No products in the cart.
The “Flowy Trap”
Reading Time: minutes remaining
I wanna talk about a trap I see many intermediate and advanced dancers falling into with their musicality and expression: their flow-focused dancing actually backfires.
Over the past decade, West Coast Swing trends leaned heavily toward smooth, flowy dancing.
And that style is beautiful. I enjoy dancing in "flow mode" myself, and I regularly train students to access the skills of weight transfer control, conservation of momentum, and lyrical body movement.
But something interesting has been happening for while now...
Many dancers have been (accidentally) training themselves to dance in that same flowy vibe… to every song.
Even when the music has:
- strong backbeats
- punchy accents
- fast rhythms
- groovy instrumentation
you’ll see dancers still moving with the same gooey, continuous flow.
And when that happens, the dancing can look slightly out of alignment with the music.
Not because the dancer lacks skill or because they are missing big musical hits, but because their training has emphasized flow more than rhythm.
On the surface, this might seem like "just a different style of WCS", which would be valid, but...
...it might actually be problem if the dancers are only good at that style and don't actually have a balanced "toolbox" rooted in authentic foundations.
Because continuous flow is a fun toy to play with, but it's not the foundation of West Coast Swing.
West Coast Swing is a rhythm dance that plays with flow, not a flow dance that plays with rhythm.
Musicality isn’t just about interpreting the music - it about becoming the music.
It’s about having movement options that match the vibe of the song:
- Some songs want smooth flow.
- Some songs want groove.
- Some songs want rhythm, accents, and playful syncopations.
Great dancers diversify their skills so they can have better vibe range. They have trained with rhythm control as their Swing foundation and can shift their movement depending on the vibe of the music.
I love playing with continuous flow
- when a song is more monotonous, consistent, or soft.
- I keep my timing, but the game I focus on is on making transitions between the shapes as smooth and flowing as possible with my partner.
- The dance feel more like prose - telling a story. I also enjoy this when stealing or switching.
I love playing with grooves
- when a song has a stronger pulse on every beat or every other beat.
- The dance feels more like a collaborative poetry - pausing and hanging out frequently rather than rushing to the next pattern.
- I feel a sense of belonging by paying homage to the roots of the dance with cyclical body pulse and footwork variations.
I also love adding rhythmic variations
- In both of these moods
- when the song has interesting extra layers of instrumentation or vocals.
- I like the challenge of imitating the rhythms I hear by isolating certain body parts or leading/backleading my partner to hit them together.
When I social dance, I love partners who can adjust their own vibe too.
And when I judge intermediate and higher contests, I'm looking for dancers who don't dance the same way to every song.
Get the training to escape the Flowy Trap
At any level if you feel like grooves, footwork, or rhythm is your weakness compared to the rest of your dance, this is your sign to train these foundational skills so you can feel more versatile and fully expressive to any song.
Want to know how? Here's the perfect way to get started no matter what skill level you're at.
Join us for the free 5-day Groove Challenge April 11-15 to get 5 days of free drills to improve your comfort, confidence, and control in your West Coast Swing to more rhythmic songs.
So you can escape the "Flowy Trap".
Great article and very timely.
“West Coast Swing is a rhythm dance that plays with flow, not a flow dance that plays with rhythm.”
Yes, exacty. Thank you for this; it says so much to me. I absolutely love “flow dancing”, but I know a lot of us miss out on some beautiful and fun opportunities to play with footwork and highlight some of those fun bits of music that exist inside the overall arc of lyrical phasing.
After many years dancing, competing and teaching West Coast Swing, I personally felt like my dancing was stagnating. Working with you and Myles has really opened the door to actually *hearing* more rhythm in music -even in repetitive, flowing music that repeats itself. I think I kind of knew what was missing but having you articulate and share the opportunities has really helped expand my dance repertoire. My friends have noticed. But perhaps just as importantly as a teacher, it’s helped me to “teach by dancing”. The result of *me* dancing differently has beginners pick up on rhythm (dancing the dance instead of doing the steps) more quickly and with more smiles and engagement. They are focused on *us* more than just their feet. I’m getting more smiles, more laughter, more fun from people I often see struggling. It brings me joy to see them “getting it” instead of (at least in some cases) ignoring the music to focus so hard on “doing the pattern correctly”.
It’s really been cool!