Subject: Misc usenet postings about ballroom and social dance ---- Date: Wed, 16 Oct 1996 12:39:45 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: NYC Hustle USA Championship Here are some notes I managed to take during the announcements of the 1996 Hustle USA competition results: Jack-N-Jill Open 1st Bobby Conception & Kim Vanaman 2nd Archie ? & Rose ? Bookends Division 1st Louie ? & Cedric ? Just Dance Hustle 1st Brian & Silvana Gallagher Amateur Classic Hustle Division 1st Brian & Silvana Gallagher 2nd Ralph Corey & Diane Masiello 3rd Steven ? & Janet Miller Amateur Theatre Arts 1st Brian & Silvana Gallagher Nightclub Salsa Division 1st Oscar Torres & Lisa Rio Pro Classic Hustle Division 1st Kenny Gonzales & Nelle Cotto 2nd Tony Pace & Sherrell Forrester 3rd Lawrence Rush & Beth Darchi (Barry Douglas & Joyce Stoughton, last years winners, did not make the finals this year!!) Pro Theatre Arts 1st Kenny Gonzales & Nelle Cotto 2nd Lucas Hymie & Marianne Hetinger 3rd Jose Solano & Alessandra Montalto [any spelling errors a result of my transcription.] Other notes: The hotel was a disaster area, almost comic if I weren't paying for my room. In spite of this, the event itself came off pretty well. The level of the social hustle was very high; several local pros came out this year to strut their stuff. One NY styling that really stood out was that the top followers really spiked the "&" step ("&1 2 3" count), harder even than a Paso imppel[sp?], exploding into a left foot kick with a heel lead. Maria Torres and Angel Figueroa taught essentially a hustle history workshop, including several patterns from '73 to '76 vintage 6-count and 8-count latin hustle. They showed a tape of a '79 episode of the Merv Griffin show with Kenny & Nelle dancing a theatre arts routine which included many completely recognizable current 3-count social hustle patterns. Next years hustle event is scheduled for Sept 26-28, 1997. ----- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 19:08:32 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Latin Dancing: Why Am I not Finding the Same Beat As My Partner? eijkhout@jacobi.math.ucla.edu (Victor Eijkhout) wrote: > In article <540nk2$smd@columbia.cs.ubc.ca> > ajh@cs.ubc.ca (Alan Hu) writes: > > > (*) Guide to Dance Geek Terminology: > [...] > > chacha(theta) = salsa2(theta/2) True if both dances are played at standard tempo and theta is a function of time (in, say, milliseconds). More precisely, for mambo music at the regulation 188 bpm, and cha cha music at around 116 bpm, chacha(theta) = salsa2(theta/1.62) > I don't think that's true. > > If you ask me: > chacha(theta) = salsa2(theta) True if theta is a function of "beats", or quarter notes in the 4/4 time signature. In this case the salsa phase will increase at around 1.6 times the rate of the cha-cha phase (beats per minute). ---- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 19:41:26 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Latin Dancing: Why Am I not Finding the Same Beat As My Partner? ajh@cs.ubc.ca (Alan Hu) wrote: > From here, we can derive: > salsa2(theta) = salsa1(theta - pi/4) > chacha(theta) = salsa2(theta/2) > etc. > The derivation of hustle from foxtrot is left as an exercise > for the reader. Assuming that theta refers to "beats", the followers canonical foot timing in hustle can be related to the leaders foot timing in Arthur Murray "Magic Step" foxtrot. e.g. "S-S-QQ" => "1-3-56" => "1-2-3&" => "&1-2-3" also "Sl,Sr,Ql,Qr" => "&r,1l,2r,3l" therefore: foxtrot(mans, magic_rhythm, theta/2) = hustle(ladies, theta) This equation will also work if theta refers to time and both the hustle and foxtro are being played at exactly the same tempo (say 120 bpm) and phase. Also: hustle(Barry or Lynn, theta) = hustle(NYC, theta + pi/3) American box step foxtrot ("QQS-" or "S-QQ") requires a frequency/phase modulation function in order to relate its "step" function to 3-count hustle. > I really do need to get out more often.. ---- Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 19:56:45 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Latin Dancing: Why Am I not Finding the Same Beat As My Partner? Susan Williams wrote: > I hear the break on 2 easily in salsa, but if my partner is > breaking on 1, I'll adjust and break on 1. I'll reiterate here that "break" is a fuzzy term. A beat in salsa covers around 300 milliseconds in time. A movement specialist could probably enumerate several hundred individual body actions that a salsa dancer performs distributed over this time period. Is the "break" the point in time when the foot commences to moves, when it stops moving, when weight commences to transfer, when weight transfer passed the 50% point, the 90% point, when the hip transfers over the foot, when the knee/ankle/hip joint extends to angle X, etc., etc. There's a whole array of motions here, extending over a couple hundred milliseconds in time. I'll guess that different dancers pick a different member of this array of motions to align with the peak energy of the clave sound. Also International, American and street style Cuban motion are probably completely different orderings of this array of motions. ---- Date: Fri, 18 Oct 1996 15:57:24 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Techniques-Let's just leave them out! > In article <32674058.1B7E@communique.net>, > Tony Lewis wrote: > >Question? ... > >This person also said that the West Coast Swing was different > >in country, ballroom, and among true west coast swing dancers. > >I always thought a dance was determined by the music, > >techniques, and characteristic style present. Somewhat true, but the music, techniques, and characteristic style used are different, to some degree, in the CW, WCS, American social ballroom and competition International style ballroom worlds. > >I was unaware that each > >categorie of social dance, country, ballroom or social, could > >either leave out or add techniques at will. Categories don't dance or name dances, people do. Different groups of people will dance with different techniques and name what they're doing with the same terms: "waltz", "swing", etc. Official organizations will disagree, or rewrite their technique books just to be new and different. ajh@cs.ubc.ca (Alan Hu) wrote: > Dances, like languages, are living entities stole the words right out of my mouth... > Are two people dancing variations of the same dance or different > dances? The standard linguistic test is whether the two people > can understand each other. The corresponding dance test should > be whether the two people can dance together. did it again... For me, the variants are evolving apart. I can dance WCS with almost any ballroom dancer, intermediate through professional, but when I go the a WCS event like the US Open or BBTB, I find that I can't really dance with anybody (except people I know who also ballroom dance.) The style is just too different. I can dance WCS with some C&W dancers, but have to work at it. At the Hustle USA event, I could dance with people from all over the country except the top New York pros dancing the local NYC style. I wasn't sure whether it was me, or the degree of style evolution. ---- Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 13:37:33 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: The Use of the Prep Step (was: C/W vs. Ballroom - more or less...) Many named syllabus "figures" or "steps" (e.g. a waltz natural turn) do not start with simultaneously zero lateral, zero rotational and zero vertical momentum. Therefore, if one wants to start dancing with such a "step", some preparatory action may be required. One could just start with a half-baked step and pick up the flow of the dance later. This is what most beginners do; since thay haven't yet recognized the phase differences between, say, rise and fall, sway and body travel. In competition, or if one jus likes to start dancing directly with a well executed figure, a prep step, before the first step of a syllabus figure, helps in acquiring the proper momentum configuration for the "1" or first "S" of the figure. In addition, even with the best lead and follow technique, there is around the neighborhood of a hundred milliseconds delay between a lead and an active response. A prep step allows time for this pre-lead before the first "real" step. ---- From: rhn@nicholson.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: C/W vs. Ballroom - more Date: 24 Oct 1996 02:58:09 GMT In article <326E8082.5086@communique.net>, Tony Lewis wrote: >This was my statement, > >I stand by my statment and can prove that the waltz when danced in both >ballroom and country is either a slow waltz or a viennese waltz and when >danced to either country or ballroom music, the same techniques are >present for both and they should look the same! ... >The techniques in question that are present in both are, > >rise&fall, contra-body-movement, sway/counter-sway, 3/4 timing, >alignments, and others. ... >Are the techniques I've mentioned present or not? I can see the possibilities for this discussion to rapidly degenerate into nonsense. I'll start with the words "prove" and "technique". Unless the basic terms are agreed upon, discussion is likely to go nowhere. The C&W, American style and International style waltz routines, that I've seen anyway, all look different. Were they different because: The particular individuals dancing were different? The dancers I saw in one form weren't "good" dancers? (Who determines what a "good" waltz looks like?) They used different technique? They used different degrees and amounts of the same technique? They were using different styling? They were interpreting the different music differently? And what's the difference between technique, good technique, styling and interpretation anyway? Take this term "rise &f all". Someone will say it should be in some dance forms and not in another. But what is it? And how much rise is rise? I'll bet that if I were to mount an optical target on the head of any dancer in a full motion capture studio, I'd be able to measure some vertical motion in every dance. So, in at least sense, one could say the the "technique" of "rise & fall" is omnipresent in all dances. And this rise; Is it due to foot rise, leg rise, body rise, or head position? If there is a difference of a few milliseconds between between the peak rise of two couples, is this a style difference, or a difference of technique? What test can you use to "prove" a statement about technique in ballroom dance? Is what the US champion does the right technique? Or the world champion? Last years or this years? If different people win this year does this mean that proper technique has changed? There are top coaches who don't like the way that the current champions dance. Who's right? [...] And why start with something as complex as technique? If I recall correctly the basic syllabus for waltz differs greatly between American style and International style. The basic step descriptions in the Fred Astair franchise manuals, Arthur Murray franchise manuals, ISTD and IDTA books are probably all completely different. To give some credit to Mr. Lewis's observations, I believe that if an good international style dancer and a good C&W dancer were walk into each others venue, they might not like the style of dance that they observe, but they both probably could point the better and the worse dancers out on the floor. If they can, then there must be some common style or technique that they mutually feel differentiates better dancing. Do I need to start hunting for my NOMEX(tm) jacket? ---- Date: Sun, 27 Oct 1996 20:36:42 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: lead & follow (was Re: Mixing dance schools) I'm starting to believe that the process of learning to lead and follow goes in a circle. I sometimes see couples (who've just starting out to learn some ballroom steps) dancing with very little actual lead, more like dancing as individuals in close formation, neither one dominating the movement of the other. Then I see couples, at a little later stage in their development as ballroom dancers, where the man, told he is supposed to lead, is manhandling and pulling his partner into (his idea of) proper position, and his poor follower, told that her proper role is to follow, complying as best she can. At the top levels, I see a silky smooth connection between a couple experienced at dancing together. Both members of the couple seem to playing with and interpreting the music. I also see the man adapting for how the lady interprets his leads. In essence, following her follow of his leads. Good followers seem capable of attaining a high level of the state of being in tune with their leader. But good leaders, as well as global traffic planning and figure selection, seem to be tuned in to how their partner is responding, and blending that response into the continuing choreography. (I'll leave lead-follow recursion for another nerd thread.) My interpretation is that lead & follow is a form of complex 2-way communication. It take time to learn, just as a new foreign language does. ---- Date: Mon, 11 Nov 1996 17:10:09 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Subject: Re: american ballroom dancers/pro am Lani Bertino wrote: > Another advantage of pro-am dancing (assuming you're the amatuer) > is that you don't learn bad dance habits to compensate for your > partner. Is this good or bad? I'll answer that. If your only goal in dancing is to win the XYZ championship in N years, by all means avoid learning how to dance with anybody who has any bad habits. But if you want to dance with any real people, or if you just want have fun dancing socially, then you're just going to need to learn some adaptive skills. (Maybe also install a mental switch so that you can turn off these skills when competing?) Didn't the between-show-dance patter of some N-time Blackpool finalist include a line about how they used to complain about each others dancing *last year*. If on that level, they can't find a perfect partner, I guess the rest of us will have to take up ?knitting? to avoid having to put up with less than perfect partners ?? (Maybe the reason some British competitors are so good is that they don't care about having any fun ballroom dancing.) YMMV. IMHO. . .. ... ---- Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 17:23:48 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: lead & follow, class situations (was Re: Frustrated...) JC Dill wrote: > How can the leader figure out that the lead is wrong if the follower > does the expected (taught) move regardless? as Scott says, "If they > end up in left field, then that helps figure out my lead". Problem is that following requires learned active participation. There's also a chicken and egg problem where it's hard for a leader to learn what a good lead feels like before his partner can even do the footwork properly. In a class, if a follower only does what her partner manages to lead and if they don't get enough reps, she may never learn her part, and the leader may never learn what a good follow to his lead feels like. If the follower only walks through her part, irregardless of the lead, then the leader will never learn whether what he is doing constitutes a actual functional lead for the move/step/pattern. I've heard a variations on this recommendation before... If the instructor usually does N reps before moving on, then the follower should walk through the first N/2 reps, ignoring the lead, so that she can understand her part; then the last N/2 reps, only execute what her partner actually leads her to do. Some instructors even institute this 2 part procedure by announcing that on certain walkthroughs the follower should concentrate on just the footwork/alignment/etc. and ignore all else. Opinions? ---- Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 18:09:08 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Mailing list shut off - Any interest in splitting newsgroup? Victor Eijkhout wrote: > > >> rec.arts.dance.partner.misc // ballroom, swing, tango, etc. > > >> rec.arts.dance.partner.cw // cw > > >> rec.arts.dance.line // solo line > > >> rec.arts.dance.misc // jazz, ballet, tap, etc. > Well, I hate it. *pout* > > I mean, c'mon, relegate most of the major categories to 'misc'? The goal isn't to run a popularity contest. The goal is to divide things up so that: A. it's easier to not read articles that one isn't interested in, (otherwise, why split at all!) B. there's some balance to the split, C. the won't encourage a lot of cross-posting. I don't see enough volume to further split into: rec.arts.dance.partner.ballroom.social rec.arts.dance.partner.ballroom.competition.international rec.arts.dance.partner.ballroom.competition.misc rec.arts.dance.partner.nightclub.swing rec.arts.dance.partner.nightclub.latin rec.arts.dance.partner.nightclub.latin.break-on-1 rec.arts.dance.partner.nightclub.latin.break-on-2 rec.arts.dance.partner.tango alt.arts.dance.partner.gerbils.aerials.physics.newtonian.advocacy ad.infinitum.etc. (humor, not serious, :-) :^) etc. no, no! don't write that RFC, arrrrgh... ---- Date: Thu, 14 Nov 1996 17:12:03 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Latin Dancing: Hips; Being too Rigid; And What is With the Noisy Hands? (Was Mambo v. Salsa) Jim wrote: > I do not mean to sound foolish, but I am unclear about the extent > to which it is important to look good in a Latin club. Depends on the ratio of dancers sitting/standing and observing versus the number out on the dance floor. In places where many potential partners sit out and watch and are also somewhat selective in from whom they will entertain a request to dance, looking good, or, more importantly, making your partner look really good, can be an important criteria of whether or not you get many dances later on in the evening. The above is more common in bars than in ballroom dance halls. In places where everybody dances with whomever asks them, and where people remember who they had fun dancing with earlier, being a fun dancer with a good lead probably counts higher than looks. ---- >sherman@sol1.lrsm.upenn.edu (Bill Sherman) wrote: >>In article <562r0c$g8k@boursy.news.erols.com>, Jim wrote: >>> And, related to that, what is going on with the noisy hands in salsa? >> >>When I was taught Salsa, my teacher said we should feel free to move >>our hands up and down or side to side in the plane between me and my >>partner, but that any motion toward/away from my partner should be a >>lead. Almost all open position dances have hand motions that are supposed to be ignored. An underarm turn does not require that the follower levitate a half meter in the air when the leaders hand tries to go up over her head; she's just supposed to let the hand go over her head. One of the hard things in learning to follow, is learning what motions are to be resisted, or connected to the c.g., and what motions are to be disregarded. The plane and axis of important and less important motions varies from step to step and sometimes changes several times within a pattern (tuck, wrap, hammerlock, duck, spin). Nobody explains this extremely complex procedure, because most everybody would give up upon hearing the description, and because it's easy for most people to learn it by just doing it. >This seems to be what I am observing. Yet, one has to lead some moves >with a sideways motion (e.g. crossover break or even an inside (left) >turn). So it would seem that part of the equation is that the follower is >disregarding sideways movements of 6-8 inches, but past a point, begins to >consider it a lead. This seems sloppy. The turn part of a break or inside turn can be led immediately either by push pull differential action or by an off axis push, even when mixed in with all the coplaner hand flourishes. I've heard that native salsa was/is a dance of the whole body, including the arms and hands. What's really the added "noise" to this dance is all the footwork and hand-arm restrictions to make patterned lead & follow work. ---- Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 15:19:00 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Fast Hustles? Charles Koeppen wrote: > Victor Eijkhout wrote: > > At the higher speeds it's much easier to hit the right > > moment for a lead. ... > I don't believe anybody is more precise at fast tempos. Maybe the leads can't be as precise. But at high tempos, ones options are more limited, so it's harder for the follower to misinterpret a lead. This can trick the leader into believing that [his] lead is more accurate. ---- Date: Fri, 29 Nov 1996 15:49:49 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: american ballroom dancers/pro am > In article <+cmu.andrew.internet.ballroom+QmVfQli00UfA410Rdv@andrew.cmu.edu>, > Lely Chow wrote: > [In reference to the damage Pro-Am dancing does to the quality > of American Ballroom Dancing] > >This whole issue has been brought up once before, but what can > we *do* about it????? Maybe nothing. Pro-Am dance partnering is an established service industry in the U.S. and Japan. The U.S. and Japan are wealthy countries. Top priority in any service industry is customer satisfaction. Why dance with a amateur (who may have his or her own priorities, like learning to dance their own part well, learning to lead or follow anybody, looking good as opposed to feeling good, winning, having fun, etc.), when one is wealthy enough to *buy* a good dance partner, who is trained in compensating for a partners shortcomings? My guess is that many (I am not saying most!) pro-am competitors are simply spoiled; and that's why they say they can't find amateur partners. [me? throw a gauntlet? what's a gauntlet?] ---- Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 13:34:33 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Cha cha: where are the cha's? Graham Beech wrote: > I've concluded that any teacher who teaches the "beat 1" system is > (a) lazy; (b) wrong; (c) only interested in keeping students for > himself. Probably all three. As much as I dislike "break-on-1" pseudo cha-cha, I have to disagree with points (a) and (c). In the U.S. there is a large population of folks who only dance occasionally, and only for fun or enjoyment, but aren't interested in spending any significant amount of time or money in learning to dance "correctly". There are teachers who cater to this audience. If the "break-on-1" varient helps them get a higher percentage of newbies smiling and sort-of-moving to the (technically incorrect) music in a 20 minute to 1 hour group lesson, why should I complain. Maybe some of them will stick around and eventually learn to dance cha-cha correctly, instead of giving up on dancing as too difficult (and thus not helping to pay for dance floors, bands, DJ's, etc.) My point is that there is a difference in what one might teach to a rhythmically challenged group in a few minutes if you want them to have enough fun to come back next week/month, and what one should teach someone who has chosen to learn to dance well. It's simple marketing. And even bad dancers help pay the rent on the good places to dance. As for (c), most of the "break-on-1" quick-teach seems to happen in the free-lesson-before-a-dance setting, where there is no hold on any of the audience. But correct Cuban motion is one of those things on which many students can spend tons of money before getting it right. So (c) actually works the other way. ---- Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 16:59:44 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Cha cha: where are the cha's? ConnaC : > In teaching I realize instructors have certain needs for > assigning numbers to steps when they are counting out the > steps for students. But, as a dancer in a competition, how > do the judges have any idea which number I have assigned to > a step so long as my pattern matches the music? Absolutely true as far as just dancing is concerned. For all the audience knows, the dancer could be counting backwards, or in a foreign language (san, zwei, uno & nil...). There may or may not be a psychological emphasis on a particular numeral which should match the musical phrasing. (Although, I imagine that it might be natural for many beginners to fall into emphasizing whatever step is designated as "one" ). But for communicating about dancing (teaching, sharing steps with a friend, etc.), it helps greatly if the two parties have a common vocabulary. If one party thinks a chasse is 12&3 and another thinks it's 56&1, things get pretty confusing. For those dances that have a natural alignment of the steps with the measures/bars of the music (waltz, cha-cha, rhumba: yes. ECS, hustle: no), it's less confusing to those with some musical education to use the same count as the printed music (1-2-3-4& in 4/4 time). Some schools like to start named patterns with a "one" and end them with a high number. This seems less important to me as the natural stopping point between teaching figures might not be after the same number of beats for all figures or aligned to the musical measures. And prep steps seem quite common in some schools (international standard). ---- Date: Tue, 03 Dec 1996 20:13:29 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Cha Cha & Latin Enio Cordoba wrote: > Terryl has a great way of explaining this concept: > Think of a beat as an hour on the clock, if the guy is stepping > at one o"clock, two o"clock, three o"clock, etc, the girl is > stepping at one fifteen, two fifteen, three fifteen, etc. in basic > following. In Salsa the guy is moving the body on one, two, three > o"clock while the foot is hitting at one fifteen, two fifteen , > etc- therefore the girl is now hitting on one thirty, two thirty, > three thirty, etc. This is a great way of explaining things. "Steps" don't just happen "on" "beats". I pretty sure an experienced biomechanics analyst could break what we dancers call a step into hundreds of seperate actions that span the entire time between and through the acoustical energy peaks (close to the beats) of the music. > A latin percussion book I read a few years ago > discussed the idea of the male bar and the female bar. This is interesting. I'll have to watch street dancers to see if the men all break forward on the same measure, or whether the split is half forward, half backward. ---- Date: Wed, 04 Dec 1996 13:56:20 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Cha cha: where are the ch Icono Clast wrote: > JI}(Regrettably, my grasp of Fourrier transforms is too weak > > to express this > > Then I'll not confess I know not who Fourrier is. And you'ld probably need to do complex Fourier analysis, because the phase information is more interesting than the frequency information for the purposes this discussion. I leave figuring out the imaginary component of a dance step to minds much greater than mine... ---- Date: Mon, 09 Dec 1996 13:01:03 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Reverse Turn in Waltz and V.Waltz? > In article <58hlms$lab@hecate.umd.edu> marshall@astro.umd.edu > (James Marshall) writes: > >> > >> The only real difference I've noticed is that the Viennese > >> Waltz reverse turn makes a complete turn over 6 steps (2 bars) > >> while the Waltz reverse turn makes only about 3/4 of a turn > >> over 6 steps; is this difference in the amount of turn > >> the reason for the foot crossing? > > > >OK, I'll accept that the differing amounts of turn is the reason > >for the foot crossing. Now, can you explain *why* crossing your > >feet helps you get more turn? Your partner is offset to your right. A reverse turn rotates to the left. If take your left foot behind instead of in front of your right, your poor partner has a long way to go to get around your left hip. If you cross in front, then your left hip will start to move to the inside of LOD and leave a straighter path for your partner to get around and through. Only the partner backing needs to cross since they're the one on the inside of the turn. Not getting around your partner leads to spiral death (a clockwise spiral sends you into the wall/chairs/mirrors.) Offset position. Direction of turn. Amount of turn. Inside or outside of turn. Amount of rise and fall. Different technique required. Or so I've been told. YMMV. ---- Date: Mon, 09 Dec 1996 13:27:58 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Reverse Turn in Waltz and V.Waltz? Re: cross step on reverse turn of V.Waltz. > Offset position. Direction of turn. Amount of turn. > Inside or outside of turn. Amount of rise and fall. > Different technique required. Or so I've been told. YMMV. And the obvious. Rate of turn. Your partner has a greater angle of turn to get through in a smaller amount of time. At the faster tempo of a Viennese Waltz deviations from heading straight down LOD have to be minimized (or in this case shared from then person on the outside of the turn to person on the inside of the turn.) All this is based on a traveling, rather than a spinning V.Waltz. Anyone know when and how the traveling Austrian/German version emerged/evolved/developed? The Victorian vintage hoopskirt type dancers seem much less interested in traveling steps and more interested in making the ladies dizzy. ---- Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1996 18:56:45 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: How Many Beats Per Minute Are Required for the Major C&W, Latin, Swing, Cajun/Zydeco and Ballroom Dances? rhmcfla@aol.com (RHMcFLA) wrote: > In general, > inexperienced dancers prefer the lower end of the tempo range . > Buz McCreary Interesting. There is a local DJ who caters to beginners, and usually plays *everything* too fast. Experienced dancers have to go up and request foxtrots that aren't played as sprint events. I think many beginners only feel in balance when A) standing still on both feet or B) when stepping as fast as they can actually execute their "moves". YMMV. ---- Date: Fri, 10 Jan 1997 19:57:00 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Dance Vultures: Single People Who Like To Dance meet People Only There to Dance Jim Titus wrote: > I need to talk with someone for about 15 minutes before I feel > comfortable asking for a phone number; a dance scene not particularly > geared for singles may convey the implicit message that this is > too long a time to spend with someone. And I know women who consider men who try to ask them out after "chatting them up" for 15 minutes at a ballroom dance the *real* vultures. I knew one particularly attractive lady (she was on the radar screen of too many of these chat-them-up-and-ask-them-out types) who actually had a hand signal which meant "please ask me to dance NOW so I can politely get away from this guy". At a singles bar, the dancers are the aliens. But at a ballroom dance, there are a large number of people who are there because they would much rather dance than play pick-up games. (And, just like, say, chemistry lab, it's still very possible to meet people and later date them, without losing sight of the primary purpose for being there.) > Personally, when I am the intruder, I speak to the man and say > "May I cut in?" Yes I know that the line was originally for > interrupting a couple that was already dancing; but it works as > well when they are not. Yea. And if this question is directed at the guy, what's the woman supposed to do if she wants to get asked to dance? This question is polite, and likely to keep one out of fights in bars, but seems to be designed for the era when women were considered property of the man they were with. Personally, I hope these "intruders" succeed in annoying jtitus. The less chat-them-up vultures that show up at ballroom dances, the less there will be women who stop attending ballroom dances because they don't want to be chatted-up. (I know of a few.) It may be darwinian; either the dancers will drive the pick-up artists away, or the pick-up artists will drive out the dancers. IMHO. YMMV. ---- Date: Tue, 14 Jan 1997 14:11:32 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Dancing the Merengue Jacques Gauthier wrote: > I like it although after a while one gets tired of hearing the > music. (In latin bars all they play is salsa & merengue) I begin to like merengue when I found out that with a good partner I could dance a fast hustle to the music. ---- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: LA Hustle instruction? In article <199701232106.PAA29058@space.ncsa.uiuc.edu>, Henry Neeman wrote: >Rahul Dhesi (dhesi@rahul.net) said: > >>>Anybody ---- leader or follower -- whose body weight or positioning is >>>detectably different between counting &123 and counting 12&3 is doing >>>something wrong. ... Any follower who isn't doing something detectable different when dancing with a different leader (leading different steps with a different style) is (probably) doing something wrong. >Lani Bertino (lanib@microsoft.com) replies: > >>I disagree completely .... On the 12&3 count, I can settle my weight >>on my right foot for a nice line and to set me up perfectly for >>consecutive turns. In the &123 count, I cannot do this. The weight >>settles on the left foot. ... There are people who can dance either style; but AFAIK they don't have to change their count to do so. >In principle, it's completely irrelevant whether one counts hustle >(or, more accurately, thinks of hustle as) &123 or 12&3. To be a little more precise... The count irrelevant to how one actually dances (moves to the music), whether one counts &123 or 12&3. However counts are based on words ("and" "one"...); and words are for communication. If one school thinks half a turning basic is counted "&1-2-3", the move starts and finishes near the ends of the slot (in the slotted hustle varient). If another school thinks half a turning basic is counted "1-2&3", then the move starts and finishes closer the middle of the slot. (at least both schools start on the same foot!) When trying to describe a pattern that starts with half a turning basic in class, in a book, on the net... mass confusion when ones audience has people trained in both schools. Technical arguments can be made that BOTH counts have their faults and can encourage various bad habits (hopping, pausing). However, having two counts and thus 2 completely different sylibi based on these counts can only be detrimental to the dance community. I'm not sure which count came first, I've heard stories both ways. But I think a strong case can be made that "&1-2-3" was the first count popularized widely (NY media, etc.), and thus should be adopted as the standard. Hopefully teachers of long standing (Torres, Montez, Schwimmer, Khiem, et.al.) will put in their 2-bits in any discussion about changing the terminology drastically. ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Lead and Follow...someone must be driving :-) In article <19970126024201.VAA00922@ladder01.news.aol.com>, wrote: > >We teach that the Leader leads and the follower follows. The leader > "asks" the follow to follow (using a gentle body lead) a move, he >doesn't "tell" her(using a strong arm lead) to follow. Well said. In partner dance, there must be a "partnership". The rules for this partnership are contained within the defined roles for the leader and the follower. Although, in other aspects of modern life, a certain amount of negotiation and compromise are considered proper, these skills may not be effective at efficiently moving two people through dance floor traffic together while also keeping time with the music. If the leader, by his lead, makes a request, the follower must accept that request to best of her ability or the partnership will fail. If the leader physically moves the followers body like a sack of potatoes, then there is no real partnership, just a leader dancing solo with a prop. A leader can also fail in his partnership role by not providing a timely lead that is within the decyphering ability of his current follower. Even though a clear lead makes a request of the follower, it may also allow a certain degree of freedom. This degree of freedom varies quite a bit depending on the dance, the step and other circumstances. During Vienesse Waltz reverse turns, the degree of freedom for the follower may be limited to her facial expression and perhaps a squeeze of the arm to warn of impending traffic. During a WCS extended left side pass, the degree of freedom may allow for an almost infinite variety of syncopations and other expressive body movements (as long as the connection can still be maintained). A follower in partner dance can ultimately control her own destiny by simply choosing when and with whom to dance. (or by learning to lead.) ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: counting hustle >Lani Bertino [possibly] writes: > >Why do the leads have to occur in between the counts? (Keep in mind that >I have never led hustle before, so I am genuinely seeking information.) >In WCS, the leader leads on 1 and the woman follows just slightly behind >(if we were to get technical, probably on the first "ah" count of >1-ah-and-ah-2). Why is this different for Hustle? Here's my dangers of oversimplification speech again. We don't dance in freeze frames. We aren't perfectly rigid bodies capable of infinite acceleration. Walking is an extremely complex activity (which complexity is mostly hidden from us by our brainstems) distributed continuously over time. At 120 bpm, there is 500 milliseconds between "beats" and, depending on the dance and the step, around 250, 500 or 1000 mS between "steps". If the music is being played by humans, the beats aren't spaced at exact 500 mS sub/super multiples, but are shaded slightly earlier or later in time by the musicians. If you look at musical waveforms with a digitizing scope, you'll realize that finding exactly where a beat is in time is a fuzzy process. If you look at swing or foxtrot dancers, you'll find that the "steps" are also shaded in time, perhaps by an even greater amount. Leads and steps don't happen exactly on (fuzzy) beats. I'm pretty sure that a biomechanics analysis of walking or dancing would break any step down into, perhaps, 100's of individual muscle actuations that are sequenced continuously before, during and after any change of weight or foot placement. Which of these micro-movements do you want to call the "step" or the lead? For the leader, there is a delay from the time he thinks about doing a pattern to when the action is committed. Then there is a delay as these nerve impulses are transmitted to body/leg/foot muscles. Then over a period of 10's or 100's of mS, these muscle forces gradually accelerate the leaders c.g. either directly or with the help of gravity. After a period of time this acceleration causes a displacement large enough to be transmitted through his hand to his partner. Then there is a race that depends on the spring tension in the followers arm between when her body moves due to the force transmitted from the leader and when the nerve impulses reach her brain telling her that the leader is doing something. The followers brainstem reacts next, starting to make the changes necessary to keep her from falling over due to her displacement. Then there is yet a further delay as she decides or reacts with a syncopation or styling, this delay being much longer for a new move than a well practiced one. All of the above is a simplification. And different people have different reaction times. So one answer is the lead happens continuously, before, during and after the "beat". If you want to pick out the lead of a particular "step", then when the leader thinks he's starting the lead, when a dynamometer would measure a change in connection force, when a high-speed camera would detect motion, and when the follower would feel the "lead", would all happen at different points in time. (IMHO. YMMV. might contain unpasturized applesause, etc.) In article <19970203235100.SAA27865@ladder01.news.aol.com>, JAnder8689 wrote: >Try bouncing a ball to music. In order to hit the beat you have to >raise the ball up slightly on the "and a" before you propel it down >to hit the floor on "1". Depends on how tall you are and on the tempo of the music. ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: The etiquette of asking for a dance, revisited yet again. (a saga in several parts) AFAIK, there are no federal, state or local laws requiring that I give an explanation for either my acceptance or refusal of a request to dance. Neither do I see any contract at the door with such a requirement. Neither are there any such requirements on a person that I might ask to dance. I also know that if I wish to dance with a person (or their friends) in the future, my chances will be maximized if my refusals (and acceptances!) are received as polite and friendly. Since I can't read minds (yet :^), and everybody is different, I can only hope that my attempts at politeness are received thusly. [to rahul: the consequences aren't always predictable.] Both parties here, A more than B, seem to be under some delusion that they can read minds; A also seems to assume the existence of some (actually several) imaginary contracts. There are people who will both agree and disagree with these existence hypothesis'. ----- From: rhn@nicholson.com Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: C& W Workshop conduct Date: 7 Feb 1997 08:39:37 GMT In article <32FA3E20.38D5@concentric.net>, David Prieto wrote: >I take workshops, and my wife general stays home; she wants to learn/see/hear >what the instructor has to give. But the guys are [1] Interested in one her >name [2] where does she go dancing ... Well, if there's class idle time (instructor quietly helping a couple across the room, etc.), these are usually the first 2 things I ask any new partner that I'm rotated to (even if she's not cute :-) Seems to be commonly accepted polite smalltalk; and if I don't open these subjects often the women does (unless there's something particularily interesting about the current weather situation). In fact, some teachers instruct their class to make sure to introduce themselves to every new partner in the class rotation. YMMV. And before you go overboard in criticizing guys for "teaching", remember that some ladies require this for the guys personal safety (no, my hand is not a crush toy; expecting my bad back to support half your weight in this sway is not a good idea; etc.) Depending on the class, the instructor may not mention these important items. But, the general problem is that partner dance is one of those things where both men and women, who actually know almost nothing on the subject, think they they are quite knowledgable. The reason is that dance is (to some degree, and, as well as being many other things) the art of making difficult things look effortless. Everybody sees the rabbit, not the misdirection and carefully engineered trap door under the hat. (ron@guilty-as-charged.unedu) ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Class Rotation Re: c/ w To teach or not 1/2 Learning new steps in lead-follow partner social dance also requires learning how to lead and/or follow those new steps. If you only dance one routine with one partner, it's hard to tell if your dancing *with* your partner, or just doing two solo dances that happen to be in close formation. Since the routine is fixed in most dance classes, the best way to make sure that people are really leading or following is to vary the partner and see if the two people can still dance together. *Every* leader in class is screwing up to some degree. The ladies who stick with one leader get to rehearse his bad habits. Rotating certainly exposes one to more bad habits, but since they vary from partner to partner, there's less opportunity to burn one fixed set of bad habits into ones brain or into muscle memory. I sometimes see a couple who dance mostly or only with each other. They're both doing the same complex routine, but he's not leading, or she's certainly not doing what he's leading. I sometimes get the feeling that if I were to ever dance with one of these ladies, I would have more luck shouting "OK, pattern 43 from advanced waltz class 7", than I would in indicating what to do by any sort of physical lead. Many times I've taken classes with a fixed partner. But then I don't consider any step done in class really learned until I can spring it on my practice partner with a different precede and follow. And not learned well until I can lead it with at least lady who wasn't in that same class. Now performance competition dancing probably requires different skills than lead-follow social dancing. But I'm the type who is just as impressed, if not more, by 6 couple standard ballroom finals, where floorcraft is required, and by the levels of WCS/hustle jack-and-jill where the participants may have seldom/never danced with each other before, than with most canned music single couple rehearsed performance routines (e.g. I've attended 2 major WCS weekends only on the j-n-j day/session). ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: The etiquette of asking for a dance, revisited yet again. (a saga in several parts) In article <19970207162000.LAA28812@ladder01.news.aol.com>, Psychohist wrote: >"Lauriec@cris.com" asks: > > . . .It is rare that I > turn someone down for a dance, but when I do it's usually > for a good reason. For example either the dancer or the way > he dances makes me very uncomfortable. And I have to admit, > I am a terrible liar - so how do I politely turn them down > when it is usually obvious that I would like to be on the > floor dancing? > >Memorize these words: "sorry, I'm sitting this one out". The statement >is true, the apologetic tone is polite, and you don't have to dance with >the guy. This is only a true statement if one really wants to "sit one out". If you'd really rather be dancing, but just not with the requester at this point in time, then "No, thank you" is far more truthful. If this hurts his feelings, that's his problem. If, however, you would like to dance with this person (or his friends) at some future point in time, then you can either blow off an entire dance, or risk creating a communication problem that needs to be resolved in the future. Although social dance may have evolved in a period when white lies and psychological manipulation were the norm, I don't think the latter behaviors should be considered mandatory in the contemporary dance scene, although, perhaps, still useful in some statistical sense in order to help maintain a generally friendly atmosphere among a group of people of mixed social sensitivities. ----- Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 18:48:31 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: competition partners (was Re: Turning down ...) psychohist@aol.com (Psychohist) wrote: > (Who keeps thinking this subject line is on turning down potential > competition partners at the end of a tryout, where "I really don't > think our dance styles are compatible" means "I want somebody > better than you". Guess I've been looking for a competition > partner for too long!) Which brings up the topic of selection criteria for competition partners. I've always thought that compatibility during practice and a positive learning curve were more important than the match in current dance "level". (at least below the championship levels.) Then again, I had one workshop partner get up to the level where she and her significant other would no longer argue over dancing; lost her. Had another brand new, just starting out, pre-novice competition partner who then zoomed right past me to the professional rising star ranks. Probably means that I need to steepen my own learning curve to prevent getting left behind so quickly. Also, I've seen couples who dance about 5-10 measures, and then stalk off to the corner for a heated discussion. Repeatedly. For months/years. Their dancing does seem to be getting better though. Maybe the fact that they're married and have kids has something to do with it... pms@zoo.bt.co.uk (Paul) writes: > "I'll call you in a couple of months to let you know" "Too bad I'm too short/tall for you." "Can you move to Oregon|Florida?" ---- Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 19:05:09 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Turning down partners Michelle Dick wrote: > Women who ask the men they want to dance will hardly ever have to > sit out. The only ones who do are those who never ask... Actually, anyone who adheres the the oft-mentioned social convention of not dancing after turning down a dance is stuck sitting one out. Doesn't matter whether they were on the way to ask someone else, or whether they have any understanding or agreement with whatever rational might have been behind the convention. > Frankly, I really couldn't care less about such princesses. Really doesn't matter if they're a stuck-up princess or a blindly polite toadstool. All it takes is adherence to a silly rule and an offensive/undesirable/manipulative dancer of opposite gender. ---- Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 20:00:13 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: The etiquette of asking for a dance, revisited yet again. (a saga in several parts) jcdilll@ix.netcom.com (JC Dill) wrote: > On Thu, 06 Feb 1997 05:12:28 GMT, jcdilll@ix.netcom.com (JC Dill) > expound upon: "The etiquette of asking for a dance, revisited yet > again. (a saga in several parts)" There is a common transitivity delusion where it is assumed that 1) if one is hurt, than the other party intended to hurt you; 2) if one doesn't intend to hurt another, they won't get hurt. However cultural differences and communication channel noise render both these thesis' false in the absolute sense. In the engineering world we use agreed upon protocols, waste some of the channel bandwidth on sufficient coding gain and redundant error correction information to insure a reasonable probability of the message getting through, and in some cases require an acknowledgement token to make sure the complete message was received. I've had conversations after a dance that go like this: "thanks", "thanks!", "Thank you", "Thank *you* very much", etc. Hey, it's repetitively redundant over and over again; but at least it's likely to get the message across on a crowded dance floor with loud music and cross conversations going on. In jc's saga: Party "A" was a bozo for assuming that B intended to snub him without verifing the fact, and then acting on this unverified and possibly incorrect assumption. And B makes the mistake of assuming that her rushed behaviour on the dance floor couldn't possibly hurt *anyones* feelings. > sigh. agreed. ron@me.sometimes.bozo(tm).also.com ---- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Turning down partners In article <5docuj$268@elan.cs.umd.edu>, Tatiana Shpeisman wrote: > - it seems to be an accepted practice to say "I am tired" when one >means "I don't want to dance with you". I bet it's not a ladies' secret. >Does it mean that any "I am tired" statement is now being interpreted >as "She doesn't want to dance with me, but tries to be polite"? Exactly. Since polite dishonesty seems to be the accepted practice when turning down a dance, this makes any explanation for the turn-down suspect, and mostly content free. Might as well say "thank you", for politeness purposes, and dispense with the rest (unless you want to try and start a conversation, or are trying to arrange an alternative dance in the future). Information is useful. If A tells me that she doesn't want to dance with me ever, then I don't have to waste time testing the hypothesis. If A tells me that she would rather dance WCS's with B than with me, then I know that I have an opportunity when A is alone and B is across the room dancing with someone else, but not when B is closer to A than I am. As it is, one needs to be an experimentalist, asking A during various dances, with B at varying proximities, in order to determine where one fits in the pecking order with respect to A's preferences for partners. Making women sit out dances, in order to test various hypothesis', seems to me to be a pretty annoying and inefficient convention. ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Speaking of etiquette ... clashing dance styles In article <33010F0E.7664@bcf.usc.edu>, Betty Cowin wrote: ... >the slot should be, and that intruding into other dancers' floor space >is rude as well as potentially dangerous. ... > >BUT - there are some advanced dancers (not all of them, but enough) who >seem to deliberately intrude into other dancers' space - by planting >themselves between pairs and dancing across their slots, or by >wandering. First, I usually consider the slot right next to an advanced pair as a much safer than average place (unless my goal is to not look like a clumsy beginner in comparison). Usually advanced dancers have the skill to control their own movements, the experience to control their partners use of space, and enough neurons left over to plan for some of the traffic about them. My first assumption is that either your perception of the slot they "owned" was an underestimate, or, more likely, the weren't really as advanced as you think. If one couple is really wild and stands out, you may want to talk to the instructor/proprietor/bouncer before someones liability insurance policy needs to be exercised. The use of space in social dance seems to have some things in common with animal territorial behavior. The steps and the airspace used aren't precisely predetermined and previously agreed upon; there are no markings on the floor; the slot size will vary with the crowd, the tempo of the music, the room temperature, etc. Just a bunch people doing their thing and using the amount of space that trial and error has taught them to seem reasonable. >Since this is a club, I think the club as a whole should deal with the >issue - or am I dreaming? I'd like to hear if any of you have >successfully handled this type of problem without major confrontations. My guess is that there are some similarities between what happens in territorial behavior and what will work in the ballroom. For instance, most animal territorial boundries are set not by fights to the death, but by a lot of posturing and minor skirmishes near the borders in question. The ballroom equivalent would be that, if one couple keeps expanding their slot, eventually the surrounding couples will stop retreating, start exchanging minor (excuse me) bumps and eventually start glaring at their rudeness. The sane leader will stop expanding well before he offends or gets injured. No big fight needed. The couple who continually retreats will end up dancing by themselves in the hallway. The couples who put sturdy pieces of their anatomy (e.g. a shoulder or hip, not a nose) on the corners and edges of "their" slot will eventually convince their neighbors that someone is already trying to claim that piece of airspace; and some compromise will eventually be reached. Not very logical, but the way it seems to work, barring some oddball competition where an official stands there with a tape measure and a yellow card. I've never been involved in a crowded social dance setting where some small amount of incidental (polite excuse me) contact did not occur. YMMV. (not a professional anthropologist) ----- Date: Tue, 18 Feb 1997 23:05:12 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: How Many Times One Takes morse@phwave.phys.lsu.edu (Andrew) wrote: > The other half, which cannot be neglected in these discussions, > is the gentleman's responsibility. ... > If a man is: > 1) Making a sincere effort to dance with a good number of > the unescorted ladies in the room (not just the good dancers > and/or the conventionally attrctive women. ... > Should a lady refuse me, and then dance that > dance with another, I consider that to be her releasing me from > any obligation to ever ask her again. ... > The gentleman should never > allow any lady sitting on the perimeter after the music has > started to think he is turning away from her. Oooh, this is fun. Let's try the other tack. I pay at the door at most ballroom dances. I am not employed to play 19th century gentleman, not a professional councilor, not an emotional support group participant(*). I show up to enjoy dancing with followers who show up and pay at the door to do likewise. If I happen by someone who shares the mutual delusion that we might enjoy a dance together, then one of us asks and the other accepts. Why waste time asking or accepting dances with anyone with whom I do not anticipate enjoying a dance. The rules are much simpler. 1) If one wants to dance with someone, and the odds seem high enough to not make the request a waste of time, then ask. 2) When asked to dance, say yes if one wants to dance with the requester, otherwise say no. Period. 3) If one is unpopular, not good looking, or not a highly desirable dance partner and in a small talkative dance community, then smile and lie occasionally and put up with a charity dance or sit-one-out, especially around people who might gossip, in order to improve ones odds at future dances. (If you're the local hotshot or babe in a large dance community, there seems to be evidence that you can pretty much ignore this rule and still have a full dance card.) As for anyone who draws bizarre conclusions based on whom you walk by, who you don't ask, what you do after saying no, etc. see (*) above. It's their problem. The summary rule: vstark@netcom.com (Valerie Stark) > No way. My body, my decision. Anything else is a form of slavery. ---- Date: Thu, 20 Feb 1997 20:16:56 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: How Many Times One Takes Trish Connery wrote: > Ron Nicholson wrote: > > > > ... > Oh, Ron, Ron, Ron... > > You wicked man. You sure know how to stir up a hornet's nest. Why Thanks! ;^) ... But, in actuality, I have to agree with the rest of your post. Social dance generally seems to be a pretty friendly activity. I've made a lot of friends dancing, and usually meet a lot of my friends when I go out dancing. Dancing wouldn't be as enjoyable if most dancers didn't try to act in a reasonably civilized and friendly manner. ---- ---- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 20:11:55 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Basic Rhythm AT vs ballroom Michelle Dick wrote: > Some schools start with SQQ and others with > SSQQ. Beginners from different schools often have trouble. > In our area, Pavilion classes generally start with SQQ and > Starlite with SSQQ. And Stanford men often switch to QQQQ > quite soon after learning the basics. :-) I've heard "dancing a Foxtrot with all quick's" called "Turbo" mode. I have also heard this called "dancing a Waltz to Foxtrot music" when the figures used are primarily 3 step patterns (SQQ). Which shows that Hustle isn't the only partner dance which uses a 3 against 4 composite/polyrhythm. ######## JC Dill wrote: [default rhythmic pattern] >This is true of ALL ballroom dances that have a single basic >step pattern. (Tango, Foxtrot, Waltz, ... Maybe more true for American, latin, and social style. I just looked at an International style bronze syllabus for Tango (and Quickstep) and there doesn't appear to be a single common basic rhythmic pattern. ---- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 20:47:13 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: theme before variation (was Re: Cross-slot vs. Shared-slot) Scott Allen wrote: > If Mario Robau, Jr., and Robert Royston, each several-time > national champions, are taking side steps (regardless of what > they're teaching), does that make it OK? Or do we say, "That's > bad technique, I don't care who they are!" Champion swing dances can put a lot of flash into their leads. Champion ballroom dancer put a lot of sway and shape into their figures. But the first thing most people find their instructors doing, is telling them to stand up straight and take all the shape/sway out (lead straight back), etc. Why? Well, in the case of sway, there are at least 5 degrees of freedom (and likely lots more). That means that a random attempt to get at least one factor approximately right still allows a (1 - 1/(2^4)) chance for error, or a 94% chance of doing it wrong. So the instructor is left with the option of (A) watching it done wrong > 90% of the time, (B) trying to get confused students to try to do 5 more things simultaneous with moving their feet, or (C) taking out ALL the fancy stuff. (C) usually wins. When the student is consistant enough at doing nothing, all the extras/decorations can be added back in, one piece at a time. So maybe a WCS champion can step one way while leading another. But are you confident that you can also picked up the other 47 subtle magic tricks that are required to make the lead still work right? Summary. A lot of "absolute standard" good techniques are based on what can be taught to actual humans, and in what order things can successfully be taught. ---- Date: Tue, 25 Feb 1997 21:11:46 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Learning from discovering [Re: "You Just Don't Understand" by D. Tannen] Michelle Dick wrote: > Another fundamental error made by these books is the assumption > that there exist distinct styles, A and B. Rather than there > being an infinite dimensional continuum describing communications. > No one is all A or all B. There most certainly is a continuum. But I wouldn't at all be surprised if most controlled measurements on a general population sample show a *strong* bi-modal distribution. e.g. the correlation between speaker gender and "communication style" is most definitely non-zero (and the Pearsons correlation coefficient for man/woman related to leader/follower for, say, tango, is not equal to 1.0, but is certainly greater that 0.9 (averaged over the entire state, etc.)) Turns out that the mats of neurons in our heads are very good at finding these modal peaks in certain kinds of multidimensional distributions (maybe too good for our own good). ---- ---- Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 15:33:26 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: foot changes? (was Re: c-w new UC rules and smaller events) JCDill wrote: > My opinion is that foot changes chould be prevented entirely in > 2step and waltz and polka in Div IV. Straight standard footwork > only, you want to do the *cool* same foot stuff, move up to III. "foot changes", I'm unfamilier with this terminology as it relates to CW dancing. If you mean syncopated moves like chasse's and such, it's done differently in international standard. They allow a couple of syncopated waltz moves even at syllabus bronze level. This allows the folks at the bottom levels of syllabus competition to add a little variation to the rhythm, and also makes the dance a little more dependant on lead and follow. Only having straight time steps at the beginning levels of American social style and CW style waltz, IMHO, makes those dances a little more boring looking than bronze int'l style. ---- Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 15:49:08 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Reply to Dave's Ohio Star jan4711@aol.com (JAN4711) wrote: > I still do not think that routine was a clear cut swing. I'm going to vote with Jan on this one. I don't have anywhere near as much swing dance experience as Jan describes; but I have been to both the US Open (Swing) and the Hustle USA events. When I first heard the music, it sounded like something to which I would dance a hustle rather than a WCS. While watching the live broadcast, it wasn't until they did the second canonical body ripple anchor step syncopation that I could tell what dance they were playing with (WCS). That was about halfway through their routine. I don't mind these showcase dances that are mostly jazz routines, gymnastics demonstrations and hitting photo op lines. It's just that I'm not sure if they have much to do with the dance [ WCS | hustle | cha-cha | rumba | etc. ] as recognized by the majority of non-performing dancers. Corky & Shirley did a show last year where they danced a syllabus rumba (or at least everything was an *easily* recognizable syllabus variation ). Got a standing ovation. ---- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 12:13:49 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: floor craft Trish Connery wrote: > Psychohist [] wrote: >> I believe this has to do with the fact that while it's very >> easy for a beginner to get started in, say, swing, even getting >> to the point where you can dance one two minute dance in >> international style takes a significant amount of instruction. >> There's a simple, six beat, repeatable basic in swing ... > As in any dance, someone can do a basic, but that doesn't mean > they are doing it right, or leading/following it correctly, or > doing it in time to the music, or exhibiting any style/technique. I think you are misunderstanding Warren's point. How friendly a dance community is seems to be more related to how long it takes just to get started, rather than to how long it takes to get good. > Which repeatable, simple six beat basic are you referring to? > Under Arm Pass? Sugar Push (Push Break), Side Pass? ... Just so. I remember being quite able to entertain another beginner partner when I could only do a 6-count push and a 6-count pass (I knew 2 things! I could vary the dance!) How well I danced was quite relative. I imagine that the beginning ladies thanked me because I was one of the beginner leaders who could dance a few patterns without twisting their arm, and that I could do a 6-count pattern in mostly pretty close to approximately around 6 beats of music (maybe). 2 or 3 patterns were enough for me to ask another beginner to dance ECS/WCS, and enough for the lady to thank me after the dance. Two patterns were enough for ECS, WCS, NC2S, American box waltz/foxtrot/rumba. This made it easier to fit in with just a couple 1 hour free lessons before the dance. International style foxtrot was completely different. Took many months before I could even get a practice partner around the floor without stopping or crashing into people. I would never even think of asking a lady who looked like she had a clue. ---- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 22:39:48 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: C/W - What's a Beginner Dancer? "beginner" is an 8 letter word. Each dancer is an individual person with different strengths, weaknesses, natural abilities. Dancing involves a multiplicity of skills which each person is going to learn in their own order. (some can spin, but can't learn routines; some get the routines but can't even walk to the music; some are very musical in the way they try to break their partners arms; some a very smooth leaders, but can't turn around without falling over; etc.) "level" is a 5 letter word. No matter where you set the bar, there are going to be a lot of people whose current skill set includes stuff both below and above the bar. Dancing "level", as a strict 1-dimensional metric, is for machined parts that come off of assembly lines, not for people. In real life, a teacher has to make up some "levels"; each level small enough to make teaching the class managable, but big enough to attract enough students to pay the bills. Depends on the abilities of the individual teacher (and the students, who have to put up with each other.) ---- Date: Tue, 11 Mar 1997 23:17:46 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Jive vrs. Swing Graeme Eardley wrote: > Some people prefer swing, some jive. > shouldn't that be an end to the matter. Two divergent species fighting for the same ecological niche. Competitive ballroom dances have evolved quite a bit from the social form of the dance; but most competition dances can at least be recognized as an idealized form of some dance by regular social dancers. The competitive latin dances have evolved pretty far away from their generic social dance roots. In the US, the social Paso is extinct (or nearly so, AFAIK). The Jive has evolved so far away from it's social roots that the basic movement can look just plain silly to social swing dancers. (At least the token Rumba basics that competition dancers sometimes throw in are recognizable as such. Except, possibly, for the stylized head position, almost everybody recognizes a competition Waltz as a Waltz as a Waltz...) Highly evolved, highly specialized species do well in stable niches, but tend to die off rather suddenly when any major change in their ecosystem occurs. ------ Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: picture pose on &1 in hustle [you might want to skip the following if you're not into metadiscussions.] In article <33baeffd.2401815528@news.concentric.net>, Mike Corbett wrote: >One who is "just learning to dance reasonably well" IMHO would better >serve the group by speaking with less authority about the "correct" >way to teach. One in that situation would be well advised to indicate >their frame of reference and attribute their remarks to their own >limited experience. 1) I just did. 2) I always put a disclaimer at the end of my posts (only my own opinions, etc.) Should I assume that because you don't, you don't need one? >It is my experience that turning technique, cuban motion, balanced >connection etc. can be explained in many different ways. Indeed I >needed several different kinds of explanations of each to come to the >level of understanding I now have. I agree. The more ways of explaining there are, the better. But why should a better expaination require a non-standard vocabulary? >... and there are some students who insist on instructing their >professors in how to teach. In my experience, the best students were not necessarily the ones who sat in the back row quietly. (And the best teachers were often the ones who were trying to learn something new. IMHO, of course.) >I would advise you to ask more questions and listen and apply the >answers you get rather than arguing with those who are attempting to >assist in accomplishing your goal. Good advice for real life. However this is the internet. The US Supreme Court just declared it an open mike. Appeals to authority are quite feeble in this venue. If you don't like my arguments, then, by all means, defeat them with your superior prose and logic. I would certainly welcome this. (Volley. Your serve.) >When we tell you that the method of counting is not nearly so >important as you seem to think, why not try beleiving [sp] it? Who is this "we"? I've talked with many of top Hustle dancers and teachers in the country. Many of them have very strong opinions about the "correct" count (they just disagree on which count :) (And exactly what does Mr Corbett regard as limited experience?) ---- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: NY versus LA Hustle Date: 10 Jul 1997 06:40:37 GMT NNTP-Posting-User: rhn In article <33c4365e.3009773469@news.concentric.net>, Mike Corbett wrote: >On 4 Jul 1997 20:23:23 GMT, >h-neeman@staff.uiuc.edu (henry joel neeman) wrote: >> >>But it's not the words that are the issue; it's the *cadence*. >> >>In my experience, the priority people give a spoken dance count is: >> >> (1) cadence >> (2) words ... >>and similarly that >> >> one two-and-three, one two-and-three, one two-and-three, ... >> >>will produce the same result as >> >> two three-and-one, two three-and-one, two three-and-one, .... ... > >That people almost always follow the cadence is true. Using your >above premise, why would the 12&3 produce a different cadence from >&123. Group classes. Information loss. Ingrained habits. 1) In private lessons, a good teacher can correct for any misinterpretations a student might make to the instruction. In a group class (where many people learn to dance) the only thing a student may take home with them are the words heard and sights seen, as the student interprets them. There is lots of room for misinterpretation. How many times have you seen a student say "I saw the teacher do this" and do exactly the opposite. One way to overcome this problem is repetition. Another is to explain things in lots of different ways, which increases the possibility that one of the explainations will stick. It also helps if the information presented is redundantly self-reinforcing. Now the cadence is one of the first things to be ingrained into the lower brain, the things one can do without thinking about much. This is a good thing if a dance is taught with the proper cadence. 2) But people forget. Some people learn slowly. Some people have better body memory, some worse. What's the backup information for losing the cadence? Where's the redundancy? Sometimes, the WORDS of the count. What's that? and ONE, Two, three (which becomes ...Two, three and ONE, Two...,etc.) or ONE, Two and three, (which becomes ...ONE, Two and three, ONE...,etc.) (paren count is lining up the coaster triplet to the middle for comparison). They're different. Why are they different? Well they won't be in many cases. Remember that the cadence sticks subconsciously. Hopefully the cadence (and other technique) that the teacher intends will stick in the students mind or body. 3) But if not, what's the fall back? Very likely the way they were taught to count in waltz, the way they were taught to count in Sesame Street. My guess is that the fallback number of emphasis (except for episodes brought to you by the number THREE, the letter "T", and maybe Elmo) in going to be the number ONE. Now, here's my judgement call. I think the three steps of the Hustle coaster should not be evenly emphasized. I tend to like the style of dancers who emphasize the 2nd or 3rd step of the coaster much harder than the 1st. (Some NY pros almost look to me to be dancing "KaBOOM,2,3" rather than just "&1,2,3".) The "and ONE two three" count hints at this style, the "ONE two and three" count does not. "step, COAST, Ter, step" also doesn't. And "step, coast, Ster, STEP" sounds quite unnatural to me. If you like the alternate styling or count, I suppose you could teach "and one TWO three" or "one two and THREE" respectively, but these counts loose some data redundancy between the inflection and the more common count cadence. I learned International Cha-Cha, so counting "two, three And ONE", (which is very similar *in cadence* to the "2,3,4&1" cha-cha count) sound perfectly natural to me. But this count will probably seem a little strange to a non or new dancer. >Finally and most important, proper instruction includes explaining >the charachter of the dance and it's relationship to the music. An important issue in standardizing a national curriculum or teaching vocabulary, is not just how well it will work with good teachers giving proper instruction, but also how well it will work with average teachers or even below average teachers with average students. Remember, about half of all dance teachers and dance students are below average (a semi-, but not completely, bogus statistical argument). They still pay the bills for the lights and band. Also remember that if you're teaching one of these talented munchkins who seem to be able to copy a 2 1/2 turn spin, complete with head spotting and arm styling, on the first try, you can throw all this redundant gibberish out the window. ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: put heel down In article <33c679ec.11851051@news.concentric.net>, Mike Corbett wrote: > >Jennifer does seem to be talking about hustle since she also refers to >keeping the "hop" out. > >I find that to correct unwanted bounce, hop, lilt etc it helps to ask >the student to walk. If they can walk without bouncing they can walk >in rythym without adding bounce. I find the bounce comes more from >how we leave the weighted foot than how we arrive on it. Interesting. I've observed different two variations the of Hustle hop problem. Hustle is an dynamic dance that requires the follower to be almost constantly accelerating her own weight towards the center of the slot. This requires greater leg swing to match the pendulum like movement of the bodys axis, and greater leg and foot force to absorb and create the acceleration than most other partner dances. Given a fixed length slot, the acceleration required to move back-and-forth between both ends of the slot increases with the square of the music tempo. This is why the hop often appears on first attempts to dance to faster music. New followers might not at first perceive the need for faster leg movement and greater leg strength. This can create a situation where the follower either gets behind and then trys to rush to catch up, or trys to move without releasing weight fully from the moving foot in an attempt counteract the forces of acceleration and gravity using both feet. (Coaster. "3&1". Left foot back, right foot back, left foot foward.) If, on the first step of the coaster, the left foot goes back too slowly, or gets planted too weakly to lift the right foot off the floor, then some ladies try to make up for lost time by pushing themselves up high enough with that left foot that they can do the right-left combination as one big double foot swap. As Mike said, what goes up must come down. Another varient is the follower not planting the right foot (middle step of the coaster) strongly enough to both maintain acceleration and release the left foot. The left foot then gets scrubbed forward where it comes skidding to a stop a little too soon. Then some ladys need to lower to on that early left foot in order to regain control or balance. ---- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: put heel down In article <19970801102101.GAA22456@ladder01.news.aol.com>, Waltz123 wrote: > >Has anyone covered the idea of putting the heel down on the "&" beat yet? >I've got some interesting thought on that, if you're interested. In small turning or spinning patterns, I see good followers take the "&" step (of &123) on only the ball of the right foot. In more linear patterns with an average to large slot length, the action I prefer to see is ball-flat-toe, as lowering the heel gives more control and acceleration to the direction reversal at the end of the slot. Some NYC dancers even seem to "spike" this step with a slammed down flat-toe action. As in Intl. Tango, best ankle acceleration is achieved when the foot is pointed mostly down the slot instead of fully turned out. The actions I don't like to see are scrubbing the right foot backwards with lots of pressure instead of quickly placing it; and, on larger patterns, taking the step on a stiff foot without any ankle action. Both of these tend to encourage the "hop". YMMV. ----- Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Why do we dance??? I don't think any molithic statement can be made about why "we" partner dance. Too many reasons. Two lovers dance romantically together. Two choreographers who have no feelings for one another create a dance that evokes the dance of the two lovers. Two unrelated dance technicians manufacture the techniques that to best execute the above choreographed steps. Two people meet at a seminar on dance technique and decide they can make some money demonstrating and teaching this stuff. Two friends learn from the above teachers because they need to fill some elective course requirement at school. Two strangers get dragged to a dance so that their mutual friends can show off the flashy steps they learned in some class. Two people meet, dance and fall in love. Or two people meet, dance and go on with their lives without a thought. YMMV.^H^H^H^H YM(will)V. ----- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 15:04:26 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Swing Content Definition (Long) dave@spiff.hgc.edu (David Raines) allegedly wrote: > Kellese Nicole Key wrote: > >Not only were these 3 couples disqualified, none of them > >were ever notified prior to the award ceremony of their > >disqualification. > > This is an issue of courtesy, and I agree that it seems like > proper protocol should be to notify disqualified parties prior > to the awards. However, this is a separate issue from the > actual judging. I would think the exact opposite. In many sporting events illegal and disqualifing activities are called on the spot. Violators are immediately notified, and thrown off the field if the violation is severe enough. Why would you want other competitors to think that a disqualifing routine was appropriate? The judging should only be between couples who followed the rules and didn't cheat. Forget courtesy, or judging or awarding anything to those who don't follow the given rules of a contest. ( whether the rules make sense is another issue... ) ---- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 15:36:31 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Swing Content Definition (Long) Trish Connery allegedly wrote: > Ed Jay wrote: > > I was told... > > [snip of much ugliness] > > That's right, Ed. You were TOLD. You HEARD. That's what he said (or allegedly wrote). > You don't know. And > unless you KNOW, without a doubt, 100%, you shouldn't be > spreading ugly rumors like this, especially at this time... If you know how to prove anything 100%, there are some theologians, scientists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers who might want to talk to you. Much of everything known in life is hearsay. Uglyness doesn't necessarily correlate with the truth or falsehood of a proposition. Why should I believe Trish's (alluded) beliefs any more than Ed's (described) hearsay? > I love dancing. I love competing. > I still believe my success (or lack thereof) is directly > related to my DANCING. Some would say that believing in something, just because you are emotionally involved with it, is just as intellectually weak as believing hearsay (although it makes for better myths and stories.) Where are the facts (on both sides)? Are swing contests more like pro wrestling, freestyle ice skating, NBA basketball, or Olympic track & field? ---- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 15:47:25 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Swing Content Definition (Long) abouman@uclink.berkeley.edu (Andy Bouman) allegedly wrote: > I'm not convinced that *any* of the contestants should know > the results of the judging in advance. Key word is "contestant". If you break the rules by a sufficient amount, you should no longer be considered a contestant. No one is "polite" about an illegal block in football. The play is called back immediately and doesn't count. ---- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 17:08:03 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Swing Content Definition (Long) Popular music and social dances evolve. WCS and Lindy are now considered different dances. Swustle seems to be current evolution of "contest" WCS. It's not quite different enough to have broken off into its own set of clubs/contests, but it's different enough that the old-time purist want to pull back. The pull will continue until one side wins, the dance evolves into 2 seperate camps, or the old-timers die off with no one left to pick up the torch (some historians think this happens to physics theorys as well.) History will tell whether 1960-90 WCS was a late 20th century fad that was part of the evolution of something newer, a lasting classic style, or a dead style that only dance history scholars resurrect. International Style Standard ballroom may well ossify, depending on the politics of the Olympic rulemaking organizations. What will be the evolutionary style that extends past Hustle? ---- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 14:50:05 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Go to jail? vstark@netcom.com (Valerie) allegedly wrote: > I lost track of who said: > > Well, according to the dance teacher I'm taking group classes > > with right now, it is not the woman's job to keep the man on > > time to the music. > > Isn't it both people's job to keep the dance going right? Right. But the leader keeps the dance going by leading, and the follower keeps the dance going by following. If the guy is leading off-time, and you dance on-time, the poor bozo is probably thinking "what a good leader I am, she's dancing great!". If you follow and dance rotten (because of the way he's leading), and comment "is this to the music?", at least leaders who are on a positive learning curve might wonder what they're doing wrong. (Either way, there's the risk a bozo is going to think the follower is the one with the problem.) Wrestling someone for the lead because you don't like the way that they're leading is not social dancing. There will always be an element of risk when dancing with an random partner to a random tune. But social dancing exists because there's an upside as well as a downside. ---- Date: Wed, 08 Oct 1997 17:45:54 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Barry Jones It seems like a number of people are reading netnews way out of context. Sort of like forming an opinion of a movie after seeing only the out-takes. According to information theory, it's possible to find any signal you want in pure random noise, given enough noise and enough filtering. Usenet/netnews provides the noise; who's doing all this biased filtering? Victor Eijkhout allegedly wrote: > Now could we please drop this stuff to discuss hustle count > or something like that? Did you call? &123 or 23&1 ---- ---- Subject: Re: AT vs. Ballroom From: rhn@nicholson.com Date: 1997/09/19 In article , Victor Eijkhout allegedly wrote: >> Ming Mar, on [Bad] posture in Ballroom: >> >> Knees very slightly bent. Back is straight but inclined >> backwards so that the shoulders are behind the hips ... >"The dance medicine man" who is pictured there with his torso >extremely arching back, and his partner even more so. ... >Is this bad? Why does he do that? Is he trying to recreate >some illusion that should have been achieved by different means? Dancing while leaning back, or with a partner who's always leaning back, looks and feels pretty bad. At least 2 illusions are involved. (and probably more...) One, ballroom posture isn't static, but dynamic. But the untrained eye can't pick out all the variants of position that good dancers use while moving. Instead snapshot of "interesting" moments are all that the untrained eye sees and remembers. Unfortunately, it seems that these "interesting" positions that are remembered are not the right ones required for basic beginner bronze syllabus movement. International standard ballroom technique is based on a lot of spinning, turning and curving movements. Just as in freestyle ice skating, where a skater can control the speed of their spin using arms and hand position, ballroom dancers can control and generate turn, not with their hands, but by using their torso and heads in relation to each other and to their feet. Trying to move linearly using the same posture that a couple would use to wind up for a double reverse turn is not good technique (and hurts to just think about). Two. All those picture poses are usually pretty extreme, look flashier on promo photos, and are more memorable. But I've seen two top (US) couples demonstrate that even in some of these extreme picture poses, nobody was "leaning" back: e.g. the leader walked away from his partner, and instead of her toppling over, as one would expect judging from her apparent "lean", she stayed motionless and perfectly balanced over her own feet. And, according to Newtons laws, if she wasn't leaning away from her partner, neither was he. Illusion. If you just do what you saw the magician did on stage, you might end up sawing your girlfriends head off. Learn the hidden technique and save her life. ----- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 14:54:13 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Origin of Nite Club 2-Step... Interview with Buddy Schwimmer... h-neeman@staff.uiuc.edu (henry joel neeman) wrote: > After all, if you dance west coast swing figures with west coast > swing style in west coast swing rhythm to tango music, it's not > a tango, is it? Tango music is much more suitable for Hustle than it is for WCS. ---- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 15:14:04 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Rough Leading Michelle Dick allegedly wrote: > And in leading beginners, I've found that essentially every beginner > back leads at some point in their learning process. Beginners who > insist on being physically placed (i.e. the "heavy lead"), do not > generally back lead. Back leading happens when the follower starts > to > learn that they need to move themselves and actively respond to the > lead. In trying to accomplish this, it is very natural to > overcompensate and back lead the move. There seems to be a certain socially agreed upon force to lead a follower of a given mass at a given tempo. For instance the amount of energy (force*distance) that I need to impart to get a good follower to do a double spin varies much less from good follower to good follower (of equal mass, given music of the same tempo and mood) than among beginners. This amount of energy (required to turn a good follower) seems different from the amount that would needed with an inanimate object, so it's probably a socially learned amount of force, not an amount derivable purely from ballistics (e.g. the follower has feet, and she uses them.) As beginners get dance experience with better partners, they iterate in on the range of force or response that's expected. Sometimes too much, sometimes too little. > This only really applies in social dancing, not lessons, > of course. In lessons, it helps if neither partner adjusts too > much so that both can learn from their errors. Part of becoming calibrated is finding out what happens when the leads is stronger or the follower spins too much/little than what is expected. Learning from lifes little surprises. And another good reason for rotating in classes. ---- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 16:34:01 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Disqualifications (was Swing) abroomsg@cix.co.uk (Andy Broomsgrove) wrote: > This is one of the things I don't understand about competitive > ballroom. > > Why should it matter what they wear at all and at any level? > > So long as the judges judge on the basis of the dancing not on > what is being worn it can't matter that one couple is wearing > tails and a flouncy dress whereas another is wearing jeans and > T shirts can it? The allowed uniforms rules of many televised professional sports also have something to do with how nice things look to the spectators/viewers/sponsors; as well as to do with safety, ease of officiating, etc. However, once the allowed equipment/uniform rules are minimally met, the costumes don't seem to affect the judging or scoring in most professional sports (not sure about ice dancing, etc.) At the open level, the costuming might actually make scoring based on skill/talent even easier as there would be less differences in costumes to distract (than t-shits vs. tailsuits might do.) The rules that don't allow tailsuits/ballgowns in newcomer or novice divisions are to prevent costume ($$$) warfare escalation in the entry levels. Probably a good idea to keep the apparent cost of competing down at the entry levels. You could say that costumes don't matter in the beginner-student-newcomer-just-dance, but if everybody showed up in tailsuits, there would be a lot of peer presure that might inhibit those haven't been brainwashed into dropping several hundred(USD) on a tailsuit. ---- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 1997 19:42:18 -0700 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Rough Leading corbettm@concentric.net (Mike Corbett) wrote: > On Wed, 15 Oct 1997 15:14:04 -0700, > Ron Nicholson wrote: > >There seems to be a certain socially agreed upon force to lead > >a follower of a given mass at a given tempo. For instance the > >amount of energy (force*distance) that I need to impart to get > >a good follower to do a double spin varies much less from > >good follower to good follower (of equal mass, given music of > >the same tempo and mood) than among beginners. > > Although this (varies by mass idea) may generally seem to be true > at some dance levels, it is by no means generally correct at the > more advanced dance levels. True. This would indicate that the level of force among better dancers is in a narrower range than that derivable from just the basic physics of move (and not just the amount of force, but the angle and the timing, etc.) This would support my hypothesis that the preferred amount of force in some lead/follow communication is a learned social convention. e.g smooth leading is a complex skill, and requires practice with partners who are good dancers. ---- Date: Thu, 06 Nov 1997 12:48:48 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) corbettm@concentric.net (Mike Corbett) wrote: > > On 6 Nov 1997 03:27:03 GMT, "Conna Condon" > wrote: > > >Most new beginners that I know of have enough > >trouble figuring out how to "walk, walk, tap, step" > >without adding the finer points of lead/follow to > >the equation... > > Unfortunately, that is correct. The biggest help would be for > the instructors to actually teach lead and follow skills along > with the patterns. Why this is not done, is beyond me, unless > they just think it's too difficult. Welcome to the real world. For 90% of the dancers whom I've met the process is 2-fold: first, to have fun dancing badly, then, to unlearn all those bad habits, and learn to dance better and have even more fun. My observation is that dance instructors mostly come in two categories: those who don't (or can't) emphasize skills, but are very popular with the beginning dancers, and those who are quite good at teaching skills, but have relatively smaller followings. Possible reason: The number of non-dancers who are interested in investing time and money in learning dance skills is, to first order of approximation, zero. (e.g. less than 1% of the ambulatory population) The reason is simple. Most people need to discover whether an activity is really fun for them before deciding to investing time and money in the parts that require any work (ski workouts, flight safety reviews, dive certifications exams, private dance lessons, etc.) My guess is that lead-and-follow in-and-of-itself, is not much fun, but only valuable because it leads to better partner dancing. So most people first have to become comfortable with just dancing to the music in approximate symmetric vicinity with a partner, which seems to come to most people far more quickly than the rather more complex skill set of lead-and-follow communication and movement. IMHO, of course. ---- Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 17:10:19 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) "Pete V. McCracken" wrote: > You bet! We've changed our approach to teaching basics. We > concentrate on movement of the Center Point of Balance (CPB) and > avoid mentioning feet or footwork. This sounds like going from one extreme teaching approach to another. C.G. is where the body is, but no ones C.G. goes anywhere without the interplay of gravity and foot force. That's just the law of physics. One has to do something with their feet in order to move their C.G. (center of gravity) > The brain just will not let one fall down! If you move > the CPB forward (which can only be done by pushing with the > weighted foot), the unweighted leg and foot will follow without > fail. Gee, now we teach the mantra of "feet follow frame", not > just say it :-) Someone hasn't been watching enough bad dancers. One of the major problems that one can observe in newer dancers is them putting their free/unweighted leg/foot somewhere other than on the optimal spot with respect to their C.G. They can end up split weight and frozen, or off balance and rushing or wobbling or leaning on their partner. Foot/leg use needs, even just getting people to follow thier own weight, to be taught explicitly for some beginning dancers. > Also, we explain that once the follower has accepted a lead and > begins executing a maneuver, the "leader" must follow the > "follower" until the "follower" completes the maneuver. Hey, I'll agree with this. It's a very good point. > We concentrate on, as Skippy Blair says, "Planting seeds, not > weeds". It is VERY difficult to change, whether good or bad, so > it is better to learn it right the first time. It may be slower > at the beginning but it is better and faster in the long term. ... > Don't minimize and reverse. Do it right the first time! I'm not sure I believe this. Human cognitive bandwidth limits the amount of things that a student can concentrate on and learn at any one time. If the limit is around half a dozen new things to learn, and any step/figure requires doing 100's of things correctly, then any teacher is left choosing which 95%+ of any figure to let the student do wrong. My belief is that good teachers are very astute at choosing what to let a student do badly, in order to minimize the damage while the student practices the few that things they are trying to do right. Every student is different, so picking exactly what is best for each student to screw up and need to relearn is an art. Plus, it's more fun to do just a few key things well, than it is to try and concentrate on the zillions of minor techniques necessary to dance it "right the first time". ---- Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 18:07:43 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) Victor Eijkhout allegedly wrote: > "Pete V. McCracken" writes: > > > [...] We've changed our approach to teaching basics. We > > concentrate > > on movement of the Center Point of Balance (CPB) and avoid > > mentioning feet or footwork. > > Can you define what the CPB is? I'm assuming that they had some pedagogical reason for making up a funny new name for C.G. (center of gravity) or center of mass. Hopefully, it's not just poor scientific literacy. > And how do you trick your feet into moving in a certain rhythm > by moving your CPB? While, I'll agree with your alluded point, it's technically possible to deduce the force vectors (and, therefore, the most likely foot rhythm) from the precise C.G. motion. Whether or not that's a good dance teaching technique is another issue. I happen to think that the near syncronicity of foot motion and foot weighting is an important facet of good partner dancing. ---- Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 18:43:39 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) harrison@cs.ubc.ca (Jason Harrison) allegedly wrote: > > marshall@astro.umd.edu (James Marshall) writes: > >Question ---- how do you teach floorcraft? I mean, there's only > >so much you > >can do to tell a student how to avoid hitting people on the > >dance floor. > > You mentioned "practice", and the best way to increase the need > for floorcraft is to make the dance floor smaller. Practice and experience. It takes awhile to learn to dance well enough that one has enough brain power left over to observe and predict the movements of several other couples. And it takes even more experience before one can predict other couples likely intentions (since where they are isn't nearly as important as where they'll be after you take the next step.) Some people only seem to learn floorcraft after they've crashed enough partners into things that they have a harder time finding someone that will still dance with them. ---- Date: Wed, 12 Nov 1997 17:17:57 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Cc: rhn@nicholson.com Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) jJjjJJjaYjjjjjcdill@ix.netcom.com (JCDill) allegedly wrote: > On Tue, 11 Nov 1997 17:10:19 -0800, in rec.arts.dance, Ron Nicholson > shaped the electrons to say: > > >This sounds like going from one extreme teaching approach to > >another. C.G. is where the body is, but no ones C.G. goes > >anywhere without the interplay of gravity and foot force. > >That's just the > >law of physics. One has to do something with their feet in > >order to move their C.G. (center of gravity) > Thank You Ron! You're welcome. But my above statement is incorrect and needs modification. > I was practicing other day with a leader the that I could NOT > convince of this above statement. We were practicing WCS without > music. He failed to understand the importance (to me as a > follower) of a "prelead" to allow me to prepare *myself* to use > my feet to propel my body forward as I was led on 1. I was > expected to somehow magically be able to "follow" his backwards > movement without delay, without either being heavy or feeling > like I was being dragged, with no warning other than "connection" > being present. My modification is this: The CG of a *couple* doesn't accelerate (or go anywhere from a standing start) without either foot force or gravity. But an individual dancer can also use connection force with their partner, in addition to foot force, to accelerate or move themself. For followers this difference is particularly important. Human reaction time from perception (feeling a change in connection, or seeing ones partner start to move) to actual muscle movement in on the order of 200 milliseconds. This is 1/5 of a beat at 60 bpm and almost a whole step time for a pair of quicks (QQ or 3&1) at 120 bpm. My guess is that followers have to use some "stiffness" in their connection to allow the forces of a lead to initially displace their body (make their following seem responsive) and then some reactive foot force and resiliency in their connection to quickly take up the slack and make their following seem light. The switch from stiff to resilient depends on reaction time. Therefore, the lower the response bounces in the brain stem, the faster the reaction time, and the lighter a follower will feel. This can only happen with enough practice that the follower can follow without any high level thinking. Reaction time due to conscious thought is much slower. (I need one of "Ike"'s quotes, admonishing followers "don't think".) A good lead must be accompanied by enough momentum to initially displace the follower, but not so much as to throw her off her balance once she starts reacting and moving herself. My guess is that a good lead also rocks a follower off her standing leg in such a way that her (now slightly off-balance) standing foot force can better accelerate her in the desired direction. This also implies that the footwork of leader and follower is slightly isochronous (same rhythm, slightly offset in phase). A leader has to start moving himself maybe 200-400 mS before the follower can actively use her feet to follow. ---- Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 15:52:15 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) Jonathan aka. waltz123@aol.com allegedly wrote: > Here's a nice little analogy: If I pull or push a shopping > cart along, it is a relatively willing partner. It doesn't feel > heavy to me (we would hope!), and it moves at almost exactly the > same distance and rate of speed as I do. It does have a slight > delay in reaction time upon changing from push to pull, or vice > versa. But I want that... it's makes it a reaction, and not an > anticipation. > I have no idea what "pre-lead" means. pre-lead is analogous to making sure the shopping carts wheels aren't pointed sideways to the direction you want to push beforehand. Otherwise you will get quite a jerk back from the cart, if, indeed, it doesn't go completely off course and knock over a pile of soup cans. Setting your partner on the appropriate part of the appropriate foot with the right direction of connection would be a pre-lead. You don't have to move her, but you've got her ready; therefore it's a pre-lead, not a lead. Every stance is not appropriate for every possible lead. ---- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:00:05 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) "Pete V. McCracken" allegedly wrote: > Ron Nicholson wrote: > > Setting your partner on the appropriate part of the appropriate > > foot with the right direction of connection would be a pre-lead. > > Ahh, but is it not the leader's responsibility to make sure the > follower is in position for the next move? Why should it take a > "pre-lead"? The only situation that I can reasonably see where a > "pre-lead" is necessary is where the leader has failed to lead in > an appropriate manner prior to the upcoming move. Followers are not "sacks-of-potatoes", and depending on the dance, have certain degrees of freedom that require accomodation. In latin dance, when allowing the follower foot styling, or in WCS, where the follower is allowed to do freestyle "syncopations", the leader may not know exactly what the followers ending foot position will be until she gets there. One could just assume that it's her responsibility to make it seem as if she has the default ready position. Or the leader could do the "leader following the follower as she follows his lead" thing to adjust to her. Or, if the leader really wants to lead move X, he can help her prepare for what's coming next. Some combination of all of the above seem to happen in practice. ---- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:13:57 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) waltz123@aol.com (Jonathan) allegedly wrote: > Ron Nocholson posts: > >> I happen to think that the near syncronicity of foot motion > and foot weighting is an important facet of good partner dancing.<< > > ...Although I beleive that the foot will almost always arrive > sooner than the body, albeit to varying degrees. In a slow > Foxtrot backward walk, the foot arrives about a half of a beat > before the body. On the other hand, a Mambo forward breaks comes > about as close to simoultaneous foot and body weight arrival as > it gets. Oops... or quote out of context. I meant the near syncronicity of foot motion *between partners* and foot weighting *between partners*. Looks and feels bad if one partner is using leg/body swing and the other isn't, or if one is using complete weight transfers and the other is going from split weight to split weight. (depending on the dance and the figure, of course... not refering to exceptions, such as entrances/exits from same-foot lunges, etc. But most basic figures have synchronous or isochronous (slight phase delay) weight changes for the two partners.) Foxtrot should be somewhat closer to what you described with respect to an individuals timing of foot motion and weighting. ---- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 12:52:52 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) "Pete V. McCracken" allegedly wrote: > In many cases the CPB and CG are congruent, BUT, it is entirely > possible for a dancer to balance around a point other than the > CG. The CG and CPB are only congruent if one's weight is > distributed in a manner that allows such congruency. A man with > a large upper body may have a CG well above the CPB as well as > many of us may have the CG well below the CPB. If one were to put the above on a high school physics exam without further explaination, the grade would likely be an "F". Given no further ameliorating commentary, it sounds like whoever defined the CPB concept in the above manner requires some remedial science education. > If the CG is not > congruent with the CPB, then muscle tone must compensate. I can think of only two ways to interpret the above CPB definition as other than pseudo-scientific nonsense: One, is that the human body is articulated. Therefore a person can move his/her CG with respect to various reference points (tuck, bend, both arms to the left, head tilt/rotation, etc.) The other, is that mental illusion makes the balance point above ones supporting foot appear to be other than on the true gravitational vertical, so that the point that one perceives as ones center of mass is somewhere other than ones actual CG. This would give some value to a defining a perceptional CG, versus a real CG, for pedagogical purposes. (my recollection is that in a uniform gravitional field, center of mass, balance point and CG are congruent.) ---- Date: Thu, 13 Nov 1997 16:16:06 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Back to basics corbettm@concentric.net (Mike Corbett) wrote: > >> >I am watching the TNN Country Dance Invitational special. > >> >Why do even > >> >the Masters insists on turning their arm in West Coast on > >> >the "5&6". ... > I have to admit I have picked up this habit too. I first remember > noticing it three years ago in Southern California. It was > particularly annoying when a follower would do it to me. My thought > at the time, was that it was a technique used to "signal" the end of > the pattern and designed to be used after either the follower or > leader had extended the anchor. Heard this from Michelle Mayers Kinkaid: The quarter turn arm rotation is one way of signaling the end of an independant syncopation; saying "get set, I'm now ready to lead or follow some sort of basic". This signal helps keep people from getting pulled off of their [long fancy] syncopations too early. (disclaimer: serious misquotes purely my fault.) One should increase the clarity of, and concentration on, the connection at the end of the arm rotation. Helps refocus limited cognitive bandwidth in a dance where there is a mix of independant musical interpretation with partner dependant lead-and-follow. > Perhaps it's just a ballroom influence creeping into swing? :-) She said something about it being similar to a hand reconnection from open work in latin standard. ---- Date: Fri, 14 Nov 1997 16:24:58 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues...) Ron Nicholson wrote: > (my recollection is that in a uniform gravitional field, center > of mass, balance point and CG are congruent.) Correction (from Victor's post): the points are coincident (congruent is not the proper term). ---- Date: Sun, 16 Nov 1997 11:27:01 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: "Pre-Leading" JCDill allegedly writes: > > >> I don't go to dance to be a shopping cart. << ... > >> If you want my participation in the dance, you have to give me TIME to > >> react to the lead. << ... > >> Ron Nicholson posted some calculations about the amount of time the > follower needs to process your lead and make a conscious reaction. > Any action from the follower in less time isn't "following" it is > being pulled (like that shopping cart above). << Hmmm. I'll have to disagree with this. The skill of following consists of a mix of passively letting oneself being moved like a shopping cart AND having semi-conscious and reflexive muscle response to a lead AND counsciously and creatively responding to the lead and the music. A good follower will know exactly when to swich between these modes of response, all of which can take place within a single beat or one step, just in different fractions of that beat or step. If you watch on tape, you will see even creative follows move faster than simple muscle reaction time allows. One purpose of "tone" is to allow your body to be moved before you know about it (and whether you want to or not). Only after reaction time can a follower disagree with or modify the lead, not at initial impulse. If a follower only actively responds (and never gives her frame enough tone to allow her body to be moved like a shopping cart) she will be slow (and feel like dancing with a noodle). If a follower only passively responds (like a shopping cart) she will be heavy and boring (and bored). By switching her mode of response quickly on the fly, she can make herself seem both fast and light, and both follow and contribute to the partnership. IMHO, of course. ---- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:48:00 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: "Pre-Leading" Jonathan Atkinson allegedly wrote: > I'd like to elaborate on why I feel > that the terminology is weak. > > Conceptually, "pre-leading" is odd. Not an oxymoron exactly, > but definitely skewed in its logic. It's like "pre-boarding" > an airplane. How exactly does one go about doing this? Do > you board before you board? Not really. You just board. And > in dancing, you just lead. My interpretation is that "pre-leading" is not different from "leading", as in leading or not leading; but "pre-leading", as in the act of executing a "pre-lead", is slightly different from "leading", as in the act of executing a specific "lead". e.g. the lead for move A is different from the lead for move B. at the end of the preceding move I might do something with my lead which sets up my partner to be in good position for either a lead for A or a lead for B. Since I haven't decided on A or B (maybe floor traffic or music hasn't convinced me of either yet), I'm not really leading A or B yet. So what I'm doing is giving my partner a pre-lead which will enable her to be in better position for if/whenever I make up my mind on what to actually lead. sort of like the wind-up is part of the pitch, but the wind-up happens before the pitch (and might instead become a throw to first base). Maybe a different and better term exists for this process? ---- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 11:14:43 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Learning with beginners - Trish jander8689@aol.com (JAnder8689) allegedly wrote: > Could you find out why the move's not working from your teacher > instead of treating your partners like guinea pigs and leading > unpolished moves on the social dance floor? I see. So anybody whose moves aren't as polished as a top professional is only supposed to only take le$$on$ and never social dance? Sounds like a troll from some dance marketing firm to me. Most dancers don't have a teacher; if these people all left there wouldn't be a social dance scene any longer. Everybody *needs* to treat their partner like guinea pigs and lead or follow as best they can (which probably isn't very good). That's the definition of social dancing for 99% of the population. That's how most social dancers (who aren't made of money) actually learn to be better dancers. Practice a little and have fun dancing badly. Say "ouch", or just avoid the few who are seemingly trying to injure you. I appreciate dancers who take the time (and money) to become better dancers; but I also appreciate the people who make dancing a big enough phenomenon to pay for the lights (DJ, etc.). ---- Date: Wed, 19 Nov 1997 11:40:03 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: CPB (Re: learning with beginners (was leading cues) Victor Eijkhout wrote: > jander8689@aol.com (JAnder8689) writes: [about Center Point of Balance] > > The CPB is located just below where the rib cage comes > > together, about 3 inches above the belly button... > > That's the definition by extent. By this definition, it's not the Center of much, and few people would actually Balance there. It might be a Point though. Sounds like a made-up term (or maybe borrowed from Eastern religion) to get people to think about something other than dancing with their feet, or dancing top heavy. Probably valuable for teaching purposes, but I wish they would have chosen more literate sounding terminology. jander8689@aol.com (JAnder8689) allegedly writes: > Actually, I tell students that if peripherally they can see > their foot in front of them when moving forward that they're > probably reaching with the foot too much (or "leg dancing"). I think it's only "leg dancing" if their weight doesn't end up completely over the front foot by the end of the step (collection) instead of split weight. Their are lots of dance steps where leg swing will take ones foot (and body weight, eventually) to a point well in front of ones peripheral vision. ---- Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 12:44:56 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: "Pre-Leading" This thread was originally about learning with beginners. Advanced dancers don't necessarily think about doing move X, then separately move Y; more likely they think about a sequence of moves smoothly connected. Beginners don't always think this way. There is a hypothesis in linguistics [Chomsky, Saper-Whorf ?] that it's easier to learn a mental concept when the concept has a word or name in the language of the learner. The term "Pre-Lead" seems very useful for teaching the concept of not just finishing move X, but finishing in such a manner so as to flow into the next move. But, I'll admit, it doesn't seem to be standard terminology. Anyone know of better or pre-existing terminology for helping convey the concepts of what needs to be done to make moves better flow or connect together? "Prep" is the term that describe what should go on at the beginning of the dance, but in fact this seems to need to be an ongoing activity. ---- Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 13:25:38 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: "Pre-Leading" iclast@infinex.com wrote: > Either terms exist or they don't. > Either items are packaged or they're not. > One is either registered or is not. > Etc. Perfect example. You used the (American)English words. Eskimos/skiers/snowplow-drivers probably wonder how flatlanders survive in the outdoors in winter with only one word for snow. Just because there is no word for it doesn't mean the concept doesn't exist (in the minds of people who are more involved with the whatever). If the prefix "pre-" doesn't exist in Japanese, how do they make the equivalent of pre-packaged goods? (Or maybe that's why they can make them and we can't!) ---- Date: Fri, 21 Nov 1997 13:51:19 -0800 From: Ron Nicholson Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Subject: Re: Learning with beginners Michelle Dick allegedly wrote: > Actually, I don't know about Ron, but I wasn't refering to people > who aren't seeking continual improvement, I was refering to > beginners, who constitute the majority of our dancers. I [Ron] was referring to the same. > Most of these folks do want to improve, they just lack the funds or the time, or the practice partners, or enough places to dance... > As an advanced dancer, you are lucky to know enough so that you > can social dance only that with which you are 100% comfortable > with. If we beginners did that, we could not dance socially at all > because there are no moves with which we are 100% on our technique > yet. It's not just an advanced vs. beginner dichotomy. Something that deeply impressed me near the beginning of my ballroom dance experience was hearing the former N times world champions speak between dances (S. Hillier & L. Tate, circa '87 ?). Something about how the next foxtrot that they were going to dance for us should be pretty good because they just fixed a problem they were having with it. (!!!) Another comment was from a regular finalist in U.S. Intl. Standard competitions. He mentioned something about how his partner was much happier because he finally fixed his lead for [I forget which dance]. So even the best people on the planet can't do the steps perfectly right! Made me feel much better about the endless road of learning how to be a good partner dancer. Learning with beginners is just one rung in the ladder of continually learning. -- Ron Nicholson rhn@nicholson.com http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/ #include // only my own opinions, etc. Portions Copyright 1998 Ronald H. Nicholson, Jr. All right reserved.