Toe leads for every step for the man?

[UKDancer]

You raise a good point even though I'm going to disagree
which I'll try and explain...

Interesting.

Actually, my own starting point for the more-or-less one track walk is not based, particularly, on a perception of elegance (although it can be elegant), but on stability. I find that beginners, particularly if they don't already dance in another style that has some useful crossover to tango, struggle to walk without the upper body swaying from side to side on every step. They are not holding their torso properly braced over a stable pelvis, and are constantly gently falling to the side as they walk, as they have not learned to support their full weight on just one leg. If the follower walks on one track, her torso can be steady, and the leader will hopefully reflect that in his own movement. As they begin the experiment with the mechanics of lead & follow, the upper body being as quiet as possible, helps to reduce the unwanted noise, so that they can concentrate on the movement wanted in the moment.

 

[JohnEm]

Interesting.

Actually, my own starting point for the more-or-less one track walk is not based, particularly, on a perception of elegance (although it can be elegant), but on stability. I find that beginners, particularly if they don't already dance in another style that has some useful crossover to tango, struggle to walk without the upper body swaying from side to side on every step. They are not holding their torso properly braced over a stable pelvis, and are constantly gently falling to the side as they walk, as they have not learned to support their full weight on just one leg. If the follower walks on one track, her torso can be steady, and the leader will hopefully reflect that in his own movement. As they begin the experiment with the mechanics of lead & follow, the upper body being as quiet as possible, helps to reduce the unwanted noise, so that they can concentrate on the movement wanted in the moment.

I can certainly understand why you are doing that, it almost seems
to help brace the body and it fits in with the people's general perception
of tango. But where are the men walking as a consequence?

It seems to me that in order to overcome an initial physical problem,
you are introducing a longer term one. Never underestimate the time
and effort it takes to eradicate a learned unfortunate habit. Such things
do get in the way of a becoming a proficient yet relaxed dancer.

I don't know if you can arrive at another method to help solve the problem.
All I can think of is exercise and practice. I'm glad I'm not teacher!

 

[jfm]

In sports coaching sometimes it's best to over correct if it's a long running quirk of that person (what they think is over correcting is usually just perfect when their body does it because it needs a lot of effort to do it differently), but I'm not sure introducing an exaggerated movement to pre-empt the possibility that they might develop a bad habit to someone just starting out is a good idea. It takes a long time to unlearn things like that. Worryingly I find myself agreeing with John.

 

[UKDancer]

... I'm not sure introducing an exaggerated movement to pre-empt the possibility that they might develop a bad habit to someone just starting out is a good idea.

The answer (for me) is not to exaggerate the movement. I don't try to get followers actually stepping on one track, but more-or-less on one (the difference being about half a foot's width). The object, of course, is to get rid of a waddling walk, not to introduce one. I agree that where the dancers are in a typical apidalado/milonguero straight-on embrace, there is usually no need, but most beginners start out with a much more open embrace (even if it qualifies, in the broadest sense, as being close) and with a degree of offset. Many will go on to choose to adopt a slight V-shape, and my purpose is not to be prescriptive in their style choices.

A waddling walk is very common in people not used to dance, and eradicating it is an important stage on the road to walking with stability. As soon as the follower has developed enough sensitivity to the leader's intention and has sufficient control over the placement of her foot with the engagement of all the right muscle groups, she will (should) stop thinking about placing her foot at all, but step where she is led to step. Until then, we have to cheat a bit.

Another reason that there can be a very natural tendency to place one foot at least partly behind the other is as a direct response to the body swing of a leader walking with any material degree of contrary body movement (CBM). That swing will tend to bring the leader's moving foot partly across the line of his own standing leg, too, and the follower will tend to mimic the action. Of course, as John says, if this is taken too far, the leader will start to catch the follower's foot, rather than place his own directly to its side. If the knees and ankles are kept pretty much together as the feet pass, then walking in the narrowest possible pair of tracks is probably ideal - but if your starting point is waddlers, then I have found that some intervention is helpful, just to correct such a basic fault. I have not found that it ingrains a bad habit, but helps to build a stable walk more quickly than living with a continued waddle.

Worryingly I find myself agreeing with John.

Don't worry about it: it's bound to happen from time to time, and it needn't be habit forming.

 

[jfm]

Don't worry about it: it's bound to happen from time to time, and it needn't be habit forming.

Lol! My brain must be operated by an infinite number of monkeys with type writers!

 

[Zoopsia59]

I've been wanting to weigh in on this since someone posted looking for the follower's perspective, but I just don't have the energy to read much less post. Maybe next week.

 

[Steve Pastor]

I'm pretty sure we'll still be here.

 

[Zoopsia59]

I'm pretty sure we'll still be here.

Yeah... and I doubt you'll come to any consensus by then.

 

[JohnEm]

The answer (for me) is not to exaggerate the movement. I don't try to get followers actually stepping on one track, but more-or-less on one (the difference being about half a foot's width). The object, of course, is to get rid of a waddling walk, not to introduce one.

I agree that where the dancers are in a typical apidalado/milonguero straight-on embrace, there is usually no need, but most beginners start out with a much more open embrace (even if it qualifies, in the broadest sense, as being close) and with a degree of offset. Many will go on to choose to adopt a slight V-shape, and my purpose is not to be prescriptive in their style choices.

I don't know how you can teach a group of people who have adopted
a range of different embraces. The main influence of the dance in BsAs
is the relative superficial consistency of embraces. Different embraces
have different extents and limitations of movement and I wonder if it is
this diversity that is resulting in the stilted commonality of plain straight
line walking because that can be taught and learned in all of the embraces.

Turning techniques and possibilities are most affected by the embrace.

A waddling walk is very common in people not used to dance, and eradicating it is an important stage on the road to walking with stability. As soon as the follower has developed enough sensitivity to the leader's intention and has sufficient control over the placement of her foot with the engagement of all the right muscle groups, she will (should) stop thinking about placing her foot at all, but step where she is led to step. Until then, we have to cheat a bit.

How about encouraging people to work on eliminating the waddling walk
outside and inside the dance. Working on good dance technique
changes people. We dance what we are and in tango your partner feels
what you are. Having to work on posture and walk while trying to dance
results in concentrating on improving them rather than on the dance.

Another reason that there can be a very natural tendency to place one foot at least partly behind the other is as a direct response to the body swing of a leader walking with any material degree of contrary body movement (CBM). That swing will tend to bring the leader's moving foot partly across the line of his own standing leg, too, and the follower will tend to mimic the action.

I don't believe either of these points is necessarily the case.
In writing there is the natural tendency to isolate one topic from another
and yet physically you cannot isolate one movement from another.

Oddly you indicate that natural body swing of the leader might lead
to the lady placing one foot behind the other. This seems to ignore
that walking backwards is very different from our natural forward walk.
Contra body swing is just as likely to turn the ladies reaching leg outwards
rather than inwards and produce a waddling walk in her. There is no visible
contrabody swing in tango because of the two different actions of man
and woman. Contrabody movement in most circumstances is noise
interfering with the transmission of intent. The upper body is still
until a change in movement is required. That in itself is a skill.

Of course, as John says, if this is taken too far, the leader will start to catch the follower's foot, rather than place his own directly to its side. If the knees and ankles are kept pretty much together as the feet pass, then walking in the narrowest possible pair of tracks is probably ideal - but if your starting point is waddlers, then I have found that some intervention is helpful, just to correct such a basic fault. I have not found that it ingrains a bad habit, but helps to build a stable walk more quickly than living with a continued waddle.

My point would be that classes and generalisations don't suit good dance
teaching. We are all individual and everyone has differing abilities and
limitations which need addressing individually.

Classes can result in prescriptive teaching and changing the walk of a group
of waddlers might detrimentally affect the walk of those who don't.

 

[UKDancer]

I don't know how you can teach a group of people who have adopted
a range of different embraces.

My starting point is always to take the people who come to my classes or lessons, and work with them from where they actually are in their individual dance journeys, and frequently that is at the very start. In classes, of course, the scope for truly personal attention is limited, and I think that students understand that.

Different embraces are part of tango, unless you wish to dance in a particular style or narrow range of styles. If you are an experienced dancer, and are dancing in an area with a well developed tango scene that can satisfy your style preference (and that is all it is, there is no one true path to tango enlightenment), then that is a perfectly reasonable choice for you, but not necessarily for others. You will naturally gravitate to places where your chosen style predominates, or is the norm, and your partners will be self-selecting too. But your experience will only reflect a small part of the totality of tango.

Personally, I highly value the development of a personal style that can be enjoyed without superficiality or stilted commonality.

How about encouraging people to work on eliminating the waddling walk
outside and inside the dance. Working on good dance technique changes people.

What makes you think I don't encourage students to eliminate basic faults? But if you mean the sort of class where everyone spends three quarters of the time being marched up and down the room, to improve their walk, then no thanks. I don't think that it actually works with a group of people, for a start, but it is also commercial suicide. No one likes doing it (unless they have just paid 3x the going local rate for some visiting maestro's wisdom, and then they will swallow anything rather than believe that they've just been duped), and my experience has been that all that walking empties a class more quickly than anything else could.

Oddly you indicate that natural body swing of the leader might lead
to the lady placing one foot behind the other. This seems to ignore
that walking backwards is very different from our natural forward walk.
Contra body swing is just as likely to turn the ladies reaching leg outwards
rather than inwards and produce a waddling walk in her. There is no visible
contrabody swing in tango because of the two different actions of man
and woman. Contrabody movement in most circumstances is noise
interfering with the transmission of intent. The upper body is still
until a change in movement is required. That in itself is a skill.

CBM works in the same way, regardless of whether you walk forwards or backwards. If it results in a swing out, its basic principle has been misunderstood or is being misapplied, coming, as it does, from a completely natural walking action.

As a partner dance, the action of one dancer inevitably affects the other. If the leader walks with CBM, the follower must follow (or there is something fundamentally broken about their embrace).

There certainly is CBM in tango, but you may choose not to employ it. It needn't be so marked as to be obviously visible, and many things in tango can only be observed with difficulty, but are readily felt.

... classes and generalisations don't suit good dance
teaching. We are all individual and everyone has differing abilities and
limitations which need addressing individually.

Classes can result in prescriptive teaching and changing the walk of a group
of waddlers might detrimentally affect the walk of those who don't.

Classes are the preferred way of learning in most dance styles for most people, and the majority will never take privates, even if it would be of benefit to them. Teaching in a group environment therefore forms a significant proportion of the contact time of many teachers. Most teachers enjoy teaching group classes and few would accept your premise. Apart from anything else, teachers cannot dictate how students choose to learn, or how much time, effort and money they are prepared to devote to their learning. It is another aspect of taking people as they actually are.

Classes can result in prescriptive teaching, of course, but so can any other teaching strategy - that depends on the teacher. Any competent teacher should recognise that the members of any group (and a couple is a group of two) have individual needs and a range of learning styles. If I ever thought that faced with a mixed group comprising waddlers and non-waddlers, I would have to sacrifice one in favour of the other, it would be time to find something else to do for a living.

 

[JohnEm]

My starting point is always to take the people who come to my classes or lessons, and work with them from where they actually are in their individual dance journeys, and frequently that is at the very start. In classes, of course, the scope for truly personal attention is limited, and I think that students understand that.

I doubt if most new dancers have any such idea as usually
they have little idea about anything except the attraction of tango.

Different embraces are part of tango, unless you wish to dance in a particular style or narrow range of styles. If you are an experienced dancer, and are dancing in an area with a well developed tango scene that can satisfy your style preference (and that is all it is, there is no one true path to tango enlightenment), then that is a perfectly reasonable choice for you, but not necessarily for others. You will naturally gravitate to places where your chosen style predominates, or is the norm, and your partners will be self-selecting too. But your experience will only reflect a small part of the totality of tango.

All those different embraces are what help make tango unnecessarily
difficult. Still it keeps people coming back to classes. The totality of tango
as you put it encompasses social, competition and performance.
Life would be easier for many if there was some narrower selection.

Personally, I highly value the development of a personal style that can be enjoyed without superficiality or stilted commonality.

There is a stilted commonality caused by the wide variety of embraces,
positions, views, thoughts and opinions. The preference to accommodate
all the wide variety of embraces seems to result in a very narrow dance;
a subset of the dance which can be done in all the embraces.

Working with a specific embrace might result in a deeper exploration
of all the possible movements within that embrace.

There is a common view in Buenos Aires that tango starts with the embrace
and having experienced the change that the embrace can make I rather tend
to that view now. Abroad, teachers tend ignore the embrace as too difficult,
more or less as you have expressed.

What makes you think I don't encourage students to eliminate basic faults? But if you mean the sort of class where everyone spends three quarters of the time being marched up and down the room, to improve their walk, then no thanks. I don't think that it actually works with a group of people, for a start, but it is also commercial suicide. No one likes doing it (unless they have just paid 3x the going local rate for some visiting maestro's wisdom, and then they will swallow anything rather than believe that they've just been duped), and my experience has been that all that walking empties a class more quickly than anything else could.

No, I am not advocating walking classes nor am I interested in whether
something is commercial suicide but more in what is best for a student
to help progress towards the goal of actually dancing the music of tango.

CBM works in the same way, regardless of whether you walk forwards or backwards. If it results in a swing out, its basic principle has been misunderstood or is being misapplied, coming, as it does, from a completely natural walking action.

I'm inclined to think you don't understand.
CBM is noise capable of interfering with the lady's perception/feel
of the intent of the man. And if she responds in the usual tango way her
backwards projecting leg will aim outward because she will feel a turn.

As a partner dance, the action of one dancer inevitably affects the other. If the leader walks with CBM, the follower must follow (or there is something fundamentally broken about their embrace).

Hmmmm . . . yes . . . . . exactly . . . . . and feel the beginning of a turn.
Or you are teaching her to ignore the turning implication and progress
straight back. No wonder some women won't turn unless they are
specifically lead a giro and guys end up rock-stepping corners much
to the boredom of some of their partners.

There certainly is CBM in tango, but you may choose not to employ it. It needn't be so marked as to be obviously visible, and many things in tango can only be observed with difficulty, but are readily felt.

The extent of CBM if any is not to transmit it in the upper body
so reality it amounts to mild disassociation.

Classes are the preferred way of learning in most dance styles for most people, and the majority will never take privates, even if it would be of benefit to them. Teaching in a group environment therefore forms a significant proportion of the contact time of many teachers. Most teachers enjoy teaching group classes and few would accept your premise. Apart from anything else, teachers cannot dictate how students choose to learn, or how much time, effort and money they are prepared to devote to their learning. It is another aspect of taking people as they actually are.

No, it is an aspect of commercialised teaching. Regularly take a little money
off a lot of students keeps them coming back for, or for as long as
you can maintain the illusion of learning. A never never instalment plan
on the basis that they will never learn enough to break free from the
yoke of supposed learning.

Teachers choose what they do and some can indeed be dictatorial.

Classes can result in prescriptive teaching, of course, but so can any other teaching strategy - that depends on the teacher. Any competent teacher should recognise that the members of any group (and a couple is a group of two) have individual needs and a range of learning styles. If I ever thought that faced with a mixed group comprising waddlers and non-waddlers, I would have to sacrifice one in favour of the other, it would be time to find something else to do for a living.

There's plenty of prescriptive teaching in tango, usually out of the
necessities of attempting to teach disparate groups. I don't believe
that you can be any better than a whole host of other teachers who
attempt the same thing. They may have different solutions but usually
it results in too many generalisations to be useful or is prescriptive
of style or teaches a narrow range of movement or as a last (sometimes
first) resort teaching moves, the classic solution to group teaching.

Of course we approach this from different perspectives, you as a
commercial teacher seeking to teach tango as a means of helping
to earn a living from dance while I am a past student, no longer being
frustrated by the spurious claims and unsatisfactory learning experiences.

 

[UKDancer]

Of course we approach this from different perspectives ...

Yes we do, and as there is no possibility of us agreeing on these matters, I'll leave it there.

 

[Peaches]

CBM works in the same way, regardless of whether you walk forwards or backwards. If it results in a swing out, its basic principle has been misunderstood or is being misapplied, coming, as it does, from a completely natural walking action.

As a partner dance, the action of one dancer inevitably affects the other. If the leader walks with CBM, the follower must follow (or there is something fundamentally broken about their embrace).

There certainly is CBM in tango, but you may choose not to employ it. It needn't be so marked as to be obviously visible, and many things in tango can only be observed with difficulty, but are readily felt..

Agreed, 100%.

Personally, I love it when leaders I corporate CBM into their walk. It feels so much more alive, and dynamic, and makes the embrace feel like so much more. From just a little bit sometimes, to exaggerated CBM at times, it's just wonderful. And I have never felt it as the start of a lead to send my free leg to the outside, nor confused it as such. It is just an entirely different feel, and a completely separate lead. Shrug. Mmm...CBM.

 

[bordertangoman]

Agreed, 100%.

Personally, I love it when leaders I corporate CBM into their walk. It feels so much more alive, and dynamic, and makes the embrace feel like so much more. From just a little bit sometimes, to exaggerated CBM at times, it's just wonderful. And I have never felt it as the start of a lead to send my free leg to the outside, nor confused it as such. It is just an entirely different feel, and a completely separate lead. Shrug. Mmm...CBM.

likewise, several of my favourite dancers use cbm a lot, is like dancing with an eel, in a nice way...

 

[JohnEm]

Personally, I love it when leaders I corporate CBM into their walk. It feels so much more alive, and dynamic, and makes the embrace feel like so much more. From just a little bit sometimes, to exaggerated CBM at times, it's just wonderful. And I have never felt it as the start of a lead to send my free leg to the outside, nor confused it as such. It is just an entirely different feel, and a completely separate lead. Shrug. Mmm...CBM.

Let me start by stating clearly I'm not disagreeing with what you experience
and that you like what you feel with a leader using CBM.

But . . . there's always a but!

As a partner dance, the action of one dancer inevitably affects the other. If the leader walks with CBM, the follower must follow (or there is something fundamentally broken about their embrace).

But you are both arguing that the response to a leader's CBM is follower's
CBM and superficially it seems difficult to disagree. However if the lead comes
from the chest then every individual nuance from the man's chest should be
capable of an appropriate response from the woman and in this case I argue
it's this:

. . . feel the beginning of a turn.

Not this:

. . . ignore the turning implication and progress straight back. No wonder some
women won't turn unless they are specifically lead a giro and guys end up
rock-stepping corners much to the boredom of some of their partners.

It is increasingly my belief that it is these ideas that help result in the
straight line walking dance because women are taught to actually ignore
certain instances of the lead and keep walking (backwards!). This seems
to me to mean that turns other than specific giros may be almost eliminated
- the subtlety is lost.

Let me give another example which is more common than the rather
esoteric CBM. After having learnt something about close embrace tango
I returned to dance with the pupils of my first teacher and discovered
that some would cross without being seemingly lead. One told me quite
specifically that I had lead it and it turned out that walking outside her
was enough for her to feel the need to cross and bring herself back in line.
There are embrace implications here too which I will ignore.

This was contrary to the teaching I was now hearing where ladies were
taught not to cross unless very specifically lead.

Imagine my surprise when in BA I experienced exactly the same "unlead"
crosses and I quickly learned that each step had to be lead and the message
almost had to be given not to cross when walking outside the woman.
As I have other examples, I have eventually concluded that every time
a teacher teaches women to ignore something she feels and carry on
regardless, the sensitivity of the woman is being dulled and the possibilities
of the man's lead are being restricted.

It seems to me that once you accept that the dance is an elegant walking
(more or less in a straight line) dance then I can understand that CBM adds
something interesting by way of variation. But maybe you have been detuned
from the many other possibilities.