Re: [TANGO-L] 1 foot, 12 inch, 0.3048 metre height

["St. Thomas, Carlene" <CarleneStThomas @DWT.COM>]

Okay, I've got to jump in here.

I agree with Astrid that you should never "sacrifice your elegant posture
for a man shorter than you !"

Here's where I take issue...

Astrid: "Thing is, if you dance with someone much shorter, it makes it so
much more difficult to hold your balance. You can no longer expect the other
person to provide any kind of support or stability for you. No, you are
actually struggling a lot of the time, not to fall over or collapse on top
of the poor guy (high heels don't certainly help with this, they were made
for the shorter person)."

Why are you looking to the lead for support and/or stability?  I was taught
that a follower must maintain her balance/axis at all times.  A lead should
be able to leave the embrace and step away from a follow without her falling
over.  I don't know of any leads that would want to spend a set shoving a
follow around the floor.

Yes, it's sweet to dance with someone who is a close match height wise.  But
in this imperfect world, the "amazons" will dance with the "hobbits".  If we
could all stand on our own axis and lead/follow with our centers (which
isn't the chest, by the way), we wouldn't be falling all over each other.

Oh, and one more thing. Why in the world do you care about how the two of
you look together? ("...while trying not to think about what we may look
like together,...") If you're having a wonderful dance, who gives a rip
about what anybody else thinks!  Isn't the core of tango about the
dance/music and not looks/appearances?


Carlene
Portland, Oregon



Date:    Wed, 13 Aug 2003 21:46:08 +0900
From:    astrid <astrid @RUBY.PLALA.OR.JP>
Subject: Re: 1 foot, 12 inch, 0.3048 metre heighth

When the woman is
> much taller than a man? I have a friend who's an
> amazon at 5'11", and she constantly complains how hard
> it is for her to dance  with shorter men.
>
> Astrid makes a good point about analyzing the problem,
> but how do you communicate to the leader what he's
> doing wrong?

Why do you automatically assume, that it is the man who is doing something
wrong? I think, it is much harder for the taller person to dance with a good
posture. I remember dancing with Gavito in a privada. We embraced, and after
we had danced about one or two steps, he already said:"You should never
sacrifice your elegant posture for a man shorter than you !" Thing is, if
you dance with someone much shorter, it makes it so much more difficult to
hold your balance. You can no longer expect the other person to provide any
kind of support or stability for you. No, you are actually struggling a lot
of the time, not to fall over or collapse on top of the poor guy (high heels
don't certainly help with this, they were made for the shorter person).
Since the chests are not touching (your chest is more likely to be near
his/her throat), there is also not much connection, and it gets more
difficult to transmit leading signals. In a misguided effort to establish
some sort of connection, you may try to bend down to the other person. Your
shoulders hunch over, you lower your chin or your forehead towards your
partner's face. In doing this, you unwittingly loose even more of your
balance, while ruining your posture, and, actually, weaken the connection
even further. I have found that if the man, no matter how short (there are
plenty of Japanese men who are below 1,70m tall, some even below 1,60m) has
a strong axis and leads with his body rather than the arms, and I keep my
head up high and my back straight, while trying not to think about what we
may look like together, dancing together and feeling his lead is no problem.

from a long suffering follower

(we are now also getting younger men in their thirties in tango,and they are
a lot taller than the older Japanese tangueros who have loved tango since
they were 18, during the fifties. Yayyy! I can actually wear 3,5" heels and
not be made an outcast now.)

Astrid