“The leading role makes 70% of art work at zouk dancing” as declared in my previous article, Mr Jukka valimaa who wrote an article “ Back to Basic” to zouksidedown from Finland, said, "my teachers said quite opposite; when it gets to the complicated stage, much more hard work is required for the woman" It was interesting. Yes, followers have different kinds of difficulties. They must maximise the opportunity given by leaders, beautifully and sensually present their dance while sensing the leader wants to achieve. When there is small room of freedom, followers are able to express some of their own individualism, hence why women's styling is getting dominant in the later stages of learning. I understand why his teachers said this. If they are of professional performance level, the moves are often choreographed, so the burden on leaders is usually eased; focus is not placed on pursuing beautiful presentation as much as for followers. There is no reason as to why leaders do not necessarily present himself cool as well as followers but most professional leaders focus on their followers to look beautiful (except for a few dancers such as Kamacho). In my view, only few international performers such as Didanho and Aline, Evelyn and Xandy equally present themselves coolly on stage. Otherwise, we might tend to look at followers on the stage. The pursuit of a beautiful performance is limitless and it would be hard for women if the show is scheduled to have leaders deciding to focus on ladies more. Let’s face the fact. More than 95% of zoukers are social dancers or social instructors who do not have to present a show in front of hundreds of people. As far as social scenes, I still think the leader's role is harder than the follower's, as their moves must be spot on with music. However, women tend to work harder than men when it comes to styling and men often stop learning new techniques to climb one step further. I imagine that this is due to the stressful nature of maintaining the learning of new skills. That is why many men wish to take a rest once they have acquired satisfactory moves to entertain the ladies. If they decided to keep learning continuously, the demand for tasks are greater than the ones women continue to learn. Followers' skills are of no use if she dances with a poorly skilled leader. She will need to work much harder only when she is able to dance with top dancers with great leading skills. Most of the time, we have no chance of showing great skills except for a few styling moves. There are very few opportunities where we can learn lift and trick skills and only a handful of men wish to do it. Not all men can do lifting as it requires strong muscle and advanced skill. To become a top dancer, they are expected to show some spectacular moves and they do. Lift and trick is not something that everyone can do easily and we only experience these moves once in a while. For professional zouk performers, both leaders and followers have to work hard to their maximum. In fact, an importance may shits from dancing skills to choreography for presenting awesome show performance. In the end, it is not a competition of which gender works harder anyway. I would settle in saying that both roles are equally hard, to avoid conflict!! Art has no ceiling and the important part is to keep on learning. If we continue to do the same moves all the time, there will be no surprises in our social dance as we keep on searching for a new partner. It would be nice if we can dance with the same partner for 10 dances continuously and having no identical or repetitive moves!
Lots of people have different views on this topic and kazouk always welcome guest posting regarding zouk life.
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