Flash lighting

[jim]

Im trying to improve my crossbody / slotted dancing and I got to thinking about flashlighting. That is keeping your body facing your partner during the cross body lead or the right or left side pass I guess as the westies call it.

I.e. You've got a flashlight on your chest and they have a flash light on their chest and both of your flash lights should be pointing at each other.

I can't remeber when I last heard anyone mention it and i've never heard any salsa teacher mention it, so I started thinking about it, wether I should be doing it, what it's relevence is and so on.

So I thought here's an opportunity for people to post and exchange views on the subject of Flash-lighting.

All contributions welcome.

[Lee Bartholomew]

I used to teach it in classes but found some people took it to extremes. Now I only teach it on an individual basis if I feel it would suit that person.

As a general rule i would say learn / improve it but don't think it has to be 'the only way'.

[NZ Monkey]

I find it to be a very useful tool, although rather than flashlighting their partners chest as often as possible we teach followers to flashlight their own wrist. In practice that has the same effect as flashlighting their leaders chest in an open position and helps them maintain their frame during turns and underarm passes.

The only thing we've found you need to be careful about is that you need to tell people not to worry about the vertical position of the wrist - only it's horizontal (or flat, which people seem to understand easier) alignment. Surprisingly enough the closed position doesn't seem to cause anyone difficulties even though if they were trying to flashlight their wrist all the time it'd make that position more difficult.

If you think about it hard enough you realise that there are plenty of moments when you can't flashlight in the dance, but it's a very useful tool to get people better connected from an early start. In general it does this by forcing dancers to maintain a squared off dance frame, making it easier to lead and follow.

My 2p.

[Lee Bartholomew]

I find it to be a very useful tool, although rather than flashlighting their partners chest as often as possible we teach followers to flashlight their own wrist. In practice that has the same effect as flashlighting their leaders chest in an open position and helps them maintain their frame during turns and underarm passes.



I do that with followers too. It helps with turns as well. Not so usefull for the leaders, they are better off flashlighting with their chest.

Flashlighting is not the be all and end all some people think it is though, but it is handy to know.

[Andy McGregor]

Im trying to improve my crossbody / slotted dancing and I got to thinking about flashlighting. That is keeping your body facing your partner during the cross body lead or the right or left side pass I guess as the westies call it.

I.e. You've got a flashlight on your chest and they have a flash light on their chest and both of your flash lights should be pointing at each other.

I can't remeber when I last heard anyone mention it and i've never heard any salsa teacher mention it, so I started thinking about it, wether I should be doing it, what it's relevence is and so on.

So I thought here's an opportunity for people to post and exchange views on the subject of Flash-lighting.

All contributions welcome.I'm assuming that you're talking about Modern Jive. The first thing you need to know is that Modern Jive is a dance with it's own rules. Those rules are not the rules of Salsa or WCS. There are some rules which apply to most partner dances which are common to MJ, Salsa or WCS. However, this doesn't mean that all the rules of Salsa and WCS apply to MJ. Therefore you need to consider carefully any advice you receive from a Salsa or WCS teacher before applying that advice to MJ. I'm reminded of a student in a workshop who contradicted what I was teaching by saying "that's not what my Salsa teacher says". My answer was that "I wouldn't be saying it if I was teaching salsa".

I think that you should concern yourself more with "frame" and keeping off the lady's line of dance than with flashlighting. The effect is pretty much the same, but flashlighting considered alone will result in twisting and breaking the frame.

What I ask students to visualise is that they are dancing on a beach somewhere lovely and hot. The sand is much too hot for a lady's delicate feet so you need to keep her dancing up and down her towel. You, being manly, don't mind stepping onto the hot sand to ensure the lady stays on her towel so you step on to the sand to allow the lady to move to the other end of her towel. Most of the time you will move your shoulders/chest so you can see your leading hand and the lady will move her shoulders/chest so she can see her following hand - you won't be looking at your hand, but you would be able to see it if you looked.

Of course there are exceptions where you break the frame and the leading/following hand is out of sight, but those are exceptions are completely leadable and we aren't talking about them here.

[Lory]

IMO, flash-lighting is a great habit to get into when you first learn to dance, especially for the follow

It helps to know where to aim for, when coming out of a spin.

It reassuring for the lead and gives him better control.

And it also helps to build a good frame.

But as one gets more advanced, its nice to add more 'shape' to the dance and not necessarily to end each move 'square on'. By the time your at this stage, you should have a sufficiently good enough frame, for the lead to still have control, even if ones at right angles to him.

[Mary]

My understanding of flashlighting was not that the flashlights were literally square on to each other but that the beams should intersect at some point. So the couple can be at 90 degrees or 45 degrees to each other but the beams of light would, at some point meet. Once those beams no longer cross then that element of connection no longer exists and another element of lead and follow needs to be utilised.

I have always found the notion of flashlighting extremely useful.

M