Originally Posted by DiamondBetty:
“Sophie is gorgeous and has beautiful legs and looked truly wonderful when holding a pose.
I think the problem is in her frame and connection.
In my area of dance, the word 'frame' is out of fashion, because it suggests rigidity. Connection (in a physical sense, not in a sexual tension sense) in lead/follow dances is a responsive action, when the lead 'asks' for tension, the follow responds - when the request for resistance isn't being given, the connection should be relaxed. If you think of the relaxed 'neutral' connection as being blue, and the rigid, totally 'engaged' connection as being red, then I believe Sophie goes from a very floppy pale blue to a very stiff intense dark red without ever going through lilac or purple. This is why she looks floppy yet also has that mannequin stiffness thing, two ends of a spectrum.
Going from one extreme to the other would make it very hard for her to relax and follow Brendan - she must be constantly anticipating his next move with her brain, rather than responding to his lead with her body. This is likely exhausting so no wonder she looks burnt out and is unable to relax enough to characterise and emote.
Interestingly though, it's super dark red tension that makes her look so great in a lift - remember the poker-straight-held-aloft-vertical lift from the launch dance?
I know very little about ballroom technique but I imagine that the classic ballroom holds are rather 'red' and that Latin is more 'purple', which explains why SEB is more suited to ballroom. Interested in the opinions of those that do all kinds of dancing, if anyone's about?”
I would agree with your comments Betty. Especially those concerning connection. I am also going to pinch your colour coding analogy - I think it will be an excellent way of describing a feeling to the more visual learners. Thank you.
Connection is an excellent word that encompasses both the physical connection of the frame that allows communication between the couple to occur and also the rapport that put the sizzle into the dynamic (more than just an overlay of acting or wearing a "tango/rumba/paso - face")
However in AT the frame does need to be solid (probably in other BR dances too). It doesn't want to be stiff but it should have a rigidity. Its more than just adopting a style but more the physics, so to speak, that enables the dance to work. The posture is also important in this way. The walk too is important and the rest - decorations and illusions - follow from /are enabled by these three elements.
The couple's upper bodies should be slightly inclined so they form a letter A shape. Their upper body positions should mirror one another so the lady keeps her torso square onto the man pretty well all the time. Their arms should be solid, not rigid exactly but with no obvious flexing and stretching. (Think of making a telephone from string and cans - if the string isn't tight the signal can't get through) The upper part of the dancers should be as if welded in plaster of Paris. The upper body is solid and the lower body loose, free, relaxed.
The lower body should be further apart than the upper body. The walk is I think the most important visual detail to get right. The steps should comprise of three parts. The step is initiated in the lead’s upper body, (called the intent or invitation) if the upper body is a solid fixed frame the point of least resistance is the follower’s free leg. The frame (The man's torso as a complete unit) is what moves first. Once her leg is in motion the man starts to move too. He is therefore moving momentarily behind her.
The follower pushes her foot out behind her (or to the side or sometimes in front) keeping it as close to the ground as possible and transfers her weight onto it as the very last element of the step. The lady puts her weight onto the ball of her foot first and some sources say the inner ball of the foot is the best technique for a beautiful step. A fraction of a second later the man also pushes his unweighted foot in the direction of travel and transfers his weight onto it at the last minute.
Between the initiation and final weight change there is something called the brush point where the dancers ‘collect’. I feel this is the really distinctive visual feature of AT it also helps manage the timing of the couple. Imagine you have little magnets in your ankle bones, as one foot passes your other foot the magnets try to pull together so there is a fraction of a hesitation as the ankles brush past one another. It’s not a pause and you certainly don’t stop but more like a little quiver as you overcome the resistance of the imaginary magnetic force. I saw none of this footwork in Sophie and Brendan’s walks last night.
I would have also liked to have seen a little walking in cross system. Mostly in dance the man steps on his right as the lady steps on her left (assuming they are face to face). In AT both partners can walk on their right (or left) when in front facing hold. Aficionados tell me this is unique to AT but I don’t know that to be the case. But it is this that allows for many of the more decorative steps that distinguish AT. Sacadas or displacements are a characteristic movement in which the man ‘asks’ the lady to move her foot a split second before he occupies the space her foot left with his foot. This gives the impression of him having kicked her foot out of the way
Most of the stuff most people recognise as being AT is done in the lower body. The upper body remains fairly fixed and the lower moves about. In the ocho (swivel) for example the upper body continues to face the direction of travel (line of dance). The foot then moves at an angle to the lower body and as the ankles meet up the dancer pivots on one foot and changes weight. The lower body is facing a different direction to the upper.
The kicks are frequently ganchos or enganches or sometimes an embellishment. But you really can’t just walk around a dance floor using an ordinary gait and flick up a leg here and there, no matter how well timed to the music, and expect the outcome to look like an AT. In my opinion the only way to make a dance look like AT is to remain faithful to the physics that enable AT.
Quite apart from the lack of emotional intensity my impression of B and S yesterday was that they faked it too much and for this reason I thought their marks were fair to generous. It was an enjoyable dance but was not a good example of AT.
For me the basics have to be there to get an authentic appearance. (I suspect much the same applies in other disciplines).
