On Ballroom Dance Technique

From Oxford Dictionary:

“a way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure"

“skill or ability in a particular field”

“a skillful or efficient way of doing or achieving something”

When I was a beginner student myself and a younger dancer in general I took technique to be the ultimate truth of expression and admired the best dance couples for their finesse and skill in movement. As many dancers and students do - I would watch the best dance couples execute dance figures with great precision and speed and complexity. I would admire their matured and well trained dance moves and try to replicate them in my own dancing. I am aware that how I perceived the art is my own way and is not the only possible way to perceive dance, but seemingly the majority in the Ballroom Dancing world is propagating and supporting this view.

At the beginning of this post I quoted the definition of the word “technique” and what it means in broad understanding. So from the definition follows a logical question “what is the particular task that we are carrying out?” What is our dance technique meant to convey? What is the goal of our dancing? I guess there can be many goals that can be achieved through dance. I would say that technique is always a subordinate of the main goal.

As time passes and I became more aware of all the different techniques out there I became more and more confused. People talk about the quality and how some dancing has it and some does not. Let’s examine quality itself:

From Oxford Dictionary:

“the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something”

“general excellence of standard or level”

“a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something”

So the quality itself is something that is extracted in comparison against other similar things or it could mean to be a very distinctive trait of some dance aspects of some dance couple. If I think about it, I would say in dancing it is more of a distinctive trait of a dancer brought to great lengths and developed into something that then we also call “technique”. So as time passes the great dancers of each era would make their own technique to serve their understanding of what dancing is for them.

So later I came to a conclusion that technique is not the ultimate truth at all. A particular technique is a devised guide how to achieve the purpose the creator of the technique has set out to achieve. Also not every human is the same. We have different bodies that will execute some moves better and some worse. Think of somebody very tall dancing Viennese Waltz versus somebody very short. The tall couple would definitely seem to be more spacious (if skill and level is equal for two dance couples) and more voluminous because of their particular body structure. But are they better dancers? Is their excellence higher because of their body build?

So we should return to the goal of dancing itself. Is it a sport, is it an art, is it a social activity? We have the power to shape the answer to that question to suit our worldview. I guess there can be many answers to these questions and that is ok.