What the very first thing you do when you start dancing with a girl says about you…

Author: Gaëlle Céline Le Vu

Source: https://zouksidedown.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/what-the-very-first-thing-you-do-when-you-start-dancing-with-a-girl-says-about-you/

I’m sure most of you will have heard of the first hug when one starts dancing.
Some of you may not have heard about it at all. Some of you may have but forget about it as soon as you get onto the dance floor.

I have heard quite a few different teachers talk about it by now. Alisson, at Warsaw’s Zouk Libre festival (Jan 2014), did a great thing during one of the workshops. I was attending as a leader, so when they asked the women to go to one side with Audrey and the men to go to the other side, I naturally went to the men’s side, thinking it was going to be some sort of combination. But Alisson told the guys there to do a “surprise” for the girls: He told them to start dancing with them by hugging them and not doing any steps, or only single steps for a minimum of 30 seconds. Only after those 30 seconds, he said they could start creating distance and doing bigger moves.

He also gave a couple of good tips for the ways to do this hug:

• First get close, so that the part of your arm closest to your shoulder will touch the side of the girl, then slowly close your arm by letting every part of your arm touch her back.
• Don’t force her to go where you want but invite her, let her come to you. She will go as close as is comfortable for her and then you can finish closing your arm.

Bruno Galhardo was here in Prague last weekend and also emphasized this as a very important tool for connecting to your partner. He made everyone hug, put the music on, and made us change partner, so we had about 30 seconds with each person. A few tips from him included:

• Use your whole arm to give the hug, not just the hands, but the whole arm from the shoulder to the end of the fingers, and make sure you also use the palm of your hands.
• Breathe together while hugging.

Those things are basic, in a sense that they are very simple, but it seems that there is a shortage of leaders who do this. Personally, I must say that, when a leader grabs me and the first thing he makes me do is a turn, it really bores me and makes me expect the worst. It’s not about doing everything slowly: It’s about starting in a connected way and building it up from there. So, it can go fast and crazy in the end, but it will feel empty if you haven’t first built the connection and haven’t given some attention to your partner’s body and soul. If you know each other well, you might not need to start all the time this way. But most dancers would benefit hugely from starting with something like this. As a leader, you show to the follower that you care, thus giving her the freedom to let go, to relax with you, to trust you, and finally go crazy with you when/if the time is right.

Also, by showing that you are prepared to hug her from the beginning, you show confidence, that you are not scared of being close, not scared of her, and not totally driven by your sequence of moves but interested in truly dancing with her. And by doing those little things, even if you think you’re not in the mood, you will also help your mind go into this mood and you will be led by your own movements.

Like Bruno said, it’s not about the hug itself.
You can feel connection too when doing bigger moves. Or you can start with a playful move. And you can also go back to hugging any time during the dance. Just be attentive and receptive to your girl. But it is true that hugging makes it much more efficient for people to feel connected and then allow them to grow the dance into something else together, not separately.

As a short conclusion, the first thing you do when starting the dance will say something about you on:

• your level of attention to the girl
• your ability to connect at this very moment
• your mood
• your level of confidence
• and many other little things like this…

Finally, there are many ways to “hug”. You don’t have to follow exactly those “rules”, you can still hug while doing isolations for example, keep your heads connected, or keep the girl’s arms around your neck while you lead, or you can put your arm around the girl in different ways, or it can last from just a second to the whole 3 to 4 min that the song lasts. It’s your connection which will determine it.

But as an example, here is a demo of Bruno and Eglantine. Notice that he never leaves her “alone” and is constantly nourishing this connection throughout the dance.