Do You Use Connection to Dance, or Dance to Create Connection?
- Rafael Piccolotto de Lima
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Over the years, I have become increasingly convinced that many people misunderstand what connection is for.
Connection is one of the most celebrated ideas in social dancing. Teachers talk about it, dancers talk about it, and entire workshops are dedicated to it. Yet I often leave dances wondering whether some people are actually interested in connection at all. Not because they lack it, but because they use it.
There is a difference.
Some dancers seem to treat connection as a tool that helps them achieve the dance they already want to have. The connection exists so the movements work, so the musical ideas land, so the aesthetic they value can be expressed, and so the dance unfolds according to a vision they already carried into the embrace. The other person becomes part of that process. The dance remains the destination.
I am interested in something else.
I do not believe the purpose of partner dancing is simply to execute movements together. I believe the dance exists to create a space where two people can discover what becomes possible between them. Technique, musicality, vocabulary, creativity, and connection are tools that make that discovery possible. They are not the destination.
The question is not whether connection exists. The question is what that connection is being used for.
In partner dancing, is the other person a means to create the dance you want, or is the dance a means to discover what becomes possible with the other person?
The longer I dance, the more important that distinction becomes.
The Dance That Could Become Anything
One of the most memorable dancers I have ever known was a teacher with whom I had the opportunity to work for a brief period years ago. She remains one of the best dancers I have ever danced with.
Not because she was the most technically impressive, although she certainly was. Not because she knew more movements than anyone else, although she had an enormous vocabulary.
What I remember most vividly was the sense that the dance could become almost anything.
There was an unusual sense of freedom in dancing with her. Sometimes I would try something unexpected and somehow it would become part of the conversation. Sometimes a musical idea would appear out of nowhere and she would immediately find a way to engage with it. The dance could become playful, quiet, energetic, or almost still.
Nothing about her felt rigid. At the same time, nothing about her felt vague. She had clear preferences, a strong identity, and years of accumulated experience, but none of those things seemed to require the dance to unfold in a particular way. The relationship always seemed more important than protecting an idea.
Years later, I remember almost none of the movements. What I remember is the feeling that something was genuinely being created between two people. The dance did not exist before we met. It emerged because we met.
The Dance That Already Existed
Another dancer taught me the same lesson from the opposite direction. She was highly skilled, confident, musical, and deeply committed to her own aesthetic. For a long time, I continued inviting her to dance because I felt there was something there worth exploring.
Sometimes we had enjoyable dances. Sometimes we even had very good ones. Yet a particular feeling kept returning.
I often felt that I was entering a dance that already existed before I arrived. Certain possibilities seemed immediately available while others felt closed before they had a chance to develop. If I proposed something, I often felt it being filtered through an existing framework rather than explored or transformed.
Over time, I realized that what frustrated me was not the existence of boundaries. Everyone has boundaries, tastes, and things they would rather avoid. The problem was not that she had strong preferences. The problem was that those preferences seemed to occupy more space than the relationship itself.
The dance felt guided less by curiosity than by an existing vision of how it should unfold. Eventually, there were moments when the dance felt almost adversarial, not because either of us was trying to create conflict, but because we were no longer discovering something together. We were negotiating with an idea that already existed.
The Same Problem Wearing Different Clothes
It would be easy to assume that this is mainly a problem among leaders. After all, leaders occupy the role most associated with making decisions. Many beginners spend entire dances focused on remembering patterns, executing movements, and making things happen until the partner gradually disappears from their awareness. I have also met highly experienced dancers who seemed to dance almost exactly the same way with everyone. The person changes. The dance barely does.
But followers can express the same tendency. The difference is that it usually appears in the response rather than the proposal.
Some arrive with fixed ideas about how they move, how they interpret music, how they use their bodies, how much space they occupy, what kinds of movement they enjoy, and what kinds they reject. Every invitation passes through that framework. The result can feel remarkably similar: the dance stops being a process of discovery and becomes a process of negotiation with a system that has already been closed.
What fascinates me is that both situations emerge from the same underlying assumption: the dance already exists, and the partner's role is simply to fit into it.
Yet the dancers I admire most seem to operate differently. They have strong identities, strong preferences, and strong aesthetics, sometimes stronger than anyone else in the room. The difference is that they bring those things into the conversation rather than asking the conversation to submit to them.
Preferences Are Not the Problem
I do not believe every dance can become a meaningful conversation. Some people want very different things. Some hear music differently. Some value structure where others value spontaneity. Some are looking for precision while others are looking for exploration. Sometimes the distance between those starting points is small. Sometimes it is enormous.
There are dances where two people spend an entire song looking for common ground and never quite find it. That does not bother me.
What interests me is whether the search happened at all. Whether two people were genuinely trying to discover what might emerge between them, or whether the outcome had effectively been decided before the first step.
I have had dances where almost nothing worked and still enjoyed them because both people seemed committed to the search. I have also had technically impressive dances that felt strangely empty because the search never happened. One felt alive. The other felt finished before it started.
What I Think Partner Dancing Is For
I do not think partner dancing exists primarily to create beautiful movement, demonstrate technique, or express individual creativity. All of those things matter, but I see them as consequences, not purposes.
What interests me is the possibility that two people can create something together that neither could have created alone. That possibility is the reason I continue dancing. It is the reason I remember certain dances years later while forgetting hundreds of others.
When I think back on the dances that remained with me, I rarely remember sequences, patterns, or specific movements. I remember moments: a shared reaction to a phrase in the music, an unexpected idea that neither person anticipated, a feeling of mutual attention, the sensation that, for a few minutes, two people were genuinely participating in the same conversation.
That is why I keep returning to the same question.
Do you use connection to dance?
Or do you use dance to create connection?
My own answer has become increasingly clear.
I am not interested in using another person to realize a dance. I am interested in using dance to meet another person.
If the relationship is not at the center, I no longer know what the word partner means in partner dancing.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rafael Piccolotto de Lima is the Founder and Educational Director of Forró New York, as well as a Latin Grammy-nominated composer, arranger, and music director.
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