Sidenote: I am using "his" in a gender-neutral sense here . . . as an English minor, I know it’s not grammatically correct, but blame whoever came up with English for not including singular, gender-neutral pronouns and possessives that refer to a person.

Okay, so cooking and dancing aren’t really the same thing. I know that. But I think a lot of the philosophy that goes behind good cooking and good dancing are very similar. Well, at least similar enough to make sense for me.

First, let me define what good cooking and good dancing are. To me, good cooking involves letting your ingredients shine through, accentuating their natural flavors, textures, aromas, and colors. It’s not about drowning your plates in five different herb-based aiolis (which are really mayo anyways) nor is it about trying to put together the most interesting combination of flavors you think of (reminder: interesting usually = bad). Some of the best dishes I have ever had have come from the simplest preparations; in fact, two of the top ones are some of the humblest dishes around: beef short ribs and fried chicken. Fancy has nothing to do with good food. In fact, as food gets fancier, the easier it is to make it bad.

All right, so what is good dancing? It’s a little simpler for me to define than good cooking :) To me, good dancing involves a connection between you, your partner, and the music in such a way so that you and your partner are expressing the music through your dancing. The lead isn’t thinking about what move to do, the follow isn’t anticipating the lead. Instead, they are both listening to the music, their own impulses, and each other to figure out the next way to go.

This connection to your partner and the music in dancing is rooted in dance fundamentals and is essential to dancing well, just like knowing all of the other fundamentals: how to lead, how to follow, musicality, basic jazz steps, etc. All of these things are the building blocks of a good dancer.

In the same way, a cook must be connected to his ingredients, his cooking tools, and his knowledge of the fundamentals of cooking. I can teach anyone how to make mayonnaise from a recipe. It’s child’s play. But what happens when the mayo breaks? What’s the unfortunate cook to do? If I sat down with the cook beforehand, discussed emulsions, why they form, how they apply to mayo, and the basic physics of mayonnaise cookery, the cook would be able to save the mayo himself (not to mention save me the headache of trying to explain how to rescue a broken emulsion over the phone).

Similarly with dancing, I could teach anyone to an outside turn. But it might not look too pretty in the end because the lead would be jerking the follow around, or the timing might be off, etc. But if I took the time to explain the connection between the lead and follow, the dynamic of the turn, and how to follow through it, not only would the pair be able to do a beautiful turn, but they might be able to come up with variations all on their own.

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Questions? Email Martin@LindyChef.com