Aerials 

  What we can tell you

An aerial is any move where any one in the dance loses personal control over their body. So even a simple dip falls into this group.

Leaders: Be careful. Don't try a move on the dance floor for the first time with a partner who doesn't know the move intimately. Find wrestling mats somewhere or grass or mattresses and practice slowly. Break a move down into its smallest parts and work from the simplest to the hardest - one at a time. Try to find someone who knows how to do it right and get the safety and movement details from them. If you have any doubts, don't take chances. Be especially thoughtful about heads and necks. We often aren't aware on just how easy it is to damage these parts. I am now suffering from an accumulation of neck injuries throughout my life. I wrestled in high school, I did this aerial stuff and pounded away at my neck doing damage that I didn't know about.

Followers: Be careful. Don't be afraid to say NO. Whenever you do an aerial, you should know enough about the move to know when your partner is doing it right or doing it wrong. You should be confident that you can detect immediately if the leader isn't in touch with you, with the move or with themself. You need to take care of yourself. You don't want to be dropped on your head when the leader is surprised because your arm catches on his back because you didn't know that your arm wasn't supposed to be where it was as he is flipping you upside down. If you feel that you are being handled too roughly, then you are. If you feel that something is beyond your ability, then it is. This doesn't mean your partner is doing anything wrong. Explain it to them nicely and they should accept it. They often don't know what's happening to you. People are very different and what works well  with one person can be a flop with someone else.

Both: Aerials result in more body contact than normal dance. You both have to be comfortable with the level of contact of the dance. This is a perfectly acceptable reason to decline an aerial. Know your own comfort levels. Practice aerials with someone you trust and have a high comfort level with. Strength is helpful and important but it is over rated. A good aerial requires coordinated precision moves by both partners. Done right, aerials take much less strength than it appears. If your aerials involve brute force and both partners aren't involved, then you are probably doing it wrong. In an aerial, one person is put into a position of trusting another. It is hard for many people to turn over this trust and it is sometimes hard for people to understand why another one won't give them this trust. Don't let this confuse you. It's simple. No one should be pushed to do something they don't want to do. If someone doesn't want to do aerials, it is as simple as that. Just dance without the aerials. You can talk with them later. This leads to another rule. Don't do an aerial by surprise. An aerial requires permission. There are leads that can indicate certain moves. This works if you know your partner and they know you. If you don't know a partner never assume they know an aerial lead. You can assume it in other leads because if your partner ends up somewhere else then no harm is done. With an aerial, if you lift them and they aren't expecting it or you drop, expecting to be lifted, and they aren't ready, serious damage can occur. I was doing a simple aerial with a friend the other day, I thought she knew it. I told her I was going to do an aerial and started off on it. About half way through she realized she didn't know what was happening and so she just sat down. It was awkward and not at all graceful, rather humorous in fact. But it was what she needed to do. Knowing that an aerial was involved allowed her to take steps to end it when she realized she didn't know it. If I hadn't warned her, she would not have expected it and couldn't have stopped it. It might have worked just fine but I would rather not take the chance.

Written by EricWolff   1998