[Tango-L] Ballroom vs Tango: Cross feet

[Huck Kennedy]

On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Carol Shepherd <arborlaw at comcast.net> wrote:
> Sounds like "shadowing" = "mirroring".

     To me (maybe someone else has a different notion?), mirroring is
like in aerobics class where, in order to make following along with
her on the fly easier for the participants, you treat the instructor
as though she were you in the mirror--in other words, if she steps to
her right, you step to your left, so you both end up going in the same
direction.  But you are facing each other.

     Shadowing is called shadowing because one of you is like the
other's shadow, if there were a spotlight on the both of you coming in
from the front.  And you are *not* facing each other, as in the
aerobics mirroring example above.

> Someone's changing feet to get into and out of that (ie, hidden step,
> stutter step, held for two beats) to get into that...probably the lead,
> right?

     Yes, either the lead adds or subtracts a step and the follow is
blissfully unaware of it, or occasionally he leads the follow into a
situation where she pretty much has to take an extra step just from
the sheer logistics of the movement.

Huck