[Tango-L] basics - "swayback" & "around-the-lower-back-grip" in followers - origins?

[Brian Dunn]

Re: Women's tango posture with "swayback" bottom-thrust-out embrace:

Sherrie wrote:
>>>
I'm pretty sure this posture & embrace is a fashion
among women, that ordinary women dancers learn
from the "alpha" females (teachers or performers)... 
It's quite recent too, I never saw it 10 years ago
and started to become common where I live (US)
maybe only 5 years ago. I wonder who started it?

Fashion...this is interesting..who creates the fashion....this corruption,
really, this not learned technique...women doing what they want, rather than
what men, leads, want...help me to understand this...
<<<

Whenever something starts growing in a "style/fashion" sense in social
tango, it may be useful to non-judgmentally examine the style change for
functional advantages, even if it involves trade-offs for other desirable
qualities.  I should state that the ideas presented below arise from
observation only - I myself lack the flexibility to test these ideas myself,
and readily defer with respect to those anatomically gifted individuals who
can actually provide first-hand commentary ;)

=== Potential functional advantages of a swayback posture:
- Some women appear to express the music by sometimes doing very high
boleos, (backwards linear or Back-cross circular), either when led or as an
adornment on an otherwise simple tango moment. By my observation, there is
something of a tango "arms race" going on among these women, competing to
see who can kick backwards (or back-around) with the highest snappiest
foot-above-their-head boleos.  

This is a difficult move, in general.  BUT if the woman adopts a swayback
posture, with her pelvis angled backward maybe 30 degrees, then she has a 30
degree head start on her snappy high-angle back boleo, can send her foot up
higher, and can send the leg out and retrieve it with less tension resulting
from normal flexibility constraints on her leg movement.  Of course it's
possible to train this semi-acrobatic move while still keeping an upright
lower back and pelvis, but that requires much more flexibility...and once
the arms race ("legs race"?;) )is underway, even the ones with flexibility
have an incentive to push the envelope even further. Wannabe followers
observe this, and a style is born.

Much like some women from a decade or two ago who overdid snappy ganchos and
thus invited too much strain on their knee ligaments over time, holding this
exaggerated swayback posture solely for style reasons may involve certain
trade-offs beyond the "aesthetic costs".  Some professional tango dancers
and body workers have suggested to me that women who adopt this posture
unnecessarily (i.e., all the time, instead of just when they need to do a
boleo) may be setting themselves up for lower-back problems later.  

=== Potential functional advantages of an arm-around-the-leader's-waist
embrace:
Some leaders enjoy dancing with an embrace (closed or open) where there is
very little energy being expended in actually embracing their partner (and I
mean this technically, not emotionally). That is, not very many calories are
being burned by the leader in using his muscles to keep the embrace in place
with his arms, hands and torso.  For some followers, an embrace around the
leader's waist would help to provide useful "connection enhancement" in
cases where the leader's signals were fading into vagueness through an
attempt to maintain an overly "gentle" embrace.  I have found some follower
students who discovered how much more clearly they could follow some leads
when they were embracing the man this way. 

I'm of average height, and I generally don't prefer that a follower embrace
me this way.  Like an excess of apilado-lean, this around-the-body hold from
a follower can make an embrace difficult to adjust or vary slightly for
conditions, which in general I see as my responsibility as a leader.  When
I'm dancing with a follower who has this habit (even "alpha-females" from
Buenos Aires ;) ), I find that by simply embracing her (somewhat) more
firmly for awhile, I can persuade her to relax into my embrace more without
using this kind of hold, and then I can adjust and manage the embrace with
her more easily.

As long as we're discussing style, I invite similar non-judgmental
speculation on how the "waiter-serving-drinks" horizontal position of the
leader's left hand may have evolved - I have my own theories ;)

All the best,
Brian Dunn
Dance of the Heart
Boulder, Colorado USA
www.danceoftheheart.com
"Building a Better World, One Tango at a Time"