Follow Voice

This post is about swing dancing: one of my main hobbies. The pertinent swing dance is Lindy Hop, but I'm sure the ideas generalise to other partner dances. The subject is "follow voice", which we can define to include all aspects of the dance which are decided by the follow, as opposed to the lead.

One day vs ten years

A typical swing dancer's career, if we focus on just the lead/follow aspect, might go something like this:

Generally speaking, because the starting point is that the lead makes most of the decisions, variations of the lead/follow convention give more choice to the follow, which I think is why some people call it "follow voice". However, just like leading and following in general, it's a cooperative skill that both roles must learn, and that improves the dance for both roles (and for spectators!). It's not just done "by" or "for" follows.

Details from above

Let's look in more detail at the part where you, our hypothetical protagonist, start questioning the lead/follow relationship. At this point, you are probably about intermediate/advanced level. The path of this experiment depends on whether you are a lead or a follow.

As a lead, you first question the lead/follow relationship when an expert follow does things that you have not led. Sometimes you accidentally interrupt the follow's idea and stop it working, though they hide it well. You try leaving space for your follow to fill with their own ideas. However, it doesn't help: there's no coordination between when you leave space and when the follow tries to do something. Moreover, your moves sometimes don't work properly because you're not leading confidently and clearly. Meanwhile, if you try leaving space for a beginner follow, they look at you blankly wondering what you expect them to do.

As a follow, when dancing with a beginner lead, you try filling in some artistic decisions by yourself. This does indeed allow you to do more interesting things, but it messes up their rhythm and freaks them out. So you try instead with an expert lead. It doesn't work well, because there's no coordination with what the lead is doing. Moreover, the lead's moves don't always work properly, because you're not always responding as they expect, though they hide it well.

You later understand that in both cases, what's missing is two-way communication to coordinate when the follow wants to add something to the dance. And the rest of the timeline is the process of working out how to do that, and what will work with each partner.

Bucket list

Let's collect in one list all the lessons and techniques in the above imaginary timeline that could be categorised as "follow voice", and a few more. The baseline is the straight-forward physical lead/follow technique that beginners learn. The variations (short of switching roles) are:

Inspiration

Let's study the world's four best Lindy Hop follows (IMO). That's right! The good shit. The stuff we're here for. Two videos each, chosen partly by the YouTube algorithm, with a few rules that basically come down to "improvised dances only":

The four follows have very different styles, and there are different lessons to learn from each one. In alphabetical order...

Pamela Gaizutyte

With Rikard Ekstrand in 2022:

This dance is gloriously playful and spontaneous. There's almost an entire chorus where they don't touch each other and everything is done visually, which is about as symmetric as a partner dance can get. This performance will never happen the same way again, and that is obvious to anybody watching, not least because of the mistakes. Indeed, the audience's reaction shapes the dance; the jokes are shared. The relationship with the band is just as important. This is the best kind of live performance: there are no clear producers and consumers!

With Tadas Vasiliauskas in 2023:

Tadas is Pamela's regular dance partner, and this video shows well what they can do with that kind of mutual understanding. The mistakes and surprises show that it is completely improvised. You can find examples of almost everything on the bucket list in this one dance.

Jo Hoffberg

With Felipe Braga in 2024:

These two know each other quite well, but they are not regular dance partners, I think. The stand-out feature of this dance is that the music switches between three or four different grooves. For example, the first chorus mixes phrases of 16th notes with phrases of swung 8th notes. The two partners manage to express all these different musical styles in a way that is consistent over time and with each other. It's really impressive how promptly they lock on to each other's ideas.

With Skye Humphries in 2018:

Skye is one of the best leads in the world, but this looks to me like an "off" day. Maybe he's tired? Nervous? I'm not sure. For the first minute this dance is one-way communication: Skye is going through the motions, expertly deciding everything. But half-way through this dance Jo decides that that's not good enough, and asserts her creativity. It's easy to spot, not least because audience goes "ooh!". And to Skye's credit, he snaps out of his trance and rises to the challenge. It turns into a really great cooperative dance, but I can't help feeling that Jo saved it.

Alice Mei

With Felipe Braga in 2024:

I believe Alice and Filipe practice together quite a lot, and it shows. This dance is a masterclass in call-and-response. I get the impression that either one of them can effortlessly copy 8 counts of the other's crazy improvised footwork perfectly. But there's plenty more to admire too, including excellent interpretation of the music and great visual leading and following. There are surely very few leads who can keep up with Alice the way Filipe does here.

With Peter Kertz in 2024:

In this dance Alice is heavily pregnant, and dancing with her regular partner. He is sympathetically leading mostly simple moves: no fast turns or dips, and not obviously offering Alice any special opportunities. Alice finds an unbelievable variety of ways to improvise within this simple structure. She's following perfectly at every moment, but she's doing much more. Her footwork is particularly impressive. I can't help imagining that Peter is interpreting the rhythm section and Alice the soloist, and it really works. Lessons for both roles.

Frida Segerdahl

With Michael Seguin in 2013:

This is one of my absolute favourite clips. I must have watched it dozens of times. They are obviously having so much fun, in spite of lots of mistakes, and I think with a dose of good luck. But it is undeniably a very skillful dance; very few dancers could handle the crazy roll-of-the-dice situations so well. Make sure to watch Jo Hoffberg in the background (seated, sixth from our right) who, though spectating, can't help but follow some of the visual leads. Most instructive!

With Todd Yannacone in 2011:

This is the oldest of my eight clips, and for me this is an example of the lead/follow dynamic not quite working as well as it could. Todd seems to enter the dance with the intention of making all the decisions, which he does expertly. I really like his interpretation of the music. Looking at other clips, this seems to be his great strength. But if you dance that way with Frida you are missing the point. This being a contest, Frida sets off on her own with the intent to win, and challenges Todd to keep up, and he gradually realises he can't. It makes for a highly entertaining show but it looks more like a fight than a dance. I think this is a great demonstration that "follow voice" is a skill that leads need to learn too.

Conclusion

Perhaps the most daunting realisation from studying these four famous follows is that they are very different. At this level, there's no textbook you can learn from. Each person makes their own path.

Only slightly less daunting is that you could find yourself dancing with any one of them, or with any of the leads, and you would need to adapt. At least half of the techniques on my "follow voice" bucket list are cooperative, and won't work unless both partners are on the same page. I deliberately showed each follow dancing with two different leads in order to illustrate this. Go find more clips of Pamela dancing with different leads; she's especially good at adapting.

We don't all have to be one of the best in the world. There is plenty in these videos that mere mortals can learn to some extent, and that works with many different partners. Perhaps the easiest lesson is to pay close attention to your partner, and not to fall into a trance of one-way communication. It's definitely something I'm going to be working on.

Last updated 2025/03/28