I asked several guys what they felt made a memorable follower. Below are there responses.

From: dancebert@earthlink.net (Bill Lapworth)

I don't have to think about my leading or her following.

She gets the intended feeling in my lead and spontaneous choreography (e.g., ok, lets get goofy now) and responds in kind.

I feel that dancing with me is the only thing she's aware of.

When someone compliments her on our dancing, she thanks them and then tactfully points out that it's a team effort.

From: GreatMusic@ibm.net (Andrew Cheeseman)

Andrew's Memorable Follower List

There are several things that make followers good-memorable for me (as opposed to bad-memorable, which isn't good.  It's bad.  Hence the name.)  Note:  my list of good-memorable is way shallow, but my explanation is too deep.

(1) I love a follower who allows for Advanced Dance Laughter (ADL for short).  For me, ADL arises from improbable -- often absurd -- situations and conversations.  For example, take this series of follower breaks in the course of a few Lindy turns:  Mess-Around + backwards chaussée + Saturday Night Fever Pose + Slow Motion + Pogo Stick + LiveLongAndProsper Hand Signal + glamour hair flip.  See?   How can that not be fun?

Or take the following still-common conversation with followers who've danced with me for years:  Follow:  "Andrew..."  Lead:  "Yup"  Follow:  "Still?"  Lead: "Nice Move"  Follow: "Great Band"  L: "Exit signs aren't well posted"  F: "You from around here?"  L: "I wish!  No, I live across the street in the movie star van"  F: "Really? What did you do with your place at the police station?"  L: "Sublet."  F: "Sorry"  L: "Better this way."  F: "Yeah, happy deputies."  L: "No, they want me back ... send me letters all the time, that sort of thing."

There isn't that much you can really talk about on the dance floor anyway.  It may as well be inane.

(2) Second of all, I prefer a follower who doesn't force me to weigh the advantages of dancing against the lost productivity of tendinitis  I mean, healthy arms & hands are useful for all kinds of things.  Plumbing and chemical-free deep carpet cleaning are just two of the obvious things I can think of right off the bat, but there are many others.  Holding those little opera binoculars that don't really work, but are kind of nice to look at -- that's one that should make the list.   But I prefer a light and responsive follower to a lean-away-from-you-at-45-degrees-all-night follower.

Actually, I even like lifting weights in the gym, so maybe it doesn't make sense that I wouldn't want to continue the biceps workout on the dance floor.  I guess there's a time for everything, and everything has its pain-quotient:  Imagine if every door you had to pass through for a whole evening weighed 300 pounds and had no bas-relief, and that power-door-assist hadn't been invented yet.  THEN where would you be?  You might decide to just stay away from doors altogether, and opt for entering via air ducts.  See the connection?  Air ducts--that's what I'm talking about here.

(3) Finally, there's nothing like a surprising improvising dancing fiend person (SIDFP, pronounced "sidfup").  I know, I know, the word SIDFP is overused in today's acronym-crazed world, but please allow me to use it just one more time to make a point.  Picture the fun here:  Quiet mood.  Lindy turn. Keep the bounce. Give the left hand style.  Setup.  You jockey!  You swing-out!  Wait!  An unexpected stop followed by a sudden slightly-rude-but-not-unexpected hand gesture!  A flying scissor-kick mess-around trickolation!  Leader waits for it, waits for it.... waits for it... They're back!  Lindy Turn, and another perfect swing-out and the leader/SIDFP team cry tears of joy & success, knowing that the coach back home in the Motherland would be crying tears of joy if she could watch this on PBS.

Well, that's my list.  For easy recall, let me summarize my list of "what makes followers good-memorable:"

(1)    ADL
(2)    Proper tendon care
(3)    SIDFP

From: TEaton21@aol.com (Tom Eaton)

Listen to the music:

I try very hard to dance to the music and let the music help determine what I do next. If the follow is also paying attention to the music it is always easier for her (I don't mean to be sexist, it's just easier to write) to understand what I am doing, or about to do. This is different from anticipating what I am going to lead and then backleading. Sometimes my leads are not orthodox, by the book leads, but I would like to think that they make sense with the music, and if the follow is listening as well as following it increases our connection.

Styling:

Don't be afraid to style and have fun. I try to give the follow room to do her own thing, and often I feed off of what she is doing. However, the best follows for me are those that are always able to react to my lead and come back when I start again.

Challenge Me:

This goes along with what I said above about my feeding off of what the follow does. When a follow is doing interesting stylings, and paying attention to my dancing, I push myself to try and raise the level of our dance. Whether I try to match her stylings or throw in some more difficult leads that I know, when a follow challenges me I will always ask for another dance.

Have Fun:

What more need be said.

Tom

From: LindyBill@home.com (Bill Millan)

The most important quality in a follower is her total attention! Nothing is worse than a bored, unsmiling woman who is looking around the room for her next partner, as she goes through the motions with you. The second quality is her acceptance of the unexpected. I like to get funky and do something out of the ordinary, and she should be able to improvise and go along with it. Some are used to a "routine", and get flustered if I don't dance steps in the order they learned them. I can't count the number of times that I have either thought, or actually said. "hey, look at me when I am dancing with you!"

LindyBill

From: ronsopas@earthlink.net (Ron Rosen)

Well Thank You For Asking!!! (This will be a lot of fun and might even create some spirited controversy.)

1. I want a good follower, not a memorable one. The one's I remember are the one's who were difficult to lead. Be so smooth that I don't even notice that I led you.

2. Total surrender. The absolute most important thing ladies need to realize is that, aside from styling, they have absolutely no say or input into what's going to happen. Sad to say, after 30 years of women's liberation, ladies must learn to be COMPLETELY passive. Like a defensive driver, your job is only to react to what the man is telling you to do. Like an attentive waiter, you must want to cater to his every request. The worst followers are the ones who go where they think they should go, where they want to go, or where they usually go, rather than where the man wants them to go. The main thing is to be relaxed and ready to figure out what he wants. The better followers are often watching their partner's face very carefully. (Watch Erin Steven's face when she's dancing with someone.) I could go on and on about bad followers, but the main thing is they have developed an idea about what the dance is about and they want to carry it out. Forget those ideas. It's not your job. (You would be surprised how many "good" dancers have fallen into bad habits in this area.)

[Editor's Note: I asked Ron if he thought I was a bad follow because I do advocate that the follower DOES take an active role in adding to the dance with styling & even breaking away and "doing her own thing". His response was excellent:

"If you know there are times when you choose not to be a follower, then you are making a conscious choice." [and to paraphrase the rest of his comment] I have no problem with followers who play -- but I figured the above comments were best for someone who was just trying to figure out how to follow.
-Margie Cormier]

I realize that many women have learned to backlead or not to follow because they have danced with bad leaders and they would look like hell if they didn't fill in the blanks. To that I don't know what to say except you have to assume the guy knows what he's doing. Try to find better leaders to dance with and learn to let go.

3. Rhythm. If you don't have good rhythm, you can't be a good follower. If you want to improve your rhythm, put on a cd and practice stepping to the exact rhythm of each song without stopping. Play songs with different tempos and force yourself to step exactly with the bass drum which usually will carry the beat. If you have a metranome practice with that at different tempos. (If you have a metranome you probably don't need to learn rhythm.) Practice stepping to very fast tempos to improve your foot speed.

4. Feel/Resistance. This is the hardest thing probably to learn. Some people resist too much, like an iron bar, others are too loose, like spaghetti. You have to learn to resist not by tensing your arms up all the time, but by being firm only at the crucial moments of impact. In other words, when you do a tuck turn, the resistance must come at the crucial moment when his hand comes together with yours and your direction changes. The resistance needs to come only at that point, because that's the point when your arm gets the push that sends you in a different direction. It takes awhile to learn that. Most people who do it, probably don't even realize that's what they are doing. Resistance should come not from not tensing up the muscles, but rather by stopping the arm from moving. This is really hard to describe in words. But the people who resist by tensing up, take way too much work to move around. It's like trying to bend very thick wire. It just tires the man out.

5. Courtesy. Do not make it clear by your facial expressions that you'd rather be dancing with someone else, that you are more interested in who just walked in the door, or that you'd rather do another step. While you are dancing, you should focus only on your partner and what he wants. (Under the right circumstances, and if you do it nicely, you can say, "Could we try that step we learned last week?" But do this only very rarely.) If you don't like him as a partner, don't dance with him anymore. (I know, easier said than done.)

6. Be aware of your surroundings and help protect yourself and your partner from the wild maniacs around you.

7. Total Surrender. I can't say it enough.

From: JohnDo@kinkos.com (John Doppert)

A memorable follower:

1. will have the same characteristics as a good leader.
2. someone willing to practice outside of class.
3. someone willing to work towards a level of strong proficiency.
4. someone who can keep track of where all their own limbs are, the angle of their body inrelation to the partner, and position between themselves and their partner and other couples.
5. someone who is willing to study the nature of the dance and fullfill the requirements that that culture of the dance demands.