[Tango-L] "Hiding weight changes"

[Laurence Moseley]

Someone said that they were amazed that a man could change weight 
without the lady even feeling it. In my experience, it happens all the 
time in Tango. Whenever you change from parallel into crossed feet (or 
vice versa) you have to do it without the lady feeling it. That's the 
whole point of the change. It does not matter if you take two steps to 
her one, or one step to her two, she stilll has to avoid moving with it.

Technically, I suspect that one can do it in a variety of ways:

1. Soft knees are, as always, important. With soft knees you have the 
choice of transferring your weight fully to the foot which has just 
moved, or of softening the knee of the moving foot still further.
2. Some men visibly lift the lady slightly on the side on which you do 
not wish her to move her foot. I imagine that some people do it 
invisibly, but as it is invisible I would not have spotted it. I 
suspect that this may be open to abuse or over-use.
3. There may also be something in the way a man uses his right arm. If 
he steps left and with a firm right arm, the lady will step with him 
all the way to the weight change. If his right arm is less firm, then 
she will step with him, but not all the way to the weight change. The 
old adage "The body leads and the arm confiirms" may be relevant here.
4. The critical feature is that one divorces the body from the feet. 
Suppose that you are walking outside to your left (the lady's right). 
You can easily do one or more change steps (lock steps or whatever you 
call them) to a Quick-Quick syncopation. If you use only your feet, the 
lady will not respond and will continue with her usual Slow-Slow... 
However, if your body moves along the line that you are taking, then 
her body will feel it, and she will follow your Quick-Quicks.

There are probably lots of other ways of doing or explaining it. I 
would welcome hearing of some of them.

Laurie (Laurence)

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