Random Secrets of Standard

I was watching a video of lecture by Luca the other day and found some of his comments and actions quite interesting. One of his thesies is, to paraphrase, that if you make an effort to hold position in some joints in your body (what he would call "form") that will spread like a virus to all joints and inhibit the flexibility and softeness necessary for "function".

He then demonstrates (in street clothes) his normal dancing... which is soft and fluid beyond belief (presumably the kind of thing Larinda was arguing for). But then he demonstrates what happens when you tone a position - by locking every joint in his body and dancing like a wooden board!

But that's not what the good teachers who teach form teach you to do at all. They teach you to tone the core of the torso, but while keeping the arms and the hips joints free to enable function. It's true that there are a lot of good couples inhibited by rigidly toned "form" arm lines - but the solution need not be to go all watery in the center or break the torso above the hips. It is an entirely reasonable and common skill to tone some muscles while keeping others soft (indeed, one could not walk upright without some amount of this). Thus the more traditional advice to firmly tone the center, while keeping the arms and especially the legs soft to move freely in relation to it.

To abstract this for a minute, one of the three main challenges in dancing ultimately is to become good at linking things which should be linked, while isolating things which should be isolated. We walk into dancing with all sorts of lifetime habits, some of which help us, and others hurt us by predisposing us to combine certain actions needed for dancing, with others that would be problematic. Not only do we need to learn to tone abdominal muscles while leaving leg-manipulating muscles soft, we need to learn to turn out hips without turning our shoulders, and all sorts of other newly seperate motions. (The other two challenges: knowing what to do, and having the physical strength to do it... plus the bonus - getting along with your partner ;-))
 
Today we learned that in IS tango, the hips don't contact so much as the area in between the last couple of ribs and the hips.
 
p.d.

The old hips q.--Scrivener and irvine ( probably the 2 best exponents ever ) stressed NO hip contact possible if the bodies are correctly aligned in dance position . Everyone dancing Tango ( Intern style ) are or have been taught by teachers who have been in all , or part , influenced by their interpretations .Unfortunately, to many of the " classicists ", the speed of the music , and the "stilllness" has all but disapeared , to the point where it is looking more like a race around the floor .
 
I'm wondering why the identification of this basic and universal requirement specfically with tango. The best idea I can come up with is that because tango has a more recognized vertical character, there's no sway-shape to confuse/mask poor posture (permitting a lower contact area) as there might be in the swing dances.
 
chris

The operative word is " swing " , -- or the lack thereof and combined with angular approach and the virtual absence of rise and fall , all contribute to the uniqueness of its movement .
 
I had actually been talking about why the mistake of hip closeness might be more tolerated in the other dances than in tango. But onto the characteristics of tango:

The swing dances also utilize movements that do not have body swing, yet these are different than the fundamental non-swing movement of tango, because they still have body flight. They are characterized by the body moving first, and then the leg swinging passively underneath the body. In contrast, tango often sees the free foot preceding the body. It can do this because tango replaces most true inline actions with CBMP on the left foot, and side lead on the right foot. Instead of sending your foot out in advance into your partner's space, you cleverly sneak it past - stepping behind your partner with the left foot, or across your partner with the right foot.

Yet tango also has a situation that is, while not exactly body flight, a more body-carrying-foot character of movement. This occurs in the outside partner and promenade CBMP steps - the partner's body would prevent sending the leg in advance of the body in those directions, so instead the body moves carrying the leg with it. This is readily noted in the reverse turn lady outside - a sharp QQ, followed by a more elongated and lyric slow as the body moves with continuity through the lady's outside step, carrying the foot.
 
As much as I love hearing all of the technique surrounded by standard..not much latin technique is being discussed. Should we have a different thread for latin on this topic?
 
I did realize the title of this thread..... i really was suggesting a new thread on latin technique be started because there isn't one yet. I always hear a ton about standard tech on this forum compared to latin. For that i wonder if we have more standard dancers posting here than latin.:rolleyes: Should we do a pole?
 
My random secret is that if a step isn't working right, it's because of the preceding step.
 
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