Basic Step for Fusion

Most modern partner dances have a sequence of steps called the "basic step." But what is the basic step in Fusion?

Purpose of Basic Step

Basic step generally serves five purposes:

1. Aligning dancers to the music. The basic step sequence is specifically created to align with the basic rhythm of a specific music style (as each dance is built on top of its own music style). It makes dancers musical, even if only on the most primitive level, but it's enough for beginners.

2. Synchronizing partners to each other without relying on connection. It even works at a distance without any connection. It's also convenient for beginners who have a hard time developing their connection skills.

3. Providing some basic choreography. Again, it is very basic but convenient to be taught to beginners. Professionals could take the art of the basic step to truly spectacular levels, of course.

4. Forcing the dancers to move their legs to make the dance look more dynamic and feel more enjoyable, and use their energy more effectively. Some more sophisticated dances include some additional functionality in the basic steps, like energy recovery on redirection in West Coast Swing.

5. It's profitable. Treating the basic step as a separate discipline to master within the dance creates a wide field of work for dance teachers and competition coaches. Students could spend years polishing their basic step in individual trainings. It's a fair business, no doubt, but... is it really necessary?

Shortcomings of Basic Step

So it is really convenient and practical to teach beginners in this manner. But these perks come with a price.

• Patterns and repeating sequences of standard steps or moves not only make the dance predictable (and boring). It's also a honey trap that is really hard to escape.

• The more one gets used to the pattern, the harder it is to break out. That puts a "glass ceiling" limit to improvisation. Even experienced dancers with over five years of dancing could feel helpless trying to dance without the crutches of the basic step!

• For beginners, it's impossible to master several skills at once. If they're focused on the basic step, connection and musicality will be ignored. It often makes dancing with beginners not really pleasant and possibly harmful.

And later the students are destined to inherit the legacy of this primary education. Usually, they need to take special courses on these topics to fix what they broke in the very beginning. Relearning is always more complicated than starting from a blank page.

Basic Step in Fusion

The main way Fusion is different from other dances is that it has no step that could be called basic. But why?

Because basic step is aligned with basic rhythm of the according music style. Bachata step is good for bachata music, rumba step is good for rumba music, etc. West Coast Swing tried to invent a basic step (2 versions of it!) that would fit any average blues/pop composition - as a reasult aligning it with non-average music could be very sophisticated. And in Fusion we have too wide variety of music, no single step could handle it well! There's simply no sense in inventing tens of basic steps to cover it.

But those five points listed above looked quite effective despite the downsides! So what Fusion offers instead:

• Connection from the very start. Even complete beginners have to learn to communicate with connection. And that's quite easy both to teach and to learn. A single lesson is enough to set it up properly based on basic principles of connection.

• Synchronization is done just by paying more attention to connection from both leader and follower. And both are being synchronized by mutual sense of the music.

• Musicality without shackles. Dancers don't need to count 1-2-3-4 and aren't getting used to focus only on most primitive structures of the music. Instead, they could follow the musical flow, listening to vocals, instruments, accents and contrasts and expressing it. They only need to be taught basic principles of musicality that are also not a rocket science.

More to it, Fusion is not a single-musical-style dance. It is danced to a really wide range of music rhythms and styles. So instead of developing basic steps for each of them, Fusion offers, in terms of effectiveness and basic choreography, a set of basic floorcraft techniques and a number of standard steps (tens of them) that make travelling through the dance floor both really effective and good looking. How to move your weight, how and why to stay in balance. And yes, also it improves the precision of connection.

Profitability... there are so many interesting things to be learned and taught in Fusion! Despite the noted techniques are really easy to start, they offer a perspective of improvement for years if needed. And there are many more techniques that are not covered by this article, so profitability is not a thing to worry about.

And the learning curve is very smooth, all that is learned from the beginning is same good for experienced. No glass ceiling, no need to relearn.

So... Freedom and flexibility come without hidden costs!

But why is it so good?

Because when Fusion was created, it didn't start from the scratch, it was using centennial experience of other dances. And at the same time Fusion tried to avoid known issues that come with legacy.

Modern ballet techniques give us best understanding of true musicality, we take some ideas there.

Contact improvisation does what the name says, so we're glad to inherit this.

Ballroom dances, tango and West Coast Swing provide some excellent techniques proven to be effective and spectacular. Thanks, please pack it all together and deliver.

Kizomba Douceur or Soul Zouk add new layers of sensitivity to our fingertips? Very nice. Let it be our secret.

Bachata and salsa... ok, we're not borrowing almost any techniques from them, but they are sharing with us a very important idea: learning dancing could be fun and you could start your first dance after a single class before the party. Compare it to dancing with a cloth hanger for a year before coming to a first social!

So does Fusion have anything of its own?

That takes us a bit far from the question of the Basic Step, but... Yes. The difference between being a dance style with its own name and being just a mix of skills and moves on the dance floor is an educational system.

These "mix sets" are usually featuring short-term popularity and could not provide a dancer with a way to grow and improve for long.

And Fusion has its own educational system that could be split into grades or levels if needed, sets of courses and topics of special workshops, offering topics for growth enough for a decade.

So Fusion is not a bachelor's pizza made of everything he found in a fridge. It offers a harmonic, flexible and smooth-curved educational system that is really a beautiful and important invention!

There are many other specific details that make Fusion stand out from many other dances. As an example take the role fluidity, when roles are not strictly fixed and could be exchanged on the fly. Add to this the concept of Whispering, lead back without any role changing.

So yes, Fusion has a good solid base inherited from many other time-proven dances. But it's powerful enough to be treated as a substantive, full-fledged dance style.

Oh, that was too much of talking... let's dance already!