340  pre-STEP

Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 01:37:57 -0800
From: "Larry E. Carroll" <larrydla@JUNO.COM>
Subject: pre-STEP

The main part of the lead is to lean the upper body toward the
direction the leader wants to go. The leader's upper body begins to
fall in that direction. A fraction of a second after beginning to
lean, the leader steps in that direction. In other words, walking is a
constant matter of losing your balance and then regaining it.

The follower is connected most securely at the upper part of her body,
though the middle or even the lower part of the torso may also touch
and supplement the upper-body part of the lead. Because the lean
starts before the leader's step, the follower can react to it and step
on the beat of the music at the same time the leader does.

So it is more accurate to talk about the pre-STEP part of the lead,
rather the confusing "pre-lead" - because, of course, all of it is
part of leading.

Larry de Los Angeles
https://home.att.net/~larrydla

PS There's a lot of research going back before the Twentieth Century
on this, much of it clearly and interestingly described in the book
The Physics of Dance. A lot of this research was revisited when
engineers started trying to make walking robots - which is damned hard
to do, as it turns out.

Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2001 00:16:24 -0800
From: "Larry E. Carroll" <larrydla@JUNO.COM>
Subject: Re: Pre-STEP

A personal email makes me think I did not express myself as well as I
could have. When I say we lean toward the direction we want to go, I
do not mean that we bend at the waist, as if beginning to bow.

Rather we relax the muscles at the front of our ankles, and our entire
body tilts forward, rotating about our ankles. Or we tense those
muscles, and our body tilts backward. Similar things happen when we
want to go sideways.

The effect is not very noticeable, either in others or ourselves. The
motion forward (backward, sideways) of our shoulders is only a few
inches, so the angle from vertical is only a very few degrees. So to
even a careful observer the leader appears to be standing upright.

Also, since the leader knows s/he's going to tilt forward/whatever,
she begins moving hi/r free leg at the same time she begins to tilt.
Or she begins moving hir leg a tiny fraction of a second afterward.

It is crucial that the leader not move hir leg BEFORE hir body tilts.
We are not connected to our partner by our feet. We are connected by
our arms. Our feet have nothing to do with the lead unless we are
doing barridas or suchlike. Moving our feet before our upper bodies is
one of the prime reasons why beginners step on their partner's feet.

The dynamics for the follower are different. S/he first feels her
upper body being moved. The average human reaction time is about 1/4th
of a second. So she does not begin moving h/ir free leg instantly.

This means she has to move her foot faster than the man for a fraction
of a second, so that both partners step on the beat at the same time.
Look carefully sometime at videos of a couple and you can see this
quite clearly with good dancers.

This difference between the time the leader begins moving h/ir foot
and when the follower begins moving hir foot is one of the reasons why
teachers tell hir to reach further backward than normal when walking
backward.

This is also part of why followers are told to lean (though not
heavily) forward onto their partners - not only does this increase hir
resistance to (and thus make a stronger connection with) the leader,
but it also puts her tender feet further from his.

Maybe all this detail seems terribly picky. But it is basic elements
like this (learned so well that they become automatic) that help make
the difference between a blah dance experience and a sublime one.

Larry de Los Angeles
https://home.att.net/~larrydla