It’s Just Like Dancing
An Invitation to Dance - Colors, textures and the excitement of a beautifully choreographed installation! You can almost envision dancers whirling!
Interior Design is a partnership of coordinated moves that lead to harmony with appropriate rhythms and a finale that delivers the Vision.
How a successful Interior Design project goes together depends on things like the synchronized application of all the elements that knit the details together!
Having been an almost lifelong folk dancer, the metaphor comes easily! From San Francisco to Bulgaria, my comparison fits.
Folk dancing requires focus and concentration -- so you won’t find yourself way out in left field somewhere, with your circle or partner somewhere else! Sometimes, you are not familiar with the group or a new partner; and that takes confidence! The parallels abound, and I never cease to be amazed at how the moves line up, and the similarities between dance and design reveal themselves.
Interior Design is an invitation to establish a working familiarity with ever-new connections. The obvious first would be Client and Interior design expert. We introduce each other with the same symbolic trust as the bow and curtsy that starts a folk dance. We might mentally circle and evaluate – you know, those moments of consideration: Can we work together? Will we be on the same page? Will we “read” each other’s moves? Can we correctly communicate choices, decisions and take the right steps?
Choreographing your Interior design project is a study of steps in the coordination of multiple essential elements. All are dependent upon accurate timing. Sub-contractors, legal compliances, deadlines, supply chains, materials, equipment, personalities – and even hidden vetoes – all come into play for the dance toward that turnkey day! There are important moments to step lively under pressure, and moments for pause and careful contemplation and reconsideration! It is very important to be flexible encountering unfamiliar factors and handling unexpected missteps.
In folk dancing we learn “quick recovery” – that’s when we catch a mistake before it happens – sometimes in mid air! In Interior Design, we crosscheck, re-check, document and change-order -- and step lively with disciplined, accurate flow-chart accountability.
Choosing the right partners for your Interior design project requires experienced Interior design professionals.
You want project leaders who know the territory, have the connections appropriate for your specific project and know how to access, the needed skills and resources. (On the dance floor, experienced level 8 or 10 dancers are never matched up with beginners!)
However, you may be a client inexperienced with all that goes into a successfully delivered Interior design project. You may find it reasonable to defer at times to the advice of your Interior design team for better choices, more durable decisions and rationales you may not have considered. Cooperation is paramount, whatever the name of the dance.
Creative energy is what produces the well-balanced, carefully developed Interior environment design that you envisioned and clearly conveyed to your Interior designer, as committed partners. Excepting Ballet, Tap and Interpretive, most dances usually require partners – and that requires commitment to an almost intuitive form of cooperation! To be able to separate and connect with perfect timing to fast music (and a no-nonsense Caller) definitely demands creative energy!
And, that is like the ability of your Interior design team to listen to you explain your Interior design vision -- then have them understand and interpret it smoothly to your satisfaction. Perhaps the pace is a bit slower; perhaps the moves have a bit more wiggle room than the fast steps of a folk dance allow, but the coordination corollaries are dead-on!
If you are considering an Interior design project – large or small – a professional Interior designer with competent partners is more than ready -- and knows how to dance the dance!
