4 ms·

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

• 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.