Back when I was a competitive amateur dancer, my coaches would tell me that I wasn’t “grounded” enough. It was a puzzling statement and didn’t make any sense to me. My feet were definitely touching the ground, so how could I not be grounded?
It was only in my final years as a championship competitor, and later as a teacher, that I began to fully understand what that statement really meant. And I also had to learn how to explain it to my students, because they were no doubt going to have the same logical question about it that I had.
What does it mean to be grounded?
Of course our feet are touching the ground. You might even know where your body weight sits over the feet. Is it primarily over the front part? The center? The heels? Understanding that is critical to every dancer, but it is not actually what being grounded is about.
Being grounded refers to how you are using the floor as a base for your leg action. Here’s why:
Dancers generally strive to be thin and light because that makes it somewhat easier to create rapid movements. Before you send me hate mail, I’m not saying you have to be thin to be a great dancer. In fact, being skinny is often a negative quality as you’ll find out if you bear with me a bit. There are plenty of heavier set dancers who can out-perform many thin dancers. One reason why is that these lightweight bodies tend to float on the dance floor instead of using the floor properly.
At the Canadian National Championships at the end of August I observed one dancer in particular. She was dancing ProAm Championship Latin. She was tall and slim, had a radiant smile, exuded confidence and knew her routine. She had many of the qualities needed to end up high in the results list. Unfortunately, her dancing suffered from one major shortcoming: she was not grounded. Not at all. Despite her fast feet and great smile, she looked as if she was about to lift up off the floor at any moment and start floating away. This is exactly what is meant by a dancer not being grounded.
Settling into the floor
One of the best ways to become more grounded is to imagine that the floor you are standing on is actually an inch or so above the real floor that you need to dance on. There’s a glass or plexiglass floor. That’s the one your feet are attached to. But the one you need to dance on is underneath the one you are standing on.
You need to allow every step, no matter how fast, be pushing solidly into that second floor underneath the invisible one that your feet want to use.
Dancers tend to rush steps. They are so busy thinking of the step patterns that they don’t spend enough time actually using the floor for each of those steps. That was also my problem for the first few years as a competitive dancer. I was not settling into the floor enough for all my steps, especially the very fast, syncopated ones. As a result, I was a lot like that ProAm dancer, looking as if I was just skating over the surface with fast feet rather than using the floor as my base. I was not grounded.
A note for ladies
Being grounded in Latin or Rhythm is easier than applying these techniques in the Ballroom or Smooth genres. That’s partly because we arrive over our feet much sooner in Latin styles, and because we use our toes rather than the heels.
A question that comes up often from ladies is how to apply this technique in dances where they have to drive forward with the heel. How do you use that “second floor” technique when you have a 2-inch high heel that’s only a fraction of an inch wide driving into the floor? It’s a great question!
In the case of the Ballroom and Smooth dances, you can still pretend that the floor you are dancing on is below the one that you are standing on. But because you send your foot out well ahead of the body in these dances, you don’t need to dig the heel into the floor on forward steps as if you are digging a ditch. Allow the flexing of your knees to soften the lowering action so that you can still apply the technique without ending up creating a stake-in-the-ground effect. Backward steps should involve the knee moving forward as the leg begins to move backwards. You will look much more grounded, and you will be able to move more fluidly with better musicality.
Of course, it’s much easier to demonstrate this technique on backward steps.
Being grounded can be especially impressive in Slow Foxtrot, where you can demonstrate your use of the floor on the second quick of basic step patterns such as the Feather Step. As the toe begins to slide past the standing foot on the first quick, allow that foot pressure to show that you are really using the imaginary second floor. As your moving foot passes your standing foot, you should allow it to push into that invisible second floor.
The timing conundrum
My coach often said that I was finding myself behind the music because I was not grounded. That was especially confusing to me, and it is something I have since tried to explain to students as well. It’s a hard concept to understand. If you are failing to apply enough body weight into the floor, how can you end up behind the music? Wouldn’t you actually be more likely to dance ahead of the music?
From a logical perspective, it doesn’t make sense. My response was to essentially ignore that information because it didn’t compute for me. Eventually, after hearing the same thing often enough, I started paying attention. And to my surprise, once I started allowing my body weight to really settle into the floor, the music appeared to slow down. I had more time, not less, to get from one step to the next. So how exactly does that work?
The basketball analogy
When you allow your body weight to settle into that second floor located under the imaginary transparent floor, you have more natural power for each step. Gravity creates energy. Think of how powerful a basketball can be if you drive it strongly into the floor. Try slamming a basketball down at a 45-degree angle and see how it takes off as it bounces back up. Now try using the same basketball with a very weak downward push at the same 45-degree angle. It won’t go as far, and it gets there later. The same thing happens with our bodies. So we end up using muscles to complete the movement, and that’s slow!
The extra power from your groundedness means your muscles don’t need to work as hard. Gravity is far more powerful than muscular activity and it takes virtually no effort. As a result, your movements become faster and clearer. You can use the current standing foot longer and still get to the next step sooner. You are more balanced. You have more visible power even though you are working less strenously.
Our Latin coach once demonstrated the impact of gravity. He held out a hardcover book in the palms of his hands and asked if that book had any internal energy (ignoring of course the energy of the atoms holding it together). We replied, obviously not. He let go. The book hit the floor with such a loud bang that everyone in the ballroom looked. If a simple book weighing a couple hundred grams can have that much energy just from gravity, what can gravity do with our entire body weight?
Push into that imaginary second floor. Use it. Allow your weight to settle into the floor with every step you take, no matter how fast. You’ll find that you are much more grounded. You’ll be more musical. And you’ll look amazing.
