Why do some dance teachers have students trade partners in class while other teachers do not? I can certainly understand that some people are not comfortable touching or dancing with strangers and so might not be willing to trade partners. However, it is my opinion that dancing is meant to be a social activity, so trading partners would seem the correct thing to do.

If you have an opinion about trading partners, please share it!

I think the previous posts are exactly right. If you dance with the same person all the time, you'll tend to compensate for each other's minor mistakes and probably never notice it. Then when you try to dance with someone else who can't compensate the same way, things will feel wrong. It will be harder to break that bad habit of compensating for your partner once you've gotten it. That's generally why changing partners in class is a good idea -- it helps you learn to lead and follow and adjust to your partner. Every man leads differently, every woman doesn't react to the same lead in exactly the same way. Changing partners lets you feel how other people dance and learn to adjust so that the two of you always tend to work together rather than fight against each other. The group classes I've been in have always changed partners when practicing things, but the groups were also almost all college age (undergrads, grads, and fairly recent alumni). I think that if the teacher stresses that changing partners in class is a way for you to help develop your leading and following skills which are vital when out social dancing, most people shouldn't have too much of a problem with it because it is helpful. If it really upsets you to change partners in class, talk to the teacher about it. Together you should be able to come up with some compromise that will work.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

I agree that trading partners is a good learning tool in spite of the fact that our teacher doesn't usually ask us to trade and I really don't like to do it! How's that for contradiction? *lol*

We are one of those couples who has had a little dance experience and are doing a bit better than 99% of the class and dancing with others can be pretty painful both mentally and physically! But we do participate when asked to trade and we do dance with other people at social dances - even the couple who can't keep time with the music DH says she leads, or tries to...and her partner leads by nodding and smiling.

But when we end up with better dancers than ourselves during a mixer, we both realize what a lot we can learn and what we can bring back to our own partnership that will make our dancing both better and more fun. So I am hoping that as we progress through our lessons that we will maybe find more dancers at our level and that we actually will do a bit more trading.

tourist

That's a perfect example of compensating for your partner, hoofer919. The husband and wife have compensated for each other's mistakes because they never dance with anyone else and thus never learned proper lead/follow techniques. I wouldn't be surprised if their technique has problems because of the compensation, too. Now when they try to dance with someone else, it won't work (as you've witnessed) because they got into bad habits that they shouldn't have; changing partners around while learning could have avoided that. It must have been rather embarrassing for the lady to dance with her teacher and not be able to follow anything. So there's a great, first-hand example of how not changing partners can hinder your learning, Kevin Laddison. Switching partners really does have more benefits than drawbacks, I think.

Oh, and tango has a good point that I forgot because I haven't taken classes in a while -- the male:female ration is almost never 1:1 unless you require people to come in male-female pairs (which most classes here don't). Never switching partners means some people never get to dance during the class and that will make it harder for them to learn the material. So in a case like that, think of changing partners as helping out your classmates.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

well, i've had some experience of both sides of this coin.
Certainly, for those just starting to dance and learning the basics, it's an excellent idea to swap partners, otherwise each person in the couple can compensate for mistakes made by the other, and bad habits can build up.
On the other hand, as you've said, many adults wouldn't normally want to swap partners, and for a couple that are progressing well, and have potential, being forced to swap can be a nuisance.
Teachers should always encourage their pupils to dance socially. When i started, i was fortunate that my teacher organised her own 'socials' with other classes. That helped me a lot

Trading partners in a dance class is not really about social interaction. It is a teaching method that is very useful for teaching lead/follow principles. As phil.samways mentioned partners, tend to compensate for their partners and develop bad habits (like backleading) that slow their overall development as dancers.

Blair

Although I certainly agree with all responses, I still had to comment on the issue of sharing partners.

I know one couple who dances only with each other (husband/wife), and they make it well-known to others. They have been dancing for a number of years and compete Am/Am. At one social, my instructor had asked the wife to dance. I watched with total amazement - she couldn't follow 90% of what he lead.

I hope I never dance like that.

It appears my question didn't indicate well enough why I was asking why some teachers ask students to trade partners and others do not have students trade partners.

I already am a dance teacher, and I am fully behind the idea that trading partners is the best way to learn to dance. I was asking so that I could gather the dance communities feeling on trading partners so that I could better communicate that to my students. A woman called last week to ask if I required trading partners because she just wanted to do something fun with her boyfriend and did not want to dance with other people. Although I will support their desire not to trade partners, I will let them know what they are missing. Thank all of you for your input, and if you have any other comments, please share!

Kevin

PS. I also think that trading lead/follow roles is a very valuable tool, because it makes it obvious what kind of communication the follower needs in order to do what the leader wants. It also helps the follower to understand what it takes for a leader to communicate that information effectivly. I don't have students trade roles in class, though, that would be much too confusing. It does work in private lessons, though.

Also, I think that changing partners is necessary in classes where there is a big difference in the number of leaders and followers. Changing partners gives everyone in the class a fair chance to dance.

And as other have said, I think that at the beginning stage, changing partners is the best way to learn lead and follow skills. You can get used to dancing with one person but you won't know if you're leading or following the right way. If you dance with different people, at least you can feel a difference and you can try to correct yourself.

tango