Swing Analogies: A new move is like a new box of legoes

On this recent Christmas morning (er, this post was written a few months ago), I helped my little nephew put together a Lego train, following his aerial training.

It struck me as a great analogy for how I look at moves I learn from others in classes and such.

Legos come in kits—blocks that are supposed to make something on the box when you put them together, like a train, submarine, castle, etc. Let’s say you buy the Starfighter Lego box. It comes with a bunch of standard Lego pieces, directions, and a few unique pieces like starfighter wings, afterburners and pilot canopy. These unique pieces, however, still have the standard Lego male-female plastic velcro hook-up bits.

A nephew first will put the Starfighter together, to see how it works. My nephew specifically would even be curious as to how the pieces would taste. As he puts it together and follows the directions, he’ll begin to understand why it’s put together the way it is, how the pieces work, and how the small parts fit together to make the whole.

He’ll see the small details that went into it, like the little light Legoes that go on the tips of the wings, or the covers to the vent onthe afterburners (he might even notice that the directions spend three times as many pages on small details as they do with big picture pieces.)

Eventually, after he’s played with the Starfighter, allowing it to attack and rain down fiery death on Bob the Builder’s entire construction site, he’ll crash it, and have to fix it again, from memory. Maybe he’ll do it right, or maybe he’ll come up with some modifications.

But more importantly, there might come a day when he will take apart the Startfighter, and use the pieces to make something of his own, and then the next thing you know, Bob the Builder’s construction site is being destroyed by a flying submarine train with afterburners.

We dancers can do the same things with the moves we learn: turn them into flying submarine trains with afterburners.