Post-performance thoughts, feelings, analysis

ProgressNotPerfection said:
Of course not! It’s never, ever, EVER the fault of the lady, right?
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Generally not, though in Smooth I might make exceptions if a lady kicks someone in the head or flings sharpened fingernails into someone's eyeball. Neither of those things happened here - just questionable and unfortunate floorcraft shared among three couples, which is not the ladies' responsibility.
 
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ProgressNotPerfection said:
Of course not! It’s never, ever, EVER the fault of the lady, right?
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I caught it when I was watching the longer video, and yeah the fault is shared about 60/40 between the two leaders. Your leader should have looked before swinging you against line of dance (that's the more unusual movement), and the other leader should be looking at the space they're traveling into. However, they are both doing movements where they are used to looking perpendicular to the direction of the movement,, so they have their training to blame for... From the outside, it didn't seem that bad of a collision, I think the other follow was disrupted a little more, but I'm sure it feels differently for those involved.
 
Mengu said:
Your leader should have looked before swinging you against line of dance (that's the more unusual movement), and the other leader should be looking at the space they're traveling into.
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It was such a short few beats against line of dance, which is so common in smooth V Waltz to do explosions. I'm going to say it's more the other Pro's fault.

And yes, the man always set the direction. Not the lady.
 
Mengu said:
I caught it when I was watching the longer video, and yeah the fault is shared about 60/40 between the two leaders. Your leader should have looked before swinging you against line of dance (that's the more unusual movement), and the other leader should be looking at the space they're traveling into. However, they are both doing movements where they are used to looking perpendicular to the direction of the movement,, so they have their training to blame for... From the outside, it didn't seem that bad of a collision, I think the other follow was disrupted a little more, but I'm sure it feels differently for those involved.
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I generally agree, though I'd give a little responsibility to the third couple and I think the situation was developing over a much longer time.

The first issue was that PnP's pro elected to dance in one spot on the line of dance for - count them - 11 bars. This is way too long to be blocking line of dance.

Then the third couple - the one that got away scot free - moved into position in the "passing lane" toward the center of the floor, and started staying in that one spot for a while. Given we know PnP's pro improvises choreography, I suspect there may have been interaction between these two pros' floorcraft here - I don't think they would have a routine or planned group that stayed in one place so long, but it's possible that they got themselves caught interacting in a way that neither could rapidly extricate themselves to continue down line of dance.

After a few bars the second couple in the collision comes flying down the line of dance doing open right turns at full speed and slows not a whit, the lady colliding with PnP at full speed. I get that two couples were fully blocking line of dance, but the way to clear a traffic jam is not to charge through it! The charitable interpretation is that they did not see the collision coming and expected PnP and pro to have cleared the area by the time they went through it - in this view it was a failure of predictive floorcraft. The uncharitable interpretation is that they were "on rails" in a routine they could not alter come heck or high water and were pushing all responsibility for floorcraft onto other couples.

Agreed that the leads would better have been taking enough glances around to see the situation developing, especially in my opinion the pro taking those open right turns down line of dance.

As for not "that bad of a collision", I agree things could be even worse, but full speed collisions don't tend to be good. In the slow motion we can see the other lady's elbow hitting PnP's back. She doesn't tense her elbow to make PnP take even more of the damage, so some of the energy is absorbed by the other lady's shoulder as her arm folds downward, but a full speed elbow hit is still painful, as PnP verifies. The other lady is lucky if she got out of this without a dislocated shoulder.
joy said:
It was such a short few beats against line of dance, which is so common in smooth V Waltz to do explosions. I'm going to say it's more the other Pro's fault.
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It's the responsibility of the leader before blocking line of dance or dancing a movement against line of dance to first make sure they are not going to be causing a collision. There's plenty of fault to go around here, though; in amateur or professional couples competition I'd suspect grudges between the couples. I wouldn't expect pro-am leaders to knowingly allow a collision to happen, though Ohio Star is high enough stakes that it might happen.
 
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Hand On Face U Funny GIF by Digital Pratik
 
joy said:
It was such a short few beats against line of dance, which is so common in smooth V Waltz to do explosions. I'm going to say it's more the other Pro's fault.

And yes, the man always set the direction. Not the lady.
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+1. Just looking at the spacing on the rest of the floor, I think a collision would have happened even if PnP's Pro hadn't moved against line of dance. (And even if there would have been enough room, it would have been just squeezing through, and I wouldn't expect someone to attempt that kind of maneuver backwards without looking.)
 
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