Ballroom style

I am past professional ballroom champion and a current judge. That is certainly not my view or the view of any of my peers.
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I'd like to know more about that. Maybe at a higher level individuality is encouraged. I've had a few classes where I was instructed how to hold my head and where to look, what level my hand should be, etc. I've also know many ballroom students who seemed to all come from a cookie-cutter.
 
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How is "embrace' any different than "frame"?
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I guess that the answer is that we can make easy reference to more-or-less authoritative texts when it comes to defining a ballroom frame, and also to the practise of top professional competitive couples, to see how the definition is currently being interpreted at the highest level (which changes over time).

There is no equivalent information source for an AT embrace. It is whatever the instructor says it is, and while one may describe and drill, another might just explain the purpose of the embrace, and leave the leader and follower to find what is comfortable for themselves within a very broad range.

There is no authoritative source for anything in tango, but the tango world is strangely full of people with apparent controlling tendencies, who behave as if it were otherwise. ;)
 
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This book has its own thread on DF
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I took a look at that thread, and I was not surprised by what I saw. My going "over there" into the ballroom threads and expressing my opinions would be like posting a "ballroom tango" video in the AT section and proclaiming it the perfect style.
 
There is no authoritative source for anything in tango, but the tango world is strangely full of people with apparent controlling tendencies, who behave as if it were otherwise.
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This pretty much sums it up.

You have one teacher, and they say, "This is how it is." Then you have a second teacher who tells you, "THIS is how it is," not THAT.

I think of a blues guitar instructional video I just watched. The instructor was very clear that he was encouraging you to develope your own style. Learn this. Learn that. Put it together your own way.

Now, in AT, we don't ALWAYS hear that, but afer a while you figure out that, with the conflicting information you get, YOU have to decide what is right for you.
 
Steve Pastor said:
I took a look at that thread, and I was not surprised by what I saw. My going "over there" into the ballroom threads and expressing my opinions would be like posting a "ballroom tango" video in the AT section and proclaiming it the perfect style.
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Well the very last post on that thread hardly makes me want to read further:

gingerbread said:
I bought it and it is a waste of money. I feel ripped off. All the "juicy" parts, her snide comments about rich older Pro Am women (who always seem to be overweight in her descriptions, something that is absolutely not true if you look at the top 12 dancers in Pro Am Scholarships in all 4 divisions in the B and C age categories), her comments about the very young Pros who depend upon these women but secretly resent them, all that stuff is in the beginning. The rest is a very tedious, semi academic treatise that is neither academic nor commercial ,in which she tries to prove that Latin dancing is based on racist motives to clean up and whiten the AfroCaribbean moves from the dark skinned countries in which these dances originated. It is insulting, wrong and boring. She doesn't talk about AmAm and the dedication one sees from the young teen agers who come every day after school and practice for hours in anticipation of a career in dancesport. She never talks about the pleasure of dancing, the joy it brings. And her use of language is quite awkward.
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when I have taken a.t. lessons I was instructed on these things too, including the angle of my body and neck and head as I lean in, the wrap of my left arm for the embrace. The visual positioning seems to be just as important to convey the feeling and connection for proper communication. How is "embrace' any different than "frame"?
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It's an interesting question., and like the others have said, the answer can vary from teacher to teacher. I think close embrace is the farthest from the ballroom frame. A lot of the structure of the connection comes from the chest, and the arms are mostly for support. As far as open goes, the one thing I can tell you is that when I first learned AT with open, there was a large emphasis on dynamic/flexible arms. There is a structure, but it moves and shifts with the dancers. A lot of tango movements are circular or move in spirals, internally as well as externally. The leader's right arm slides around his partner, and the follower's left moves up and down his arm or around his body as needed depending on the movement. Open and close aren't really set terms... it's not a 1 or a 0, though a lot of people dance it that way. The embrace is a continuum.

If you go into modern/nuevo, they take the flexible embrace a step farther... the concepts of compression, momentum, and balance are explored. Movements that you might find more appropriate for bolero or swing become possible.
 
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when I have taken a.t. lessons I was instructed on these things too, including the angle of my body and neck and head as I lean in, the wrap of my left arm for the embrace. The visual positioning seems to be just as important to convey the feeling and connection for proper communication. How is "embrace' any different than "frame"?
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The answer to that would depend on the style of tango, as well as the teacher's personal preferences. Some teachers say that the only purpose of the embrace is comfort. Others do teach doing certain things with the embrace for functional reasons (making it more like a frame).

This gets into the whole issue of a "standardized" sylabus for tango. There are several "named" styles, and maybe a jillion other personal styles, (although that number drops quite a bit, if "sucks" is not counted as a style).

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Some of the "rules" (or things that are allowed) in nuevo, would violate the "rules", of some other styles (which then gets into the seemingly unwinnable argument about whether nuevo is part of tango, or not).
 
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when I have taken a.t. lessons I was instructed on these things too, including the angle of my body and neck and head as I lean in, the wrap of my left arm for the embrace. The visual positioning seems to be just as important to convey the feeling and connection for proper communication. How is "embrace' any different than "frame"?
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Well, I will be the one here to come out and say that it is not any different than frame.

I think most people who hear "frame" have this idea that it is rigid. That is it is ballroom only. That it is on a syllabus somewhere. They don't understand that this is just a word, of many others that could be used instead, to describe the basic concept of "Hey, you. Yeah. Stand up straight, okay? Now, hold yourself up, and face your partner. Don't let your arms fly around like noodles. Thank you, drive through..." How it is shaped and how it is used is different from style to style. I have no earthly idea why "embrace" is the word of choice and "frame" is a dirty word. Sometimes I entirely avoid the word "embrace" because some peoples' concept of embrace is to hug or to squeeze. We all know how uncomfortable that is while dancing.

This thread baffles me. I thought the kids were brilliant. The routine was cleanly executed, it had solid tango content, and the children showed an incredible maturity of movement. The music was authentic. There was no snarling, posturing, roses in teeth or other such nonsense. I honestly don't know what some people want.

This is the type of sensationalist no-content "AT routines" we used to complain about here:

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I'm really disappointed to read some of the comments made here about the original video. I think the "ballroom dancer" who came to reply here, has a more open-minded attitude here than several others I've seen post here.
 
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*shrug*

Yes, it's better than DWtS or SYTYCD. But to me it still looks like latin dancers playing with AT moves. That's fine, as long as they are having fun with their performance and the audience enjoys it. But I don't have to like it. ;)

Also, welcome back Me. Long time no see.
 
I don't think people complain about these routines just to be curmudgeons. I think that all those routines have their own merits, even those "sensationalist no-content" ones. I enjoy watching a lot of them, including all the ones that were posted in this thread, but I shake my head when I hear them being called "Argentine Tango". What bothers a lot of people I know (and a good portion of posters on this forum, I suspect) is pretending that those kinds of performances are authentic tango, or that they contain solid tango. They may be executing some really nice step combinations, but what really impresses me when I watch a good argentine tango (either in a performance or just voyeuristically watching people dance at a milonga) is the feeling they're expressing while they're dancing and their interpretation of the music.

To borrow an analogy from photography, it's like someone taking a technically perfect picture (sharpness, white balance, exposure) and claiming it's perfect, while ignoring the fact that its composition is underwhelming. In each case, the interesting photos trump the technically correct photos.

I know this dead horse has been beaten plenty before, so feel free to ignore me ..
 
This is the type of sensationalist no-content "AT routines" we used to complain about
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While it's a nicely executed show dance, I'd complain about that too if somebody called it tango.
 
mini hijack...

Was wondering what kind of experience posters on this thread have in BOTH dance styles?

I've been watching this thread from the sidelines (popcorn optional), and it struck me that there seem to be some who are knowledgeable about one or other style, completely ill-informed of the other, and yet quite vociferous in their misinterpretation of the style they don't know about.

I don't mean any affront to posters of either style or this forum, just honestly curious, really.

(I'd hate for some readers who might not be as discerning as other posters to take ill-informed opinion as gospel truth and perpetuate them).

Sorry for the interruption...





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