Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Spaciousness In Partner Dance: A Naturalism Demo, published by LoganStrohl on November 19, 2023 on LessWrong.

What Is a Naturalism Demo?

A naturalism demo is an account of a naturalist study.

If you've followed my work on naturalism in the past, you've likely noticed that my writings have been light on concrete examples. When you talk about a long and complex methodology, you're supposed to ground it and illustrate it with real life examples the whole way through. Obviously.

If I were better, I'd have done that. But as I'm not better, I shall now endeavor to make the opposite mistake for a while: I'll be sharing way more about the details of real-life naturalist studies than anybody wants or needs.

Ideally, a naturalism demo highlights the internal experiences of the student, showcasing the details of their phenomenology and thought processes at key points in their work. In my demos, I'll frequently refer to the strategies I discuss in The Nuts and Bolts Of Naturalism, to point out where my real studies line up with the methodology I describe there, and also where they depart from it.

I'll begin with a retrospective on the very short study I've just completed: An investigation into a certain skill set in a partner dance called zouk.

How To Relate To This Post

(And to future naturalism demos.)

Naturalism demo posts are by nature a little odd.

In this one, I will tell you the story of how I learned spaciousness in partner dance.

But, neither spaciousness nor partner dance is the point of the story. The point of the story is how I learned.

When I'm talking about the object-level content of my study - the realizations, updates, and so forth - try not to get too hung up on what exactly I mean by this or that phrase, especially when I'm quoting a log entry. I sort of throw words around haphazardly in my notes, and what I learned isn't the point anyway.

Try instead to catch the rhythm of my investigation. I want to show you what the process looks like in practice, what it feels like, how my mind moves in each stage. Blur your eyes a little, if you can, and reach for the deeper currents.

I'll start by introducing the context in which this particular study took place. Then I'll describe my progression in terms of the phases of naturalism:

locating fulcrum experiences,

getting your eyes on,

collection, and

experimentation.

There will be excerpts from my log entries, interspersed with discussion on various meta levels. I'll start with an introduction to partner dance, which you can skip if you're a dancer.

What Is Zouk?

I enjoy a Brazilian street dance called "zouk"[1].

Vernacular partner dances like zouk are improvised. Pairs of dancers work together to interpret the music, and there's a traditional division of labor in the pairings that makes the dance feel a lot like call and response in music. The lead dancer typically initiates movements, and the follow dancer maintains or otherwise responds to them. (The follow is the twirly one.)

The communication between partners is a lot more mechanical than I think non-dancers tend to imagine. Compared to what people seem to expect, it's less like sending pantomimed linguistic signals to suggest snippets of choreography, and more like juggling, or sparring.

I've been focused on learning the lead role in zouk, but I follow as well. I think I'm pretty well described as an "intermediate level" dancer in both roles.

Last weekend (Thursday night - Monday morning), I went to a zouk retreat. It was basically a dance convention with workshops by famous zouk instructors, and social dances that went late into the night. ("Social dance" means dancing just for fun, outside of the structure of a workshop or class. A "social" is where the real dancing happens.)

I went to quite a few dance conventions in college, when I was obsessed with a family of...