We get it – it’s fun to dance fast. When you watch performers cutting a rug dancing salsa, or rocking out to a jive, it seems the ones who catch the eye are those who can pull out the most crazy moves in the shortest amount of time. And don’t get me wrong, those are often the best dancers. What they don’t show you however, is how many hours they spent dancing each step. Much. More. Slowly. Because as it happens, there’s a lot that slow dancing can teach you about dancing fast.
1. Slow dancing teaches you patience.
Most dancers hate waiting. They rush on to the next step before they’ve completed the previous one, and before they know it, dancing fast doesn’t look or feel like fun anymore… It feels like work.
Those awesome fast dancers aren’t just awesome because of their moves-per-minute. They’re awesome because they can pull off those fast moves and make it look easy.
Learning to dance slowly teaches you to find the stillness between the movements, so it’s not just crazy energy.
2. Slow dancing gives you greater balance.
What’s the difference between a balanced dancer, vs a balancing one? The balanced dancer can pause on any movement without falling over, while the balancing dancer must continue moving, or face-plant.
If you can slow dance without losing your balance, it becomes a lot easier to control your momentum, which means you can change direction much faster than you could before. Plus, who wants a dance where they’re constantly about to fall over?
3. Slow dancing gives you greater precision
When we dance slowly, we have a lot more time to focus on the details of movement that change us from ‘someone who’s trying to dance’ to ‘a dancer’. These details in a fast dance are like the air we breathe: We may not be aware of it when it’s there, but we are very aware when it’s gone.
In fact, the metaphor works for all three principles. Those fast dancers we love so much would look a lot less awesome if they didn’t dance with patience, balance, and precision. They learned the magic of slow dancing – and you can too.