Katherine -- I think that the way you were doing the ballroom swing before you modified it is not how most of the rest of us do it, and that this in itself produces some of the problems your modification solves.
I'm sure under the impression that the 'standard' ballroom swing [*] has the robin's arm on top Here's a video (from the East Coast) whcih sure looks to me (from the West Coast) like how we do it out here. https://youtu.be/lQ0R5iHT-l8?si=OYKTgBXg0dLyKQza (Of course there has to be some adjustment for height difference, and you don't want a tall person having to bend way forward and then support a short person or a short person getting their shoulders stretched by reaching way up; your modification (robin's hand goes on upper arm rather than shoulder blade) is sometimes the best solution for height differences even when the default hold is 'standard' as shown in the video. Please try the 'standard' hold with your husband and see if it's any better for you that what you were using.. And then we can at least all be talking about the same thing. I say "some of the problems" because I think the appropriate solution for creepy dancers lies in counseling or ejecting them rather than in changing the hold, because creepy guys gonna creep regardless of the hold. It's really only a solution for people who are dancing too close for comfort and don't realize it, and I think the solution for that is for people they are making uncomfortable to either tell them or tell management and have management tell them. I don't see why in either hold anybody should be grabbing you by the waist. I also think that there's going to be some irreducible minimum of innocent / unintended boob and butt grazes, especially among unsure dancers - the chances of a new dancer in a courtesy turn having their behind-the-back hand in an unexpected place and the other person, trying to take that hand (which they can't even see, by the way) is going to end up putting their hand on hip, waist, or butt.; Do you want to change the courtesy turn hold to avoid that? Because you don't have to interoperate with other dances, you could change the courtesy turn hold into a hands-in-front promenade hold and avoid that risk) On a pedantic note, I've been having trouble understanding the hold before you posted the picture, because "modified ballroom swing" is, as I recall, what Larry Jennings ("Zesty Contras", "Give and Take") called what we've been calling the ballroom hold because it's a modification of the position for ballroom dances like waltz and polka, that modification being that the inside of the feet being square-on to partner, or slightly offset so that you intentionally step between your partner's feet; when you're in the ballroom-dance hold, of course to rotate you alternate stepping forward and stepping backward. Modified to fully offset, you both step forward the whole time. (One of the reasons an ex of mine hated contra dancing was that she'd fully internalized the step-between-the-feet thing in foxtrot, one step, waltz, etc, and if you try to do that in a contra swing the results are somewhere between unsatisfactory and actively dangerous.) Anyway, as a result, the arm that goes to the partner's shoulderblade is necessarily stretched to some degree across the front of your partner's body - more stretched if your and your partner's feet are further apart, less stretched if they're closer together - and it's much easier for that arm to contact the front of the partner's body somewhere in the boob area than it is n a square-on ballroom hold. As far as I can tell -having only fairly-small man boobs - you can manage to reduce the impact by adjusting the angle at which partners are facing and how close your the right side of your right foot is to the right side of theirs. All the stuff that you'd naturally want to do to avoid unintended forearm-boob interaction is, counterintuitively, unhelpful so long as you're keeping the shoulder contact - you want to keep your distance so you keep your feet further away, and that changes the angle, reducing the clearance between arm and boob. Or you want to pull the shoulder near the grazed boob back -recoil from the touch, or whatever - and that also makes it worse because it changes the angle and brings more boob surface into contact with the arm. Counterintuitively, adjusting things so that the pointy-end side is farther apart helps by increasing clearance on the blunt-end side where the boob contact is happening because it brings you closer to square-on, reducing the arm-boob a ttack surface. -- Alan (hoping this doesn't completely come across as mansplaining) ________________________________________ From: Katherine Kitching via Contra Callers <contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net> Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2024 2:27 PM To: Katherine Kitching Cc: Jeff Kaufman via Contra Callers Subject: [Callers] Re: Modified ballroom swing position: seeking more conversation and info Sorry everyone - I am clearly not the global authority on this hold, just yet!! :D I just tested this out at home with my (life) partner and realized something unexpected- In the case of me and my partner dancing, it was actually better for both of us if his arm went below mine even though he is taller- I guess because he is taller, his upper arm is also longer, so somehow it still made sense for my arm to go on top. (If anyone thinks they can better explain the physics/physiology of this, be my guest!) Anyhow we got a photo - he is camera-shy and made me crop out his face, but I think you can view it here - let me know if any issues. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ebotfe2jksbr3dqbjyiuf/Modified-Ballroom-Swing-elbow-hold.jpg?rlkey=ekblzvpc2tk2hkbtfrh9u96au&dl=0 Let's call this hold a "work in progress" from us at Halifax Contra Dances- seems we are still sorting out some details!! :) Kat K Katherine Kitching<mailto:k...@outdooractive.ca> Wednesday, March 13, 2024 6:09 PM whoops whoops!! sorry, correction on that. the photo on Jeff's page shows the arms that are closest to the viewer, in the photo, in a similar position to what my group has been using. But I just noticed the dancer's other arms are not hand-in-hand, like my group does it. Darn :) We would still have Lark's Left hand in Raven's Right hand. KK _______________________________________________ Contra Callers mailing list -- contracallers@lists.sharedweight.net To unsubscribe send an email to contracallers-le...@lists.sharedweight.net
