4429  When lead-and-follow seems to disappear

Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2006 15:38:06 -0400
From: "TangoDC.com" <spatz@tangoDC.com>
Subject: [Tango-L] When lead-and-follow seems to disappear
To: tango-L@mit.edu

Chris, UK wrote:

> Jake wrote:
>
>> That is what my (now infamous) "Prologue to an Aesthetics" was about. Anyone with a semester's worth of experience in actual aesthetics (whether from the artistic or the philosophical angle) will recognize...
>>
> Damn, that must have the semester I skipped off to dance...
>

Evidently.

[Chris, UK] >> When the guy keeps his upper body static relative to
hers, and she to his, thence the union. Within that union, the lead is
just kinesthetic gesture, only the suggestion to move... as one.

Look, the dance in close embrace, with a vocabulary limited to walking,
ochos, and giros, is more or less an affair of such symmetry, or union.
But this is a limit set deliberately, in order to dance in a certain
style, and to achieve a certain end. This one style also sets a hard
limit on what walking, ochos, and giros will be. Different embraces and
different styles use a greater variety of moves, and add a greater
complexity to the lead-follow relationship.

Ultimately, if you only dance one style, and believe that style to be
the only one you're interested in, it's obvious that elements beyond its
purview won't concern you. Those elements, however, are not therefore
"wrong."

Moreover, we aren't (to my knowledge) talking about kinds of leading
that violate the connection you refer to as union. We're talking about
other ways, in _addition_ to that connection, to make it happen.
Foot-contact during a barrida, for example, does not replace the torso
lead. It is, however, an additional part of the embrace, and can be
used-- like the hands in the embrace-- to smooth and shape the motion,
as secondary features, while the upper-body connection remains present
and primary.

In any case, the torso connection itself is not completely static, or
shouldn't be, if you seek to create comfort for yourself and your
partner. If it were static, then counter-motion movements such as boleos
would be painful. As it is, we relax and harden the embrace by different
degrees, sometimes minute ones, in order to absorb shock, to pick up the
slack, to smooth or sharpen our movements-- to maintain a kind of
harmony, no matter which embrace we use. The _illusion_ is that we
don't. But let us not succumb to blind-eyeing the very illusions we create.

Jake Spatz
Washington, DC

Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:09:27 +0200
From: Alexis Cousein <al@sgi.com>
Subject: Re: [Tango-L] When lead-and-follow seems to disappear
To: spatz@tangoDC.com
Cc: tango-l@mit.edu

TangoDC.com wrote:

> Chris, UK wrote:
>> Jake wrote:
>>
>>> That is what my (now infamous) "Prologue to an Aesthetics" was about. Anyone with a semester's worth of experience in actual aesthetics (whether from the artistic or the philosophical angle) will recognize...
>>>
>> Damn, that must have the semester I skipped off to dance...
>>
> Evidently.
>
> [Chris, UK] >> When the guy keeps his upper body static relative to
> hers, and she to his, thence the union. Within that union, the lead is
> just kinesthetic gesture, only the suggestion to move... as one.
>
> Look, the dance in close embrace, with a vocabulary limited to walking,
> ochos, and giros, is more or less an affair of such symmetry, or union.

But even an open embrace requires such a union - be it a more
adaptable one. And yes, if modifying that open embrace (by leaving the
follower more/less room or changing the relative angle of the
partners) is "leading by arms", then obviously that does exist.

We could never go from open to close embrace or vice versa
within a single dance either, if the frame was to be set in
concrete.

But that's not what Chris was objecting to. Chris is objecting
to leading by hands that are autonomous puppet string pullers,
and try to move the follower by their own accord.

--
Alexis Cousein al@sgi.com
Solutions Architect/Senior Systems Engineer SGI
--
Bad grammar makes me [sic].