spatial awareness as a dancer

When people first learn to dance, they are focused entirely on where to place the feet and what to do with the hands. It can be overwhelming at times. As they get more experienced, their focus moves beyond those basics to technique, musical timing, and leading or following. But one powerful aspect of dancing is often overlooked: the magic of spatial awareness.

Ballroom and Latin dances move around the floor, often in haphazard ways. Since the different couples on the floor are not doing identical step patterns at the same time, those movements can often conflict with other couples. 

Collisions are fairly common in ballroom dancing, but usually they aren’t a major concern. The goal is to minimize these occasions and that takes spatial, or situational, awareness.

Without awareness of the space around us, we can seem to others like a ‘bull in a china shop’; they have to watch out for us, which elevates the difficulty and stress level of everyone else on the floor. 

It’s similar to the way you feel when you’re driving and come across another driver who seems to be oblivious to the vehicles around him or her.

Spatial awareness is much more than just trying to avoid collisions. 

It’s an essential element in being able to apply floor craft; that ability to instantly move into a different step pattern than the one you initially planned, based entirely on the changing space around you.

Learning spatial awareness takes time and effort and like any skill, you have to apply yourself to this with deliberate effort and practice.

How do you become spatially aware?

The first step is to use your head to actually see what’s going on around you. 

There’s nothing wrong with looking around before starting a move that might cause problems behind you. 

Some steps require a quick look before you lead the figure since you need to know that there’s space behind your partner and yourself!

So, keep your head on a swivel, especially on a crowded floor…just don’t compromise your posture in the process.

Next, start to become aware of how others on the floor are using their space. 

You may find that some couples move more than others and if so, you may need to become more alert to where those fast-moving couples are. 

If you can’t see them anywhere in your line of sight, chances are they are behind you.

Eventually, with practice, you will begin to recognize how different step patterns fill up space and how much time you might have before an open space becomes a recipe for a collision. 

Some patterns are danced frequently, so you can almost assume that if a couple is dancing a Fallaway Reverse Slip Pivot in Waltz, they are likely to continue with rotational figures like Double Reverse Spin and then possibly, an Oversway. 

This gives you clues as to where the space will be a few seconds from the start of their sequence and where space is likely to be filled.

The Partnership at work

One of the most important issues in managing spatial awareness is that of working together as a couple. 

Followers, don’t hold back the Lead when you notice a potential issue! 

Many ‘slam on the brakes’ long before a potential collision because they didn’t trust their partner to deal with what was/is happening behind them. 

When you freeze up and stop your partner, you are not only showing a lack of trust but also making it impossible for them to do whatever they may have been planning in order to avoid the problem. 

The best thing a Follow can do is to gently squeeze the arm or connecting hand to indicate a potential issue and let the Lead handle it.

If you’re serious about developing your skills as a dancer, put some extra effort into developing your spatial awareness. 

You’ll find greater enjoyment in your dancing, as you become much more skilled at manoeuvring around the floor and best of all, others will love sharing the floor with you!

Balance is absolutely critical in dancing and in ballroom and other partner dances, it is particularly critical given the impact of one partner’s balance on the other.  

With poor balance, relatively simple moves can seem challenging. 

With great balance, executing even complex choreography is much easier so, think of improving your balance by focusing on the 6 parts of your body that impact it the most…these are your eyes, ears, head, core, arms and feet.

1.  Eyes provide information to the brain that helps or hurts balance.

If your movement is so fast that your brain is not able to register all the changing information quickly enough, it will not know what position is best to balance you. 

With this you may get dizzy and lose balance all together. 

This tends to happen when turning, especially when turning very fast or multiple times and here you have 4 main options:

• Spot to reduce the amount of information to your brain down to two main chunks. Spotting does this because you keep your gaze in one spot as long as possible, then quickly move to the next.
• Blink more quickly, to put small rest breaks between the points of information sent to your brain.
• Intentionally blur your vision, again to limit over-stimulation from too much information to your brain.
• Practice repeated fast spins, because you can build up tolerance for almost anything the more you do it.

2. An even slightly plugged ear canal will definitely hurt your balance.

Sinus congestion feels a lot like your ears are plugged, and can also impact your balance. If this happens, you have 3 main options:

• A salt and water nasal spray can help to clear nasal passages which are linked to the ear canal.
• You can yawn, swallow or chew gum to clear pressure that may have built up from high altitudes or mild allergies.
• For stronger allergies and congestion, you might need an antihistamine. If you take antihistamines, drink plenty of water since your throat and respiratory passages will likely feel dry.

3. Your head is heavy and can knock you off balance if not well-aligned.

There are many ways to misalign your head, but also many ways to counter-balance it. You have three main situations and options here as well:

• Keep your chin parallel to the floor or at a right angle to your body. This will immediately put your head in a balanced position. It also looks strong and elegant.
• If your step or choreography requires your head to briefly go back, forward or to one side, make sure that your core is particularly well engage, and keep the misalignment as brief as possible if you are moving. It will also help your balance if there is some counterbalance in another part of your body. Typically this will happen      quire naturally, unless you are tense.
• When a follower in ballroom does a stretch, there should still be a perfect triangle from the head as the point on the top or the triangle, to the shoulders as the 2 points of the base. This needs to be maintained even with the left turn of the head, to ensure that the neck stays straight, and able to balance the head.

4. Your core is critical to balance.

Your core is much more than your abdominals. In very general terms, it includes the front, back and side muscles in your entire torso as well as the pelvic area. When the core muscles work together, they support stability. When one or another is much weaker or less engaged that the others, you are less stable therefore, consider the four main requirements for core engagement:

• The muscles that are most likely to be too relaxed are the muscles of the pelvic floor. Until muscle memory is developed, most people have to consciously engage them as in Kegel exercises, which are similar to activation the muscles to stop urination
• Engage the abdominals by thinking of bringing the belly button to the spine.
• Engage the back and side muscles by keeping your shoulder blades down, your back flat, and your rib cage compact and not puffed out.
• Exercise your core even when not dancing. Every bit of advantage here helps a lot.

5. Arms can help balance, but more often, they hurt it.

If the core is engaged, the arms should be free to naturally amplify your movement and connect appropriately to your partner. The major risk is when you are in a closed or contact position, and the partners’ connection is too strong and tight so, consider these two points:

• Even when partners are in perfect unison, a move with a very slight difference in timing of one partner, can sabotage the balance of the other. Arm tone cannot be too strong or too soft. It has to be “just right”.
• A similar result will occur if the leader “steers” a step with arms as opposed to leading with the body and allowing the arms to follow. Even the sharpest move that may look like arm lead (think tango) is actually a body lead. The arms do not move, they remain in the same position relative to the body and simply re-position in space because the body moves.

6. Feet are at the bottom of everything good and not so good.

You have probably heard the term “stand on your foot”, “get your weight on your foot” or some colourful variation that dance instructors say.

There are two main things here:

• Truly it is impossible to move with balance unless your weight has a single focus point. Split weight (where your weight is equally divided between both feet) is a static or transitional position. If you try to move without full transfer of weight to one foot, you will literally be in conflict by being in-between standing and moving and will become off balance.
• Your foot position is also important. Even if you start a step on the side of your foot, remember to have the base of the foot flat before you move. If not you may cause injury as well as imbalance.