How can we grow leaders in our balboa scene?
Many balboa scenes are follow-heavy. Chicago has a slightly lead-heavy balboa scene. Here are some ideas to grow your leader population.
- Send personal invitations to leaders to come to balboa events. Follows should send out personal invitations to leaders that they would like to dance with and see at events. This is very effective and how I balance roles in classes and dances in Chicago.
- Give leadership roles to burgeoning leaders in your scene. Ask a promosing leader to co-teach a beginner lesson with an experienced follow. Get leaders involved in promoting and organizing events.
- Find out what leaders want to learn and make classes relevant to them. Bring in out of town instructors to inspire leaders.
- Put together a balboa choreography teams. Choreography can help leaders feel more confident with their moves, build community, inspire new dancers, and practice transitioning between moves. If you need help putting together a team, contact Matt Mitchell for assistancce.
- Work with promising and dedicated leaders outside of classes to help fast track them into more advanced dancers. Provide mentorship opportunities to help them take leadership roles.
- Use the Mickey and Kelly online video series to work with a leader to develop skills.
- Encourage all genders to consider leading and try having an everybody leads/everybody follows class.
- Have lots of classes and workshops. Many times leaders do not feel comfortable attending a social dance until they have had lots of formal instruction. Provide opportunities and help leaders transition to social dancing.
- Ask leaders to dance. Novice leaders are nervous about asking experienced follows to dance. Encourage follows to ask leaders to dance particularly if they are new. Make sure newbie leaders feel welcomed and encouraged.
- Mentor leaders traveling to events for the first few times. Make sure they are getting asked to dance and have a social scene at the event. Leaders who eat alone and do not get asked to dance will likely not travel in the future.
- Teach followers how to encourage leaders during group classes. Dancers need explicit instruction before they begin giving constructive feedback. Many times followers particularly in lower levels can be very “blamey” which lowers the leaders self-confidence. In low levels, have partners high five when they rotate and give lots of positive feedback. Do not promote the idea that mistakes are always the leaders fault.
- Give genuine compliments to leaders. Leaders sometimes need extra support in building their self-confidence. Offer specific feedback when they have done something well such as “I love you were connecting and taking care of your partner” or “You are developing really solid and comfy basics. Save me a dance next week.”
- Tell intermediate leaders when you think they are ready to compete without pressuring them. For example, you could say “You are becoming such a fun balboa dancer. Have you considered competing at the next___ event? I heard it is a great beginning level competition and ____ is looking for a partner.” Competition can be a great motivator for intermediate leads to improve their dancing to become more advanced.
- Invite new leaders to join your carpool to regional events. Novice dancers are often nervous about traveling to events. Sometimes having a group to go with can encourage a dancer to attend an event.
