, with any luck, a few minutes devoted to follower variations which are almost always contingent upon not interrupting the lead. I’ve attended conferences where talks were given on what was required of a good follower and a good leader, and on the origins of partner dancing, as though society has never been biased and men and women (‘traditional’ leaders and followers, respectively) have always been perfectly equal. I’ve witnessed conversations in which all of us could see that society was evolving and changing, that the ethics and philosophies we embodied in our own lives didn’t match those of the ‘authentic’ dance, and that talented dancers were stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to continue honoring history while expressing what they felt as individuals.
The truth of the matter is that in this case, despite our best intentions, the weight of the words comes crashing down like a guillotine. ‘Leader’ and ‘follower’ are words allocated to dancers which separate them in time—one in the future and one in the past. These words bear the weight of responsibility. They are separated by a wall known as the present, keeping both dancers from peeking over it to see that they are actually on the same side – the same team – with the same desire to play, speak and share. But leaders are too busy setting up what comes next, and followers are occupied striking a balance between what leaders want to do and what they want to do. After all, you can only play this game with these rules if each dancer plays their part...
Many of you will recall a contest called the ‘Jack & Jill’. Many will also recall the reason some decided to change the name. I’m confident that it was more than just a question of esthetic, that the decision was based on deeper values and that, whether we share these values or not, it clearly illustrates the fact that society is changing and that these changes don't necessarily mean abandoning the roots of the dance.
If we’re looking to transform partner dancing into a real dialogue or conversation, perhaps a step in that direction could be to remind ourselves of what the words mean and ask ourselves if we want to keep using them.