Dancing to the beat

[AndaBien]

...until I covered his feet/lower part of the body on screen, so I just could see his shoulders and then it was ok. I think he is one of the old dancers still having the expression at shoulder level.

That's an interesting observation!

I've never watched Tete's feet very much before, but I can see where his feet appear to be off the beat. I also notice that Sylvia's feet appear to be right on the beat.

If Tete's thought is to give his partner a dance and he's thinking about putting her feet on the beat, maybe his own footwork becomes secondary in importance.

 

[Steve Pastor]

Resistance is bad style.

Perhaps you could elaborate on this, because resistance is actually a big part of most couples dancing, and it's a huge part of apilado. It's the calibrating of the thing that makes it challenging to write about.

 

[AndaBien]

Perhaps you could elaborate on this, because resistance is actually a big part of most couples dancing, and it's a huge part of apilado. It's the calibrating of the thing that makes it challenging to write about.

Yes, I agree. We often get goofed up on word definitions, but to me, resistance is an important part of the dance.

 

[Gssh]

Hi Gssh, honestly, some of your terms really puzzle me. Tightest close embrace can be lead without compression. I fear that a great number of apilado-aficionados only adhere to this style because they are lazy dancers, without much tummy muscles and an extremely poor ability of dissociation. Also in apilado the follower has to follow actively. Resistance is bad style. And only because a lot of traditional social dancers in BsAs cannot but lean onto each other and step with resistance it remains bad style. Done properly, apilado is the most physically demanding tango style and actually a challenge on the wrong side of fifty.

I guess i am lucky then that i have quite a few more years to work on it

Your impression of apilado is puzzling to me, too - from my perspective it is the style that requires the most core strength, as both dancers have to maintain their alignment and the alignemnt of the couple activly, and can not use gravity - in a vertical axis couple the shoulders, hips and feet are kept stacked on top of each other pretty much by gravity, while being even slightly off the vertical all the time, as in a counterbalanced close embrace absolutely requires an activated core at all times. Similar with the dissociation - sure, this style does not support things "big" dissociations like overturned ochos, but on the other hand dissociation is the only tool available - to some extent i think that for example a apilado ocho cortado requires much, much more dissociation than when we use other paradigms - an apilado couple will keep their shoulders parallel, and that requires a lot of dissociation on the leaders side. Even most crossed ochos and crossed giros require quite a bit of dissociation, often more than what people use for pivoted ochos where they use the elasticity and fluidity of the embrace to adjust for the fact that their dissociation is not able to keep their shoulders parallel through the whole movement.

I don't think resistance is bad style - with the caveat that this depends on what you mean with "resistance". The image i have in mind when i talk about resistance is the couple charging itself up like a wound spring, and gaining the ability to move strongly into any direction by releasing that tension, and recharging again. Like when leading an inline boleo - the elastic spring feeling i have as a leader the moment that all the forces are in equilibrium, that "whee" moment - that "whee" moment is what i am trying to recreate as a continuous experience in the close embrace - just based on bodies moving into each other, and not apart.

I realize that compression is not neccessary for close embrace - there are lots of people who dance close embrace using tension, or no mechanical coupling at all - but my personal preference is towards compression.

Gssh

 

[Gssh]

If Tete's thought is to give his partner a dance and he's thinking about putting her feet on the beat, maybe his own footwork becomes secondary in importance.

What else could he be thinking about? This is a social dance, not a performance or a solo dance.

Gssh

 

[AndaBien]

What else could he be thinking about? This is a social dance, not a performance or a solo dance.

Yeah, right. He could be thinking about himself, or about showing off. Maybe the cute woman who just walked in the door. Maybe about the cool sequence he learned in class.

 

[UKDancer]

Yeah, right. He could be thinking about himself, or about showing off. Maybe the cute woman who just walked in the door. Maybe about the cool sequence he learned in class.

Did Tete learn cool sequences in class?

 

[opendoor]

I can come to terms with all of your slightly differing suggestions on defining resistance, but of course you are experienced dancers or teachers. My experience instead: dancing with die-hard apilado followers or long-standing partners of apilado aficionados, or even native porteñas feel like dragging sacks of potatoes. So this is the reason for my doubt: behind the curtain of so many apilado dancers simply a lack of ability is waiting.

 

[Gssh]

My experience instead: dancing with die-hard apilado followers or long-standing partners of apilado aficionados, or even native porteñas feel like dragging sacks of potatoes.

We must have danced with the same people .

I think in tango, as everywhere Sturgeon's Law applies: Only 10% is really good. There are a lot of people out there who dance an unpleasant apilado - just like in any other style.

I personally got to my current preference for apilado by studying tango from people grounded in tango nuevo analysis, and after a while of exploring stepping in all direction from all systems and using the elasticity of the embrace and the free leg i wondered why with all that freedom we were so prescriptive in how the embrace worked, when there were clearly other ideas out there that seemed to work well for some people. So i started to work with my partner on trying to dance everything we knew while playing with the structure of the connection, going from compression over no mechanical coupling to tension, from offset to parallel, from angled to parallel. And it took quite a bit of time to get accustomed to the strenghts and weaknessess of each combination, and figure out how to actually dance them, and how to move between them.

For me personally defaulting to compression, parallel, parallel is the combination that gives me the most satisfying dances, and i basically ended up being an old fashioned apilado dancer by playing with nuevo conceptualizations of tango (which is somewhat amusing to me, tbh), but the sweet spot is different for everybody, and i think this probably not related to ability or lack of ability - if the ability to back up ones stylistic preferences with being actually skilled in that style beyond the most superficial elements was a condition for going to a milonga dancefloors would be empty.

Gssh

 

[opendoor]

..dancefloors would be empty...

So true, Gssh !

 

[bordertangoman]

I did a workshop with Homer ladas on 'Pitter patter.' he had a particular approach whereby you started with a left hand lead and then explored either doing pitter patter steps solo - leader, solo- follower or together. it raised the question of what can be lead.

I know a couple of followers for whom something along these lines works. they are rare as unicorns. but I can give them enough impetous to dance pitter-patter steps, whilst I do something simpler OR together, which seems to be easier.

 

[opendoor]

Help needed! My online-dict goes on strike. All translations of pitter-patter tend to mean something like clumsy toddling. But I don´t see anything like that in Homer´s class summary.
There are passages in this vid showing caminadas (also as sidesteps) in simple and double time. Was that meant?

 

[bordertangoman]

Pitter-patter normally refers to the sound of raindrops....
or the pitter-patter of tiny feet running
; in this context, Homer is referring to small, fast, little steps
faster than normal double time, though you may need to start slow..