Sharing weight.

What sharing weight means

When two people share weight, part of your body's weight rests on them and part of theirs rests on you. Neither of you lifts the other. You each lean a little, and the contact point holds both loads. The glossary defines weight sharing in a line, and the blog post weight sharing explained walks through one example. This chapter is the practice.

Bones carry weight, muscles steer

A body stacks its weight through the skeleton into the floor with very little muscle effort. A lean on a partner follows the same rule. Their weight should travel through their bones to the floor, not hang from your gripping shoulders.

Use this test. If your shoulder, neck or forearm is working hard to hold the contact, you are holding it with muscle. Ease off until the work moves into your legs and feet. The contact gets lighter and lasts longer.

Martin Keogh collects dancers' notes on support, starting from the dictionary sense of bearing weight from below. One dancer in those notes describes watching others as a way of supporting them. We would add that the person at the edge who is paying attention helps keep the room safe, and that counts.

Try this: back to back

Sit back to back with a partner on the floor, spines touching. Agree who starts. The first person leans a few degrees and the second one receives the lean. Swap. Notice what your partner's spine feels like and how their breathing moves it.

When that is easy, press your backs together, walk your feet in slowly and rise together to standing. Go slowly. If either of you wobbles, sit back down and try again.

From collapse to lean

An exercise progression Martin Keogh teaches, in his notes on falling, starts with two people collapsing their weight onto each other and ends with a pair falling together through space. The middle steps are the useful ones. Here is our version.

1. Start by resting. One person sits or lies and the other rests a small amount of weight on them, with permission, in a place you both agreed on.
2. Stand side by side with hips and shoulders touching. Lean toward each other until the contact holds you both. The lean is small. If your partner stepped away, you would both notice.
3. Find the middle. There is a point between you where the pair balances, a mutual centre. Move toward it and away from it by changing how much you lean, a few centimetres at a time.

This light weighting is what makes the contact mobile. A heavy lean pins you in place, and a light one lets you travel.

Try this: the leaning walk

Stay shoulder to shoulder, lean slightly, and walk across the room together at the slowest pace you can manage. The contact point travels while neither of you can leave without the other noticing. Swap sides, then swap who sets the speed. Talk afterwards about where the weight felt balanced and where it felt like work.

Letting a shared balance fall

Later, once the lean feels easy, you can stop guarding your own balance and trust the pair's. The two of you tip off balance together, and your steps keep the pair upright. Keogh's description of this stage ends with the observation that "instability leads to greater mobility".

That is why being off balance is the aim and not a mistake. The steps you take to keep the pair standing are the dance. Beginners should try this slowly, on a mat, after the earlier practice, with an agreement to stop whenever either person says so.

When it hurts

Say "lighter" or "less" as soon as you feel pressure on a joint. Agree on those words before you start. A partner who hears them and eases off is a partner you can learn with. The next chapters build on the same idea, and chapter 5 covers what to say when "less" is not enough.