[Tango-L] Usage of Heel AND Ball

[Tom Stermitz]

On Jul 7, 2007, at 12:28 AM, lgmoseley at aol.com wrote:


> The other difference is in the walk - whether one walks on the ball  
> of the foot first or on the heel first. The ball-first dancers  
> (male or female) have rather more time then do the heel-first ones.  
> That? means that the men have a little more time to change  
> direction, swivel, pause or whatever, and ladies have a little more  
> time to react to such changes.
>
> With both classic and alternative music the ball-first dancers have  
> no problems. However, the heel-first dancers have a slight time  
> delay. Rather than their weight transfer taking place on the beat,  
> it arrives slightly late. That, as far as I can see, is because  
> their heel lands on the beat, but the weight has not been fully  
> transferred. There is then a slight delay for the weight to be  
> transferred to the ball. That is what appears to account for the  
> fact that they always seem to be slightly out of time with the  
> music. As usual, irrespective of the direction in which you are  
> moving, the heel acts as a brake.
>
> Of course, you can only be out of time with the music when the  
> music actually has a time! When there is no obvious time, one can  
> continue to move as one wishes - it's just that one is not dancing  
> to the music. Once one has mastered the ball-first, weight-forward  
> way of moving, one can then dance to any? music - old or new.
>
> This phenomenon, of the heel-first dancers being slightly behind  
> the music, first hit me when watching people dancing milonga.
>

I don't completely agree with all this.

A lot of great, traditional argentine dancers dance behind the music,  
or perhaps they are dancing through the beat rather than "on" the  
beat. In other words, trying to exactly step on the beat doesn't  
capture the part of tango that occurs between the beat. This is a  
hard concept for me as I started as a rhythmic dancer and I dance  
pretty much to the beat. However, as I get better I notice that my  
insistence on beat exactitude may be hindering my musicality.

Hsueh-tze Lee of Boston works a lot with this concept. She is a 15  
year dancer and excellent teacher with many miles on the Buenos Aires  
dance floors with the great social dancers. I trust that she knows  
more than I do about what they do, so I have to pay attention when  
she tells me this, even if it contradicts some of my own training.


Second, performance dancers have certain needs and training which  
require weight over the ball. Social dancer have different needs as  
they are expressing very subtle things to their partner, not to an  
audience. For them. varying the foot placement (heel and ball)  
enables a lot more richness than ball-first alone would give them.  
Managing heel and ball gives them control over the time and space  
between steps.


Here is a specific description:

Landing heel first, then shifting to the ball allows the leader to  
control the speed with which the follower "collects", that is brings  
her feet together. If you desire her to collect quickly, then you  
would want to shift quickly to the ball; if you want her to collect  
slowly, then you would hold back on your heel, and shift forward  
(four inches?) a bit later in time. This allows you to "jazz" the  
arrival, that is hold back the tempo of the collection.

So, as an exercise in delaying your arrival, you could take a step,  
placing your weight (let's say you hold your hip back a bit) over the  
heel. Your floating leg holding back about the length of one shoe.  
Shift weight (the hip) to the ball, while collecting together (shift  
back and forth a couple times to sense the heel-ball combined with  
leg-pendulum). This gives you a new technique for managing your  
follower's movements.

To delay the initiation of the new step, you could sneak the foot  
forward about a shoe-length, while softening the knee in preparation  
for a stride. The sensitive follower feels your preparation and  
starts to stretch her leg backward. She typically stays on her ball,  
although many followers frequently rest for a moment on their heels.

So I've just described two examples of using weight and heel/ball  
control to change the tempo of movement behind or ahead of the so- 
called beat. Slow down the arrival, or slow down the take-off.  
Playing with these ideas is giving me a lot of new and interesting  
movement possibilities.

Tomas Howlin (an argentine who now lives in Montreal is an  
experienced and skilled dancer) awakened me to these ideas.



Tom Stermitz
http://www.tango.org
2525 Birch St
Denver, CO 80207