Cuban stepping earlier than linea?

[Gaviota]

This has come up before, but I can't find the discussion to hook in right now.

Adonis Santiago put out this nice video on three exercises to make your Cuban basico look nice

The thing that stood out to me is his description of the timing and weight transfer during the basic, in exercise 1: He's counting "y-uno", with the metatarsals/ball of your foot making contact on "y" and the heel touching down on "uno" (and I understand that heel to coincide with the weight transfer).

By contrast, linear tends to teach (in my experience) initial foot contact on the beat, and rolling through your foot/weight transfer.

This distinction matches my experience in my local scene, but I wonder how far it generalizes.

 

[Smejmoon]

Any social dancing video of his where this new theory can be seen in the real life? I remember he danced with few of my friends long time ago, but I don't see that in those videos.

As far as I remember theory of linear (if such thing exists) this does not matter. Matters when you push into the floor and change direction. And that is done with the other foot, which has finished the step already. So many dancers step on 8& but they don't transfer the weight then. Some step on 8, some on 1.

 

[Gaviota]

8 vs 8& vs 1 isn't really what this is about

I'll see if I can find a video of him social dancing (but it's always hard to make clear observations about this from video because the audio video sync is not guaranteed)

 

[Gaviota]

this should be a good test maybe? dancing with Brenda Liew

 

[Smejmoon]

this should be a good test maybe? dancing with Brenda Liew

It's just my opinion, but he's so disconnected from her that timing of stepping doesn't matter. But in those moments when his feet were visible he stepped on the beat, not before.
Timing precision is really important when people dance in closed position, not when they horse around like this.

 

[Gaviota]

Personally I'd give up on closed position and start horsing around if we can't match on timing

 

[Groove On]

this should be a good test maybe? dancing with Brenda Liew

One of those partner mis-matches that is so annoying. Brenda is a very good dancer, but she totally was not feeling the song, just reacting to and hitting the odd cue and highlight. Adonis, on the other hand, was totally in it, smacking all the layers in the song with every move.

To Gaviota's point, I have feeling this is a good example of the difference between the more ball-heel stepping approach in casino and the more flat-footed style common in linear.

I also think many pure linear dancers would probably have a harder time musically styling this Cuban song, while Cuban dancers would feel right at home in this song. The real test would be have Adonis and Brenda dance to a linear style song and see what happens.

 

[Groove On]

in exercise 1: He's counting "y-uno", with the metatarsals/ball of your foot making contact on "y" and the heel touching down on "uno" (and I understand that heel to coincide with the weight transfer).

By contrast, linear tends to teach (in my experience) initial foot contact on the beat, and rolling through your foot/weight transfer.

This distinction matches my experience in my local scene, but I wonder how far it generalizes.

This has also been my experience; Casino does benefit from more ball-heel stepping, if you want to dance it well and really have fun with it.

I think you could generalize even more and say that frame-based dances (like Casino) tend to use more ball-heel steps to accommodate the faster and more frequent rotating changes of direction, while slot-based dances naturally morph into a more flat-footed and smoother approach, which is more useful for going up/down the slot.

 

[Chris_Yannick]

By contrast, linear tends to teach (in my experience) initial foot contact on the beat, and rolling through your foot/weight transfer.

This distinction matches my experience in my local scene, but I wonder how far it generalizes.

I would agree with this generaliation in theory. The problem is that, in my experience, hardly any teacher teaches the 'ball-heel rolling through your foot' technique so most dancers just step flat footed, whether Linear or Cuban.

 

[Chris_Yannick]

while slot-based dances naturally morph into a more flat-footed and smoother approach, which is more useful for going up/down the slot.

Hmm this is most likely incidental. Any dancer dancing flat footed will look comparably worse than a dancer who's truly weight shifting under the weight of their feet.

 

[eclo]

I would agree with this generaliation in theory. The problem is that, in my experience, hardly any teacher teaches the 'ball-heel rolling through your foot' technique so most dancers just step flat footed, whether Linear or Cuban.

My experience too, which imho is a shame as that's how you get Cuban motion & a chance at the elusive sabor.

Also ties into my absolute pet hate of followers who dance constantly on their toes. I see it so often in linear, esp followers in jazz shoes spending the whole dance on tip toes. Makes the dance stiffer, you can't use your knees properly, no chance at Cuban motion, basically it throws your entire biomechanics off. But people seem to think it makes them look advanced.