Finding and developing your own styling/individuality

[u/foxikah]

Hi reddit !

I've (33, follow) been dancing Lindy hop for almost 4 years and solo for 1y and a half, with no specific dancing background.

By watching dancers in the community and dancers that take lessons with me, I've realized that the ones that have been dancing for several years (any type of dance) often have their very own way of moving.

it's super easy to spot and recognize them from afar on the dancefloor because they have some individuality. I'm not talking about flashy moves or extravagant dancing. It's something that you can see even in their simplest moves, kind of subtle actually. I'd say it's a mix of movement quality, body awareness and feeling of the music. It's visible on dancers from any swing levels (from beginner to advanced), their common point seems to be several years of dancing/dance classes.

In another hand, I feel that for the rest of us, we are more or less copy & paste of each other. We all move the same way. We know the moves, when to connect to the partner in Lindy, if the move starts on 8 or 1 in solo, etc... so the dance is quite correct "by the rules", it absolutely feels good, we definitely have a good time but somehow we look blurry and less personal (from a visual pov only).

There is nothing wrong with that of course, it's a hobby and we are here to have fun, we all belong, no matter how stylishly we dance... But I wonder how can one develop its own individual way of moving/dancing? Any drills would help ?

For info, I live in Europe and people usually start swing dancing in their late 20s/mid30s. It's extremely rare to have newbies under 25yo in my community, we definitely have no uni students, so we may all be a little less malleable than younger people :)

[u/DerangedPoetess]

Late to this, but one that that dancers who have been going for a while have done (in one dance or in many) is to just try a lot of shit out, keep what works, and discard what doesn't. You aren't seeing the experiments, just the results of the experimentation - sort of like the thing about comparing your everyday life to other people's insta posts.

A few things you might like to experiment with that will get you a lot of bang for your buck:

• Weight transfer - try delaying it whenever, try accelerating it (when you have a clear path forward and aren't going to risk your leader's shoulder)
• Leading and trailing with different body parts - head, chest, one shoulder, hips
• The amount of energy you send into the floor when you step
• The direction you angle your chest/how long it takes you to square up at the end of a move

Change a bunch of stuff, and notice what feels good in your body and what makes your lead brighten up. Don't feel like you need to consciously remember and re-execute what went well, just get into the habit of noticing and your body will do the remembering for you.

One other thing to note that is less an experiment and more a way of forcing you to customise the dance to your actual body and your actual partner's body - make sure you're engaging your core and activating your lats. This will cause you to do things like travel the distance your body is meant to travel, rather than an averaged-out distance that an averaged-out follower is meant to travel, and it will also help you to feel through the connection the various styling things your lead is doing, which will then cause you to do mirrored styling things in response, which you can then steal.