The Partnership

[opendoor]

..men can be followers too..

This is an important and necessary point!

 

[opendoor]

..you'll get a stitch by 400m.

The opener thinks in terms of static conditions.

 

[lucia_l]

I don't consider myself a "high level dancer", so perhaps that's why this all seems confusing to me. But often I tend to think I disagree. The treatise is long, which means that I eventually just feel so confused I need to stop reading. I'll comment on my reactions to this.

In the Modern Dance, three types of power must be used: first, moving power; second, stretch power; third, muscle power (muscle tone).

Perhaps it's because I'm an engineers, but I should note that power means something very specific to me. "Stretch power" strikes me as a little odd, but I can imagine it meaning something.

The first is the most important power, which the dancer use to move the body forward, backward or to side.

As this is evidently not "muscle power " (which is type 3), I don't know what this power is supposed to be. I would generally imagine that the "work" to move (or specifically accelerate) a body come from muscles. Alternately, some can come from reducing potential energy (so lowering the body). Sometimes, some can come from releasing stored energy stored by generating torque in the body, but I think this would actually be a form of "elastic" potential energy, andso include "stretch" power in some instance. But evidently form 1 does not include "stretch" power.

How much power you get out of this depends on how fast you release the energy.
So i'm left wondering about the actual source of this type of power.

The second is the power used to stretch the body and its main purpose is to make the soft part of the body (mainly refers to the belly and waist) solid, so as that the power (mainly for the movement) can act effectively throughout the whole body.

This doesn't strike me as "power" at all. In fact, It's not work or release of energy. It might be some sort of "effort" to hold the body to allow force to be transmitted. (So, rather than be floppy ragdoll, holding the body firmly allows work done by or energy in the legs to efficiently move the upper body. Holding the body in a controlled way has other mechanical advantages too.) This is an important reason for body control of various sorts and stretch can be involved in achiving it, but I don't really think that's the main reason one stretches. (I can be wrong here.).

Anyway, I was under the impression that an example the sort of stretch you seem to be discussing is the kid where the follow sort of stretches to press her hips or ribs etc into the lead to make better contact. I think another important of the purpose of this is to allow better communication between the lead and follow. Another is that it facilitates transfer of energy between partners. So sometimes the follow gives the impetus to the led and sometimes lead gives impetus to the follow. Having a properly positioned broad contact point can make this efficient. The lead's right and follows left arm are not always well positioned to for this purpose. Stretching parts of the body to make a better and firmer contact point seems to be one big purpose of stretching.

(Yet another purpose is to help the dancer place their center between their base of support! Feeling like you "lift" the top while "pushing" feet into the ground amounts to a stretch. It also tends to place a center of gravity over or between feet! Otherwise, sometime a rag-doll like top ends up outside the base of support. So this sort of "stretch" helps balance. But once again, I don't see this as related to "power")

The third type is the power that makes the dancer's muscles stronger. Among these three types of power, except for the second type, which always remains unchanged, the first type and the third type always keep changing, and the third type always increases or decreases with the increase or decrease of the first type. The first and third types always maintain the same degree of power with each other.

I honestly don't understand your distinction between the first type of power and the third. They seem to be the same things. Naturally, if they are the same thing, they must maintain the same degree!

(I also dispute that "stretch" remains unchanged. I've been advised to change the position of contact in smooth dancing and some amount of sway changes too. But in any case, I don't see this as "power" or "energy", though it takes "effort" which I see as a different thing. There is a thing I might call "stretch power", but it doesn't seem to be what you mean.)

 

[opendoor]

....This doesn't strike me as "power" at all. In fact, It's not work or release of energy..

Hi Lucia , the problem is that Julius employs a terminology of his own. But mind, that this always was the case: Joseph Pilates coined the term "power house". His scientific education was poor, but he was an excellent JuJutsu stylist. He trained the police in self defense, and also the opera ballet in my hometown Hamburg. So a false, strange or unscientific terminology sometimes prevails.

I attachted the relevant pages of "Dance Anatomy" by Jacqui Hass (a must read).

 

[Warren J. Dew]

And I don’t have enough time or patience to address all the other problems with your latest post, but the first huge one that jumped out at me is when you said there are only three connection points in the hold. What??? What about the the connections at the ribcage, hips, thighs, insides of the knees, and so on? I receive significant information the angle of my partner’s right hip, for example. I don’t understand how you can arbitrarily announce that the “most important connection” is the lead’s right arm with the follower’s left arm.

That jumped out at me, too. There are a lot of different ways of dividing up the contact points. The one I find most useful in Standard has five: lady's left wrist and fingers on gentleman's upper arm, lady's left forearm on gentleman's right forearm, gentleman's right wrist and hand under lady's shoulder; lady's right hand on gentleman's left hand; and gentleman's right diaphragm area to lady's right diaphragm area. However, these are only the static contact points, and omit some of the other contact points you mention that tend to be less constant but are still very important, perhaps especially in Smooth.

I do tend to agree that the contact points that involve the leader's right arm and hand and the follower's left arm and hand are the most critical in the sense that I think those contact points would be sufficient for a good lead, and omission of them would result in a bad lead even if the other contact points were fine. This is because these contact points tend to be very stable and offer enough degrees of freedom around enough different axes to fully transmit what needs to be led in Standard. I differ from him in that I would include the gentleman's right wrist under the lady's shoulder or upper arm, rather than just the two contact points that he subsumes into the one he considers most important, but I may not be fully understanding him there.

Many Standard coaches consider the diaphragm area contact point the most important. I agree that good dancers should be able to be able to lead with just that contact point, however I find it requires a lot more attention than if one has the half of the frame on the leader's right and the lady's left.

 

[Mengu]

What about the the connections at the ribcage, hips, thighs, insides of the knees, and so on? I receive significant information the angle of my partner’s right hip, for example.

There are different schools of thought on some of this... some will tell you connection in the hips or thighs is not really connection, but contact, and is more incidental, depending on the amalgamation you're dancing. For others, hips are the core of their connection. Some will tell you hands are the most important points of connection. I've heard a lot of instructors talk about these connections and points of contact. I feel it's actually best to digest where they are coming from, experiment, and then find what works best for any given partnership. For instance a couple with a larger height difference may find different connections work better for them, than a couple that's closer in height. And the build of the dancers can play a role as well.

Also I think the discussion of what's "most important" is somewhat irrelevant... at least to me, and you're right, it is arbitrary. We don't dance with one part of our body, we dance with our whole body. Maybe more relevant is "where to start", and arms and hands are a good place. Dancing socially, some followers will only have contact through the arms, so it's good to know how to lead with those connections. But to be a good, well-rounded dancer, all tools in our arsenal are important to understand.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Also I think the discussion of what's "most important" is somewhat irrelevant... at least to me, and you're right, it is arbitrary.

I don't know about discussion, and I do generally agree, but knowledge of what can be done with which contact points has been useful to me in at least two situations:

1. In Standard, in floorcraft situations where I need to drop part of the frame to get through a tight space or avoid hitting someone, in deciding what I can safely drop. Specifically, I find I can generally drop my left arm and hand - lady's right - with little to no loss of lead/follow connection, when I need to, or even just when it's convenient. Giving up the other points of contact is not generally a good idea, unless I'm about to bash my right elbow through someone's temple through no fault of theirs, or something like that.

2. In Smooth, which points of contact I can drop or vary with which figures. In a lot of them, all physical contact can be dropped, but some require some contact to be retained for various reasons, and it's not always the same points of contact that are needed for different figures.

 

[Julius Zhou]

Those are contact points, not connection. A good connection is always between the gentleman's body and the lady's body, whichever physical contact points may be used to transmit the connection.

A good leader with a good follower can do most steps together well even without any contact points at all.

I am talking about the connections in the frame only in my post, nothing to do with body contact.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

I am talking about the connections in the frame only in my post, nothing to do with body contact.

You are talking about contact points, not the lead and follow connection. There is only one lead and follow connection per couple, because there is one leader and one follower per couple. The lead and follow connection is - or rather, should be - between the bodies even when you are not dancing in body contact.

Once you understand the difference between connection and contact, you'll be able to reread my post and understand what I mean.

 

[Julius Zhou]

I assume you mean “followers,” not limited to “ladies,” because men can be followers too. And I assume you mean “leading,” not limited to “man’s leading,” because women can lead too.

Your insistence on gender-defined roles is so very tedious. I’ve edited the paragraph quoted above to demonstrate my objection. I realize you will probably ignore my concerns, but hopefully other readers will take my point.

And I don’t have enough time or patience to address all the other problems with your latest post, but the first huge one that jumped out at me is when you said there are only three connection points in the hold. What??? What about the the connections at the ribcage, hips, thighs, insides of the knees, and so on? I receive significant information the angle of my partner’s right hip, for example. I don’t understand how you can arbitrarily announce that the “most important connection” is the lead’s right arm with the follower’s left arm.

Where are you even coming up with this crap? Says who? Based on what data? Where’s any evidence to support your contentions?

Whatever. I’m done wasting my time on this.

My post only discussed the partnership when man is the leader, and as I said in the beginning of my post that a high-level man dancer is already a good leader if his body is stretched ……, so I think it is more significant to discuss this topic more about the lady’s side. And I only discussed the connections in the frame as the subtitle designated, so there was nothing to do with the ribcage, hips thighs and so on.

 

[Julius Zhou]

You are talking about contact points, not the lead and follow connection. There is only one lead and follow connection per couple, because there is one leader and one follower per couple. The lead and follow connection is - or rather, should be - between the bodies even when you are not dancing in body contact.

Once you understand the difference between connection and contact, you'll be able to reread my post and understand what I mean.

Ｉ think you get confused with concepts of connection and contact. See what this video said:



and try to google "dance hold connection".

 

[Julius Zhou]

My feed back, Julius . In the first section you summond the experienced "high level" dancer, meanwhile the beginner is addressed. Your analysis also remains vague, as you do not use our biomechanical or physiological terminology. Is it possible that you have absolutely no idea what projection really means? A dance hold like the frame cannot be rolled up simply by using contact points. You lack the concept of the shared axis. Your explanations are based on a static notion of dance. You cannot explain movements, momentums, rotations. As a final point of criticism, I would like to remind you of the broad range of different dance holds: you can't lump standard, smooth and latin together. You didn't take the Argentine and Cuban dance hold into account. Finally, you can also lead without any physical contact. Seems you did not learn in an innovative dance environment, right?

I think no article can cover everything and I only want to emphasized on something of what I think important.

 

[Warren J. Dew]

Ｉ think you get confused with concepts of connection and contact.

I think you got confused by people like the guy in your video saying "connection" in reference to a contact point.

 

[Julius Zhou]

Well, I think everyone needs to calm down. This is someone with a different opinion...and speaking it. How is that any different from anyone else here asserting their own limited dance understandings? I read a lot of technical assertion here that make me wrinkle my nose... and I simply think "well that is where they are on their dance journey..." Some of ya'll act like you never were (or still are) a beginner regurgitating weird assumptions about what you are learning

Feel free to discuss but for pete's sake stay calm about it.

And @Julius Zhou ... in case no one already said it... WELCOME TO DF!

Thank you sincerely for your understanding and I am still very glad to be here although I have received lots of criticism on my posts.

 

[Julius Zhou]

I don't consider myself a "high level dancer", so perhaps that's why this all seems confusing to me. But often I tend to think I disagree. The treatise is long, which means that I eventually just feel so confused I need to stop reading. I'll comment on my reactions to this.



Perhaps it's because I'm an engineers, but I should note that power means something very specific to me. "Stretch power" strikes me as a little odd, but I can imagine it meaning something.


As this is evidently not "muscle power " (which is type 3), I don't know what this power is supposed to be. I would generally imagine that the "work" to move (or specifically accelerate) a body come from muscles. Alternately, some can come from reducing potential energy (so lowering the body). Sometimes, some can come from releasing stored energy stored by generating torque in the body, but I think this would actually be a form of "elastic" potential energy, andso include "stretch" power in some instance. But evidently form 1 does not include "stretch" power.

How much power you get out of this depends on how fast you release the energy.
So i'm left wondering about the actual source of this type of power.

This doesn't strike me as "power" at all. In fact, It's not work or release of energy. It might be some sort of "effort" to hold the body to allow force to be transmitted. (So, rather than be floppy ragdoll, holding the body firmly allows work done by or energy in the legs to efficiently move the upper body. Holding the body in a controlled way has other mechanical advantages too.) This is an important reason for body control of various sorts and stretch can be involved in achiving it, but I don't really think that's the main reason one stretches. (I can be wrong here.).

Anyway, I was under the impression that an example the sort of stretch you seem to be discussing is the kid where the follow sort of stretches to press her hips or ribs etc into the lead to make better contact. I think another important of the purpose of this is to allow better communication between the lead and follow. Another is that it facilitates transfer of energy between partners. So sometimes the follow gives the impetus to the led and sometimes lead gives impetus to the follow. Having a properly positioned broad contact point can make this efficient. The lead's right and follows left arm are not always well positioned to for this purpose. Stretching parts of the body to make a better and firmer contact point seems to be one big purpose of stretching.

(Yet another purpose is to help the dancer place their center between their base of support! Feeling like you "lift" the top while "pushing" feet into the ground amounts to a stretch. It also tends to place a center of gravity over or between feet! Otherwise, sometime a rag-doll like top ends up outside the base of support. So this sort of "stretch" helps balance. But once again, I don't see this as related to "power")


I honestly don't understand your distinction between the first type of power and the third. They seem to be the same things. Naturally, if they are the same thing, they must maintain the same degree!

(I also dispute that "stretch" remains unchanged. I've been advised to change the position of contact in smooth dancing and some amount of sway changes too. But in any case, I don't see this as "power" or "energy", though it takes "effort" which I see as a different thing. There is a thing I might call "stretch power", but it doesn't seem to be what you mean.)

To lift the ribcage or to stretch the body, one has to use a little of body energy and I consider this as one of three powers a dance has to use during dancing. It is no need to increase this power any time during dancing. The moving power must increase when you move faster, and the muscle tone (third power) will automatically increase too. How to use the moving power or how to best use the body energy is another big topic and it not an issue to discuss in the topic of the partnership.