When Dancing with the Stars premiered back in 2005, my daughter Jamie was just eight years old. Every week, we’d watch together — with unabashed and unapologetic enthusiasm — as the professional dancers magically transformed their celebrity partners into honest-to-goodness ballroom dancers, able to perform before a live studio audience — not to mention the 20 million or so viewers like us who were watching at home — with surprising grace and rhythm.
Our ritual continued for several years, until life’s rhythm — as it does — changed for the two of us. Jamie entered her teenage years, then became busy with high school, then went off to study at the University of Michigan (“Go Blue”), followed by three years at Make-A-Wish NYC before returning to the Los Angeles area at the end of 2022.
I hadn’t watched the show in years, and then — six weeks ago — Jamie sent me the following text: “This was a great week of Dancing with the Stars, you should watch it.” Curious, I asked her why. She replied: “It’s Dedication Week — very sweet and emotional! And next week is Wicked Week!!”
And just like that, my daughter had asked me to “dance” with her again!
How could I possibly refuse? I sat down, watched the Dedication Week episode, and was instantly hooked again. It was exactly as she had described it — and as I had remembered it, only better!
In one of life’s full-circle moments, Jamie and I began watching our favorite show “together again” — albeit mostly from different locations. Last week, one week shy of his 22nd birthday, Robert Irwin, son of the late Steve Irwin, won the Mirrorball Trophy — almost ten years to the day after he had watched his sister Bindi, then only 17, accomplish the same feat!
Watching the show again reminded me why dancing is so often used as a metaphor for negotiation. The back-and-forth of demands, offers, and counteroffers — “the dance” — is vital to the process. Without it, the parties risk what Professor Barry Goldman, in The Science of Settlement, calls the “winner’s curse” — the unsettling feeling that they may have agreed to a deal too quickly.
The more I watched, the more I noticed the similarities between choreographing a dance and guiding a negotiation. The opening move should be measured and confident — enough to set the tone without being so bold that it throws off the rhythm. What follows are looser, early movements as the parties feel out the timing and the distance between them. Then the tempo changes and the steps tighten. The parties adjust to each other’s cadence, making smaller, more deliberate moves.
Seeing these couples on the dance floor also reminded me of something else about mediation itself. The mediator isn’t the choreographer, but plays a supporting role in shaping the choreography of the negotiation dance. With experience comes the ability to suggest a different move when it might better serve the parties — but most of the steps remain theirs.
Revisiting DWTS these past six weeks offered life lessons that were both simple and enduring: whether on a dance floor, across a negotiation table, or in your own family room, it’s all about personal connection — and it always takes two to tango.
As always, it would be my pleasure to assist you and your clients in the dispute resolution process. I’d welcome the opportunity to be of service.
Best regards,
Floyd J. Siegal