6 ms·

Slightly off-topic: I’m a professional dancer, we specifically train hugging. For contemporary dance, because it’s an important skill for a lot of partnering m

by mudita 5y ago

Slightly off-topic: I’m a professional dancer, we specifically train hugging. For contemporary dance, because it’s an important skill for a lot of partnering moves, like jumps involving two persons (an example of partnering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1BbxTWsoO4&t=13s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1BbxTWsoO4&t=13s). One important detail I found interesting is that for contemporary dancers, it’s not only about the arms, but how to use the whole body for the hug. Many people in everyday life unconsciously lean forward while hugging to keep some distance between their hips. Close hips feel much to intimate in Western culture for most people. We trained to not do that. Instead we trained to stand with slightly offset feet, so we could stand very close to each other and stay upright and to hug with the whole body. This is both aesthetically and especially biomechanically advantageous for dance. Similarly in couple dances like Tango the quality of the hug is very important. I remember many female Tango friends would praise an experienced dancer for his abrazo before anything else.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
I know this might be off-topic, but are you familiar with ballroom dance? If so, how does one learn to touch in a way that's not to stilted but doesn't, for lack of better phrasing, "overreach" into intimate territory?
- bedobi 5y ago
  Not the author of the comment, but I dance socially and from what I've seen and experienced it varies wildly depending on the dancers, style of dance, context etc etc. Eg Sensual Bachata and Urban Kiz are embracing in a intimate way that can be difficult to get used to, but while it may look very overreaching to most people, overwhelmingly, it's really not sexual at all. (unless the dancers want it to be, which does happen but isn't really the norm or point of the dance)
- gampleman 5y ago
  From my experience its something you just very quickly get used to. Many ballroom dance moves are very difficult to perform correctly with any distance between the bodies (a quick Vienna Waltz really relies on a shared center of gravity). The thing to note with most proper ballroom posture is that the dancers are usually looking in opposite directions which I think reduces the intimacy aspect significantly.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Funny you mention the Viennese Waltz as that was my favorite one mainly for the gliding spins. However, I never really got used to arm placement even after a couple of years. I never got to the point where I was able to develop an internal metric for what's insufficient or excessive touch outside of the most obvious or awkwardly extreme cases. While Bachata is the probably the most visually intimate, I'd consider the Vienesse Waltz to be most intimate in a mechanistic sense; A dominant partner has near full control over the momentum and displacement of his subordinate at all times. As a result, the onus of success lies with the dominant partner with failure resulting in many moments of backseat leading. Facing anti-parallel makes in someways it more difficult to dance as it creates a blind spot in the line of dance. This contributes to the stress of maintaining appropriate body distance between partners and couples, while also maintaining directionality, in addition to keeping the appropriate amount of pressure on a partner's upper back without betraying a weak control over ones placing. All of these elements must be simultaneously managed without a thought or a moment of hesitation and, should things go awry, must be swiftly corrected in little more than few seconds.
- alex_smart 5y ago
  It is part of the process of learning the dance form itself. Even in something like sensual bachata, you learn which parts of the body are "safe" and which are not. For example, upper back okay lower back not. In Kizomba, the partners are pretty much always in a pretty close embrace. Kizomba is impossible to lead without a contact at lower ribcage/upper belly with the partner. In any other setting, this would be a pretty intimate position, but in Kizomba it is not. Learning to be comfortable with it is part of learning Kizomba.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    I've only done International Standard, Smooth, Rhythm, and Latin dances and their American variations, but I don't recall doing Bachata and I've only learned about Kizomba as a result of this thread. With that said, I know of the obvious cases of where and how not to touch. It's other elements like hand pressure, control, silent looks, etc. the confluence of which constitute a "carnal communication" that I never fully comprehended when I still did ballroom dancing. If you have any information on what I'm trying to describe, I would be appreciative.
  - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
    In my swing club in grad school we once had a Balboa lesson. The instructor used me to demonstrate, and the way she taught it, the dancers basically mash their hips together and bounce rapidly -- like 3 times a second. It felt designed by rabbits. I was embarrassed but everyone seemed to think we looked cool.
    - Dracophoenix 5y ago
      Was the instructor a working professional or another undergraduate or graduate student? How comfortable were you in general when it came to Swing?
      - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
        I think she was an undergraduate. If you mean skill, I was one of the better dance students, okay at everything and excellent at a few things. If you mean emotionally, I enjoyed it a lot, even when I felt clueless.
- tremon 5y ago
  Ballroom dancers are connected, most of the time, (right)hip-to-(right)hip, not groin-to-groin; that offsets quite a bit of the awkwardness. On top of that, the shoulders must be apart (both dancers should lean away from each other), which further reduces the intimacy of a casual dance. In my experience (casual dancer only), it's mostly in the tango where there's potential for overreach, because doing it properly means moving the hips closer to the ground by bending the knees, which increases the potential for upper-leg to groin contact -- that's pretty much where the tango originates from. But it's perfectly possible to dance a respectable tango with less bended knee, if things get awkward with your partner.
deepGem 5y ago
Reminds me of the ass-out hug remark in Seinfeld.
- oolonthegreat 5y ago
  btw I couldn't remember that in Seinfeld so I googled it and found this rant from "wedding crashers" https://youtu.be/9Tn0fr7EMow https://youtu.be/9Tn0fr7EMow
  - deepGem 5y ago
    This is in the first episode of Seinfeld season 1
puchatek 5y ago
What brings you to HN? Are you interested in software as a hobby it from a previous career?
- mudita 5y ago
  Yes, I have a master’s in computer science and was a PhD student in machine learning, before I decided to fully go for dance.
Matrixik 5y ago
Your response is the most important reason for why I love HN, so many interesting "slight" off-topics. Thank you. So my slight off-topic to your slight off-topic: I want to learn dance myself but after using "barefoot" shoes for last few years when I see dance (men) shoes they scream to me moving in them will be painful, because of narrow toe box. There are no dance shoes with wide toe box, like anywhere. So I ordered custom made and should get them next week. It was actually hard to convince shoe maker to create one. I checked them in the middle if fitting is OK, and even that they are not as wide as I would like they are still way better than any ready to buy set.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Where did you order your custom shoes from?
  - Matrixik 5y ago
    He is in Poland (from my city Lodz): http://www.lewandowskiszewc.pl/ http://www.lewandowskiszewc.pl/ I know that he is making shoes for people from other countries. He is artistic shoemaker and you can see some more of his creations on fb: https://www.facebook.com/szewstwoartystyczne/ https://www.facebook.com/szewstwoartystyczne/ He, unfortunately, like to have narrow toe box... That's why I was pushing him hard to make one with wider toe box and even left one of my Joe nimble pair as a example.
- lief79 5y ago
  Hmm, at least when I was swing dancing .... most dancers just had shoes they like resoled. I never did it myself, as I had found some that worked, and I wasn't doing it often enough to wear them out.
- mleonhard 5y ago
  Another option is to convert your regular shoes to dance shoes with a suede sticker [0] and scissors. [0] https://www.soles2dance.com https://www.soles2dance.com
comprev 5y ago
The variety of HN readers never ceases to amaze me.
- Slow_Hand 5y ago
  I'm a record producer and co-owner of a general contracting company and I don't work in tech. The things that drew me to HN over ten years ago was 1) The breadth of intellectually stimulating essays and articles 2) The quality of discussion around said articles and 3) The quality of moderation and the culture that upholds it. For the intellectually curious I don't know many other places in which to have these discussion online. Everything else seems to be corrupted in one way or another (trashy/unfocused content, poor/zero moderation, community not large or diverse enough). If y'all know of another place that satisfies my three criteria above please let me know.
vidanay 5y ago
I instinctively lean forward because unless the other party has a large chest and is also 6'3" tall, we aren't likely to align properly standing straight.
silicon2401 5y ago
> abrazo I've always found the use of loan-words with mundane meanings amusing and baffling. 'Abrazo' translates directly to 'hug', just like 'langsam' in music translates directly to 'slow(ly)'.
- ggpsv 5y ago
  Parent is referring to tango, which originated in a spaniel-speaking area. "Abrazo" has meaning within the dialect, and that can be lost in translation.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    What is the meaning in the dialect?
- TobTobXX 5y ago
  Wait, English speaker use the German term 'langsam' for musical tempo? I'm Swiss and instead of using this native term, we were trained in music scool to use the Italian term 'largo' or 'lento' for slow tempi.
WA 5y ago
Interesting. In Tango Argentino, you explicitly lean slightly forward, because your upper body needs to move independently from hips & legs.
France_is_bacon 5y ago
Dancers are a unique group of people. I've been to places where dancers practice, and they just strip off their clothes in front of god and everyone, without one bit of self-consciousness. I used to do physical training for adults and kids, and shared the space with a dance group. I was there after the end of the training with 6 boys (about 6 or 7 years old) and their mothers. The dance group of about 10 women came up and into the hallway and just stripped all their clothes off to change into their dancing clothes. Boobs everywhere. The boys did what boys did, their eyes opened wide and they started laughing and poking each other in the ribs, and their moms were open-minded, they just laughed at their boys and at the situation. Anyways, dancers have a different way of looking at the world. That's been my experience.

by mudita 5y ago

Dracophoenix 5y ago

I know this might be off-topic, but are you familiar with ballroom dance? If so, how does one learn to touch in a way that's not to stilted but doesn't, for lack of better phrasing, "overreach" into intimate territory?

bedobi 5y ago
Not the author of the comment, but I dance socially and from what I've seen and experienced it varies wildly depending on the dancers, style of dance, context etc etc. Eg Sensual Bachata and Urban Kiz are embracing in a intimate way that can be difficult to get used to, but while it may look very overreaching to most people, overwhelmingly, it's really not sexual at all. (unless the dancers want it to be, which does happen but isn't really the norm or point of the dance)
gampleman 5y ago
From my experience its something you just very quickly get used to. Many ballroom dance moves are very difficult to perform correctly with any distance between the bodies (a quick Vienna Waltz really relies on a shared center of gravity). The thing to note with most proper ballroom posture is that the dancers are usually looking in opposite directions which I think reduces the intimacy aspect significantly.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  Funny you mention the Viennese Waltz as that was my favorite one mainly for the gliding spins. However, I never really got used to arm placement even after a couple of years. I never got to the point where I was able to develop an internal metric for what's insufficient or excessive touch outside of the most obvious or awkwardly extreme cases. While Bachata is the probably the most visually intimate, I'd consider the Vienesse Waltz to be most intimate in a mechanistic sense; A dominant partner has near full control over the momentum and displacement of his subordinate at all times. As a result, the onus of success lies with the dominant partner with failure resulting in many moments of backseat leading. Facing anti-parallel makes in someways it more difficult to dance as it creates a blind spot in the line of dance. This contributes to the stress of maintaining appropriate body distance between partners and couples, while also maintaining directionality, in addition to keeping the appropriate amount of pressure on a partner's upper back without betraying a weak control over ones placing. All of these elements must be simultaneously managed without a thought or a moment of hesitation and, should things go awry, must be swiftly corrected in little more than few seconds.
alex_smart 5y ago
It is part of the process of learning the dance form itself. Even in something like sensual bachata, you learn which parts of the body are "safe" and which are not. For example, upper back okay lower back not. In Kizomba, the partners are pretty much always in a pretty close embrace. Kizomba is impossible to lead without a contact at lower ribcage/upper belly with the partner. In any other setting, this would be a pretty intimate position, but in Kizomba it is not. Learning to be comfortable with it is part of learning Kizomba.
- Dracophoenix 5y ago
  I've only done International Standard, Smooth, Rhythm, and Latin dances and their American variations, but I don't recall doing Bachata and I've only learned about Kizomba as a result of this thread. With that said, I know of the obvious cases of where and how not to touch. It's other elements like hand pressure, control, silent looks, etc. the confluence of which constitute a "carnal communication" that I never fully comprehended when I still did ballroom dancing. If you have any information on what I'm trying to describe, I would be appreciative.
- Jeff_Brown 5y ago
  In my swing club in grad school we once had a Balboa lesson. The instructor used me to demonstrate, and the way she taught it, the dancers basically mash their hips together and bounce rapidly -- like 3 times a second. It felt designed by rabbits. I was embarrassed but everyone seemed to think we looked cool.
  - Dracophoenix 5y ago
    Was the instructor a working professional or another undergraduate or graduate student? How comfortable were you in general when it came to Swing?
    - Jeff_Brown 5y ago
      I think she was an undergraduate. If you mean skill, I was one of the better dance students, okay at everything and excellent at a few things. If you mean emotionally, I enjoyed it a lot, even when I felt clueless.
tremon 5y ago
Ballroom dancers are connected, most of the time, (right)hip-to-(right)hip, not groin-to-groin; that offsets quite a bit of the awkwardness. On top of that, the shoulders must be apart (both dancers should lean away from each other), which further reduces the intimacy of a casual dance. In my experience (casual dancer only), it's mostly in the tango where there's potential for overreach, because doing it properly means moving the hips closer to the ground by bending the knees, which increases the potential for upper-leg to groin contact -- that's pretty much where the tango originates from. But it's perfectly possible to dance a respectable tango with less bended knee, if things get awkward with your partner.

deepGem 5y ago

Reminds me of the ass-out hug remark in Seinfeld.

oolonthegreat 5y ago
btw I couldn't remember that in Seinfeld so I googled it and found this rant from "wedding crashers" https://youtu.be/9Tn0fr7EMow https://youtu.be/9Tn0fr7EMow
- deepGem 5y ago
  This is in the first episode of Seinfeld season 1

puchatek 5y ago

What brings you to HN? Are you interested in software as a hobby it from a previous career?

mudita 5y ago
Yes, I have a master’s in computer science and was a PhD student in machine learning, before I decided to fully go for dance.

Matrixik 5y ago

Your response is the most important reason for why I love HN, so many interesting "slight" off-topics. Thank you. So my slight off-topic to your slight off-topic: I want to learn dance myself but after using "barefoot" shoes for last few years when I see dance (men) shoes they scream to me moving in them will be painful, because of narrow toe box. There are no dance shoes with wide toe box, like anywhere. So I ordered custom made and should get them next week. It was actually hard to convince shoe maker to create one. I checked them in the middle if fitting is OK, and even that they are not as wide as I would like they are still way better than any ready to buy set.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
Where did you order your custom shoes from?
- Matrixik 5y ago
  He is in Poland (from my city Lodz): http://www.lewandowskiszewc.pl/ http://www.lewandowskiszewc.pl/ I know that he is making shoes for people from other countries. He is artistic shoemaker and you can see some more of his creations on fb: https://www.facebook.com/szewstwoartystyczne/ https://www.facebook.com/szewstwoartystyczne/ He, unfortunately, like to have narrow toe box... That's why I was pushing him hard to make one with wider toe box and even left one of my Joe nimble pair as a example.
lief79 5y ago
Hmm, at least when I was swing dancing .... most dancers just had shoes they like resoled. I never did it myself, as I had found some that worked, and I wasn't doing it often enough to wear them out.
mleonhard 5y ago
Another option is to convert your regular shoes to dance shoes with a suede sticker [0] and scissors. [0] https://www.soles2dance.com https://www.soles2dance.com

comprev 5y ago

The variety of HN readers never ceases to amaze me.

Slow_Hand 5y ago
I'm a record producer and co-owner of a general contracting company and I don't work in tech. The things that drew me to HN over ten years ago was 1) The breadth of intellectually stimulating essays and articles 2) The quality of discussion around said articles and 3) The quality of moderation and the culture that upholds it. For the intellectually curious I don't know many other places in which to have these discussion online. Everything else seems to be corrupted in one way or another (trashy/unfocused content, poor/zero moderation, community not large or diverse enough). If y'all know of another place that satisfies my three criteria above please let me know.

vidanay 5y ago

I instinctively lean forward because unless the other party has a large chest and is also 6'3" tall, we aren't likely to align properly standing straight.

silicon2401 5y ago

> abrazo I've always found the use of loan-words with mundane meanings amusing and baffling. 'Abrazo' translates directly to 'hug', just like 'langsam' in music translates directly to 'slow(ly)'.

ggpsv 5y ago
Parent is referring to tango, which originated in a spaniel-speaking area. "Abrazo" has meaning within the dialect, and that can be lost in translation.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  What is the meaning in the dialect?
TobTobXX 5y ago
Wait, English speaker use the German term 'langsam' for musical tempo? I'm Swiss and instead of using this native term, we were trained in music scool to use the Italian term 'largo' or 'lento' for slow tempi.

WA 5y ago

Interesting. In Tango Argentino, you explicitly lean slightly forward, because your upper body needs to move independently from hips & legs.

France_is_bacon 5y ago

Dancers are a unique group of people. I've been to places where dancers practice, and they just strip off their clothes in front of god and everyone, without one bit of self-consciousness. I used to do physical training for adults and kids, and shared the space with a dance group. I was there after the end of the training with 6 boys (about 6 or 7 years old) and their mothers. The dance group of about 10 women came up and into the hallway and just stripped all their clothes off to change into their dancing clothes. Boobs everywhere. The boys did what boys did, their eyes opened wide and they started laughing and poking each other in the ribs, and their moms were open-minded, they just laughed at their boys and at the situation. Anyways, dancers have a different way of looking at the world. That's been my experience.