Lending a Deaf Ear to Steppin Back

Dec 12, 2010

By all accounts, I think we have seen all kinds of steppers run through our sets over the years. Big, tall, young, mature, short, thick, thin, wheel chair bound, African-American, Asian, European…you name it...we got it. Each of the above mentioned types have all represented steppin in their own form and fashion but I think that this is a first for me. I met a deaf couple that wants to learn how to step.

As an educator, I have worked with and continue to work with all types of learners in school. I make my living teaching teachers how to connect with young people and how to help them think on an abstract level by "seeing and understanding” concepts. When I first started teaching steppin, I shared with other instructors, that to me, a sign of a good instructor is someone who can make a blind stepper see. In other words, if a virgin stepper cannot mimic what they see with their eyes, then you had the task of making their MIND see it as well. It’s been a challenge over the years but I swear by that formula.

This hearing impaired couple has apparently visited a few sets around Detroit but has not had the opportunity to participate in any classes. I met them at a conference and of course I had to ask them, "What is it that you both see in this dance that makes you want to learn it without hearing the music?” The male explained, through his interpreter, that deaf people minimally rely on the music or beat of a song when they dance to it. They connect to the emotion that they see convened through the dance by people doing it and by connecting with the words of the song if they have access to it. The man added in his own words, "I don’t have to hear something to feel it. I don’t have to have my wife tell me she loves me; I can feel that she loves me. Steppin would be the same. We see what the people look like on the dance floor. They are communicating with each other without talking but they ARE signing (using sign language) with one another. We like the communicating that we see in the hands when the man leads the woman. We live that every day.”

Wow! That’s the same premise that some steppin instructors try to get their students to live by. Don’t just learn combination after combination but sincerely feel and experience whatever connection is transmitting through the two people on the dance floor.
Because I don’t charge people to teach them steppin concepts, I accepted the challenge to work with them. I meet with them next week. The very first thing I plan on explaining to them is that over the course of the next couple of months, I want them to convince me that they love each other through their dance and through their hands. I’m going to expect to see some attitude at times, some flirting, submissiveness and subtle aggression…in their dance that is. These are all of the things that I see from my favorite steppers. I won’t be able to escape the inevitable "counting monster” but I think once they get in sync with each other…all they will hear is the music inside of themselves.