21 mar 2008

Tonight my friend Mariana is leading a workshop for women's technique. In disclosing the focus of the workshop she has made an emphatic statement that she will not teach adornments, and in the promotional materials she says, "You don't need adornments to be pretty, you are pretty." So why does she seem to have such a strong aversion to adornments?

We had a talk a while back about this. I once asked her which women dancers she admired. One of the names she mentioned was Lucia Mazer, and her reasoning for this was because Lucia never wastes energy with extraneous movements. That was an attitude that Mariana strongly agrees with. We got on the subject of adornments and embellishments and she seemed to feel that they take away from the unity of the couple. This was a view that was heightened the more she practiced the leaders' role and would find that the followers' embellishments tended to interfere with her intentions. Beyond that, she apparently thought they spoiled the aesthetic of the dance.

Now, Mariana, if you don't know her, is an exceptional dancer. She's one of the few followers I've met who truly seems to enjoy and excel at *every* approach that a leader provides her, from the absolute beginner to the elite and from the most strictly traditional to the wildly experimental. She seems to have an uncanny knack to adapt instantaneously to whoever she dances with. I have always loved watching her dance but until we had this discussion I never even noticed that she doesn't use adornments. And yet she is absolutely compelling. Why?

Regarding adornments, the current trend for followers seems to be the more, the better. It's as if followers are looking forward to and/or paying a large amount of attention to every space between the leaders' marks for the opportunity to make a display. Aside from aesthetic, it seems to be an exhibition of skill for women to decorate their transitions. In my opinion, perhaps the single biggest influence to this current aesthetic is the dancing of Geraldin Rojas de Paludi, particularly during her time with Javier Rodriguez. Now, I'm sure they are no strangers to anybody who may be reading this and that my singling them out is fairly obvious. But I wonder if many followers are missing something about her dancing, something more vital and bewitching about her dance than her obvious skill with ornamentation. And it is something that she and Mariana, despite their different approaches to the dance, both have in common. That is their complete investment--emotional and physical--in the leader. It's not about technique, it's all about attitude.

"A woman, totally connected with her man," Mariana said, "what could be more beautiful?"

As a leader, I am fairly neutral when it comes to adornments. I utilize them in my dance but don't make them an emphasis, and as far as leading a woman who uses them it generally doesn't bother me. I will say that despite the claims of some, who say that you can make them essentially invisible as far as the partner is concerned, they always affect the mechanism of the dance. Even when the movement is masked by a very skilled dancer, there is always something transmitted even if it's only subconsciously. And when I dance with someone who I know uses a lot of them I tend to limit my dance in order to indulge their interpretation, but also to keep from tripping them over their own feet. I still enjoy these dances, but in a sense I feel that they aren't really all my dances. Like in a way I was just providing a vehicle for the follower to make her statements. And as a leader, that's not the most satisfying feeling. Not to say there shouldn't be give and take, a sharing of expression. But dancing with a follower who places excessive emphasis on adornments is kind of like having a conversation with someone who won't shut up and give you a chance to interject, or like someone who you feel isn't really listening to what you say but is just waiting for the next opportunity to get her two cents in.