Communicating silently with your partner

ken mcfarland

Message 13771 · 25 Oct 1998 00:12:30 · Fixed-width font · Whole thread

Alastair Murdoch wrote:
>> I also like the exercise where one side of the set gets the
>>instructions for the dance and have to communicate with their
>>partners without words. No options there!
>Now there's an excellent idea I had not heard of before. Anyone
>else tried this?

Here's another good one that I tried years ago: have your dancers take their
partners in a firm promenade hold. One person is blind, and the other person
is the wide-eyed leader.

Have them do variations of movements to the music - begin simply by having
the leader of each couple take the blind partner just around the room to get
used to depending on the other person. Then get creative: try having them
move freely about the room rather then just in a circle (goal is to build
better reaction response time between the two people). Try having them dance
a 16 bar reel in couples, making sure that they don't let the blind partner
touch any of the other couples - or even a continuous interlocking reel in a
circle along the edge of the dance.

I've forgotten some of the things I used to do; maybe other's out there can
offer some more suggestions. I was doing that exercise 20+ years ago, but I
think these things come through the dance community in waves. I think you
may still find value in it -

Cheers,
Ken McFarland