Volunteer Report

Recharging after Welcome Week

By Alexzandra Enger

It's welcome-back season at the University of Minnesota. For me, an officer of the Ballroom Dance Club, this means endless publicity commitments and performances targeted towards freshmen and otherwise new students.

Student participants in our club are what keep us alive. Each year, we see a new crop of eager young adults join our ballroom-dancing ranks, and we say goodbye to our seasoned veterans, now graduated and off to face the world. The club likes to promote ballroom dancing as a fun and engaging activity that brings participants new social connections and the opportunity to learn a cool new skill.

To club members, most of whom usually only see the outward-facing portions of our operation, everything appears smooth, organized, and perfectly coordinated. To those behind the picturesque front, things are a little more complicated. Anyone who has ever been involved in planning any sort of event—particularly one where almost all of your actions have to go through and be approved by a third party—knows it's not a simple job. Coordinating volunteers, allocating funds, arranging venues—all of this requires a large and dedicated team of people willing to put in long hours to make it happen.

Because I'm so integrated into the behind-the-scenes work BDC does, I occasionally lose sight of what our club sets out to do: get people hooked on a fun new activity. As I continue to work more and thus sometimes (sadly) have less time for social dancing, I've been on the lookout for opportunities to leave other obligations behind and just dance for the spirit of it.

After yet another of our welcome week marketing events, I and some of my fellow BDC cohorts decided to check out a swing dance at 301 on Main. None of us had ever been to this particular venue before, though we'd heard rumors that several of the dances formerly held at the now-closed Social Dance Studio had made this ballroom their new stomping grounds.

When we arrived, the lesson preceding the social dance had just begun. It was east coast swing, something I was quite familiar with … or so I'd thought. I was leading, since the ratio of leads (all men, on this occasion) to follows (a category dominated entirely by the female population at this time) was rather skewed. By taking myself out of the follow mix, I freed up two more spots for follows to get some experience dancing with another person.

Now, when I lead swing, I usually end up just reverse-engineering the leading moves from what I know as a follow. More often than not, this works out just fine; occasionally it takes some missteps, laughter, and a follow willing to learn alongside me as I figure out exactly what it is I'm supposed to be doing.

I wasn't expecting too much difficulty going into this lesson. We started with some pretty basic underarm turns and passes, and if we learned anything new, I'd be learning it from the lead's perspective this time.

In no time at all, however, our relaxed, basic lesson made a left turn at easy and headed down a road I'd never seen before. As it turns out, there's a form of east coast swing that I'm entirely unfamiliar with. Instead of being face-to-face with your partner, we began dancing in a triangle sort of shape with both of us facing the same direction. This wasn't too hard to grasp, but then the instructors started into a long string of very cool, very difficult-looking moves. After a few slow demos, they began breaking down the steps. There were motions in play here that I'd never encountered before, and at first, it was quite confusing.

As I'm regularly a follow, I began to be hit with with new realizations about the challenge of leading. I had begun learning to lead ballroom dances at the beginning of the summer, but the moves we were learning then were ones I already had a decent knowledge of as a follow, whereas these were steps I'd never taken before.

It struck me that, when I'm following, I rely very much on my partner to know what to do when and where to do it. This habit crosses over into my learning new steps as a follow as well. As a follow, you generally wait for signals from your lead before you start any movement, and then the connection between you and your partner usually gives you cues on what your motions should be. In a leading position, it's up to you to move not only yourself but also your partner around the floor. There's nobody you can rely upon for cues when you're leading.

Eventually we made our way through the long string of spins, turns, and wraps before the social dance began. I was following then, and as I tried to reverse-engineer the follow portions for the moves I'd just learned, I kept my thoughts from my hour of leading in the forefront of my mind.

The night was long, though a live swing and jazz band kept the mood lively and bright. Many other fellow club members had come along with us, so there was a pleasant mix of people closer to myself in age and experienced individuals with a broader repertoire of moves.

Eventually we made our way back home, thoroughly swinged out. Of course, I came away with a rather drained energy supply (over four hours of nonstop swing dancing tends to do that to you), but I also brought back a renewed appreciation for the leads I have the fortune to dance with. It's by no means an easy task to tackle, and now that I've had firsthand experience learning a step series I've never encountered in any form before, I have a greater understanding of just how difficult it can sometimes be to develop a step to a workable point.

Beyond that, I saw that even though a lead might reach the point where the move is able to happen with some degree of smoothness, there are still a great many smaller points that are glaringly obvious to the leader that they want to improve upon to give the motions more ease. It's safe to say that now, with this greater understanding of the leading perspective, I'll have a more appreciative and patient demeanor when practicing my ballroom dancing in the future.

What had started as a much-needed respite from all the volunteer tasks for welcome week became a valuable learning experience. Sometimes a little break is all you need to recharge your mind and your love of dance.