Standard Geekery

[Warren J. Dew]

Yet this non-STEM person gets it. I mean, what could be clearer? If you send me this way then that way in very rapid succession, my brain has to react before my body can. Stimulus 1: go over here. Stimulus 2: go over THERE. Time between almost nil. That's why I call it "the startle."

What I find hard to believe is that anyone could quantify the amount of time involved, what Cal called,
"... formulas for acceleration and change in speed and calculations and charts of a body’s micro-second Reaction Times."

I'm skeptical that the nervous system can reliably distinguish the order of stimuli separated in microseconds but not milliseconds, thus my assumption of woo.

Being a STEM person may also make me more reluctant to make assumptions like "my brain has to react before my body can" absent explicit evidence. Some following actions may involve the musculoskeletal system without involving the neuromuscular system.

 

[Cal]

I'm skeptical that the nervous system can reliably distinguish the order of stimuli separated in microseconds but not milliseconds, thus my assumption of woo.

Being a STEM person may also make me more reluctant to make assumptions like "my brain has to react before my body can" absent explicit evidence. Some following actions may involve the musculoskeletal system without involving the neuromuscular system.

.... and, as I seemingly am becoming annoyingly obsessive in trying to figure out this Sudden Movement stuff:
(i) The book does say that the reaction time is always greater than 0, and as a non-STEM person, I didn't bother to look up the abbreviation for the units that is used in the Tango book, so I think I inadvertently misled you when I wrote microseconds. In referencing the interval of time between two stimuli, they use the abbreviation "ms" which I incorrectly thought meant microsecond, when apparently it means millisecond. Sorry about that. (And that's the extent of my STEM work the day)

(ii) In googling and youtubing for more inframation, I ran across this clip from Paolo Bosco and Sylvia Pitton.

I don't find that the clip helps me at all, but maybe for someone else, it does.

 

[Cal]

....and because I just can't seem to help myself, I found a clip of Paolo and Silvia demonstrating a Tango Progressive Link in which they mention the concept of Sudden Movement.



Not much help to me about the mechanics of the "how".

 

[j_alexandra]

I'm skeptical that the nervous system can reliably distinguish the order of stimuli separated in microseconds but not milliseconds, thus my assumption of woo.

Being a STEM person may also make me more reluctant to make assumptions like "my brain has to react before my body can" absent explicit evidence. Some following actions may involve the musculoskeletal system without involving the neuromuscular system.

agree to disagree.

 

[j_alexandra]

....and because I just can't seem to help myself, I found a clip of Paolo and Silvia demonstrating a Tango Progressive Link in which they mention the concept of Sudden Movement.



Not much help to me about the mechanics of the "how".

Paolo talks about some interesting things here

 

[Warren J. Dew]

I don't find that the clip helps me at all, but maybe for someone else, it does.

Okay, I'm going to spoiler this because it involves some fairly severe implied criticism of the WDSF style. Moderators feel free to delete this post if it's too controversial to be addressed by a mere spoiler.

Spoiler

1:55: "... vibration is done by the arm of the man ...." So it's okay for the man to jerk the lady around with his arms now? Yuck. I don't doubt that Bosco and Pitton are accurately describing the WDSF style there, but if so, it sounds like a singularly uncomfortable style.

....and because I just can't seem to help myself, I found a clip of Paolo and Silvia demonstrating a Tango Progressive Link in which they mention the concept of Sudden Movement....

Not much help to me about the mechanics of the "how".

This seems to confirm to me my unvoiced hypothesis about what the concept corresponds to in classical English style - roughly, "WDC style" in current WDSF parlance. Since this is the Geekery thread, I'll go into some detail. In the process I'll try to address two different versions of "how".

In the example of the tango link, the classical approach, using the classical English ballroom tango hold that wraps the right arm around the lady with the forearm diagonally down the lady's back ending with the man's right fingertips at roughly the lady's spine at the small of her back, the crisp action is produced by use of a "head snap", which I will describe. Note that the classical tango hold is different from the WDSF tango hold, which is wider with the man's right arm less around the lady's back, and also from the Argentine hold, where the man's right arm seems to go more around the lady's back, well across the spine, if I'm correct about what the Argentine tango folks are doing.

From the leader's point of view, the head snap consists of first, a small windup of the head to the right, then a sudden movement of the head well to the left, to promenade position. The directions "right" and "left" describe both head turn and, to a lesser extent, head and neck - cervical spine - tilt. The rotation of the head to the left accompanies a rotation of the hips and feet to the left - toes go with the nose - and an accompanying rotation of the shoulders and rib cage to the right. This should in turn lead the follower to turn head and hips to the right, ending in a promenade position where the rib cage and shoulders are still parallel to the leader's, while the hips are open to the leader's left - follower's right - in approximately a 90 degree V, 45 degrees in each partner between hips and rib cage.

Now, this will lead a crisp, sharp turn to promenade in the follower in the classical tango hold. However, in the WDSF tango hold, I think because of the different locations and angles of the spine, it will give the follower whiplash. The WDSF solution to this appears, based on your videos, to be to transmit the impetus from the leader's head windup and turn to the follower through the frame and arms rather than through the body and body rotation. This incidentally results in the rib cages and shoulders turning with the hips to some intermediate angle, the entire "body" of each partner turning slightly to form a narrow V rather than there being differential turn in the rib cage and hips to parallel shoulders and a less narrow V in the hips.

I would assume that the Argentine folks don't use any of the "head snap" nor "sudden movement" stuff, but they should feel free to correct me if I'm wrong about that.

Cal, if you opened that, does that help at all?

 

[raindance]

FWIW, biologically or medically, a body reacting before (or without) the brain is called a reflex. (I'm oversimplifying a bit, there are a lot of different types of reflexes. But there are definitely some bodily reflexes that do not involve the brain.) We all have lots of reflexes. And some of these reflexes surely come into play in following.

 

[Cal]

@Warren J. Dew Yes – many thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to describe the distinctions.

When it comes to the style/technique I'm a "classical style" fan, but I’ve been trying to keep an open mind about the WDSF stuff. After all, I’ve spent $67.50 per WDSF book, so I was hoping for something more “a-ha!” from the books than just a slightly different list of syllabus figures. As I’d indicated back in post #317, when they use terms like “vibration”, it did nothing to diminish my skepticism of WDSF technique/styling. And then in the videos, describing leads from the hands/arms….well…….nope. And it seems that other posters in this thread also find WDSF technique to be..….unconvincing (trying to be diplomatic here).

Still, there is a little part of me that had hoped that there would be some proponent of the WDSF technique who would be able and willing to make a few posts about it. You know, just so that I could get a different point of view.

 

[opendoor]

..In French, “rendez” means appointment. “Rond” means round; “rond de jambe” is a classical ballet term meaning a circular movement of the leg. The NDCA rulebook uses the terms “ronde” and “rondes”..

Just add the spanish "ronda" to your list: slow and responsive moving in the LOD.

..zig-zag..

Is the opposite of the ronda.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

@Warren J. Dew Yes – many thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to describe the distinctions.

When it comes to the style/technique I'm a "classical style" fan, but I’ve been trying to keep an open mind about the WDSF stuff. After all, I’ve spent $67.50 per WDSF book, so I was hoping for something more “a-ha!” from the books than just a slightly different list of syllabus figures. As I’d indicated back in post #317, when they use terms like “vibration”, it did nothing to diminish my skepticism of WDSF technique/styling. And then in the videos, describing leads from the hands/arms….well…….nope. And it seems that other posters in this thread also find WDSF technique to be..….unconvincing (trying to be diplomatic here).

I think at this point one has to accept that classical English style and the WDSF style are mutually exclusive. The money spent on the WDSF books would be a good investment if one were planning to switch to WDSF style, no? But you might also have to accept leads from the hands and arms to make it work.

Me, I prefer Krapez and Karabey to Bosco and Pitton anyway, so I'm not tempted.

Still, there is a little part of me that had hoped that there would be some proponent of the WDSF technique who would be able and willing to make a few posts about it. You know, just so that I could get a different point of view.

I think we've had a few over the years - remember Julius Zhou? - but none lasted long.

 

[Cal]

Thanks for the reminder about Julius Zhou - I'll have to re-visit those posts.

 

[j_alexandra]

Thanks for the reminder about Julius Zhou - I'll have to re-visit those posts.

Huh. I had forgotten he was a WDSF proponent.

 

[Dance Redeemer]

Not sure if this is helpful, but my Pro is unapologetically a WDSF fan and not WDC. And he's Italian style, at that. We were working on Tango just today, and my Pro's lead is exactly what Warren described above. There is no yanking around by the arms; movement is led through the body, particularly a connection of the right ribs, the right legs (most of the time, anyway), and the follow's back to leads right hand.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Not sure if this is helpful, but my Pro is unapologetically a WDSF fan and not WDC. And he's Italian style, at that. We were working on Tango just today, and my Pro's lead is exactly what Warren described above. There is no yanking around by the arms; movement is led through the body, particularly a connection of the right ribs, the right legs (most of the time, anyway), and the follow's back to leads right hand.

Note that I described at least two different ways of doing the link movement, and three different tango holds, so "what Warren described" is not really a differentiator. Better would be to watch the Bosco/Pitton videos and see whether what he does matches that. A quicker differentiator might be whether the fingertips of his right hand touch or cross your spine in tango hold, and by how much.

That said, I find "Italian style" also to be extremely vague. Schiavo is a proponent of the Irvine school, an English school, for example, and was about as far from Baricchi's style of dance as anyone. Which one is "Italian style", or is it someone else?

 

[Cal]

Well. THAT was painful.

I read the threads in which Julius Zhou posted, and it did not enlighten me. I’m not convinced that he’s a WDSF proponent – he seems to draw from a variety of sources. But even if he is WDSF, I don’t think he is the best spokesperson for explaining the WDSF technique – some of what he seems to be describing does not appear to match up with what is in the WDSF books that I have.