I've only learned some very basic, slow dips. Then the other nite at a social--I was dancing EC swing with a very smooth gentleman and whoa! I missed the first one, then he said "just trust me" and I was dipped twice! Maybe this was a "ragdoll", I'm not sure, but I felt like I was doing a backbend and back up again! And I liked it! My friends applauded as I dizzily left the floor.
Only thing, I don't think I'd want to do this (or many other) dips with someone who doesn't know exactly what he's doing. Especially on a crowded dance floor!

I've found that most women love to be dipped.

I started doing dips after an hour-long class at a weekend swing workshop, and I thought I was doing well. Most followers loved what I was doing.

However, one particular follower thought that the kind of dip that I was doing felt an awful lot like a judo throw, and (although I didn't hurt her) she told me never to do that again and backhanded me on the shoulder when we finished dancing. She forgave me and we are still friends, but I am also much more careful about what I do while dancing.

After that potentially dangerous event I took a couple of private lessons where my only goal was to learn to do dips properly and safely. I've now got two or three that I am comfortable with, and that I feel I can lead safely and without danger to my partner.

However, when dancing with a new partner I always ask if they want to be dipped and a couple of times followers have told me about back problems that I did not know about. It is always safest to ask first.

I am presently teaching here in Vermont, but I normally do not teach dips. I'm starting with several wedding couples, though, so I feel that I need to be able to teach dips effectively. I'm going to take a couple of private lessons from another local teacher who has been teaching and dancing longer than I have so that I can learn how to lead other dips effectively.

In my experience women love to be dipped when they are physically able to do the dip, and when the leader is able to control the dip and protect the follower.

Kevin

Dronak, I have Victor & Heather's Picture Lines video tape--it's great! I haven't watched it in a while though, so I forget if it shows entrances and exits for them. A lot of them you can just straighten up, bring your feet together, and hover out of, or do a little ronde and slip. For the Left Whisk, an outside spin or runaround works well.

Kevin, I teach quite a few wedding couples. I usually give them a simple corte-type dip to start with, and if they do that well and are comfortable I'll have them rotate and lower a little until they find a line that looks good on them and is comfortable and safe for them to do. Usually I'll have them do the simple one during the song, and the showier one at the end.

The key is making sure the lady can support her own weight over one leg (usually the right), and that the man stands up straight instead of bending over her. He can go lower by bending his supporting knee and stretching out the other one (making sure that knee is also flexed).

[This message was edited by twnkltoz on 03-03-03 at 10:32 AM.]

As a female, yes, I love to be dipped .. However, up until recently I didn't know how to follow the lead for a dip, which led to some rather interesting experiences on the dance floor : ) .. It's probably safer to save the dips for those Ladies that you know can execute their part correctly.

Most ladies like to do picture lines. They do not necessarily like being thrown toward the floor with a 50/50 chance of coming out of it unscathed. We don't like getting scared and we don't like getting hurt. I know of a pretty well-known west coast swing teacher who was thrown into an "effective dip" and couldn't dance for like six months afterward.

Please be very careful with dips. Learn them in person from an instructor who can show you proper lead and technique.

The Left Whisk is syllabus waltz; I actually did learn that one in group classes with a Runaround ending. I've also done the others I mentioned before somewhere, the Contra Check which is syllabus in waltz and tango (and V.Waltz, but no one around here uses it because it's typically the Fleckerl change of direction and no one does Fleckerls) and the (Drop) Oversway in tango. I'm pretty sure in one class we also did a RF Lunge, but our teacher ended it in the lunge and didn't give us an exit. Let me dig up those workshop notes. . . . If I'm not mistaken these were with the Masons, Timothy and Michelle. The syllabus lines workshop went over Contra Check and Left Whisk as figures, then sort of talked about how you get lines kind of in the process of dancing other figures like figures going to PP, the PP can be a sort of line, and the "hover" family of figures like Reverse Corte or Hover Telemark where I guess it's the hovering action that acts sort of like a line. The open lines workshop went over Throwaway Oversway, Oversway, and Same Foot Lunge. This was a bit over my head at the time and I think my notes show it. I'm not sure I could quite reproduce these figures from just the notes I have here. If someone demonstrated them to me or I found more info somewhere else, I might remember how they worked though. I think we were given ways to get into and out of these figures. It was mainly the ones from group classes where sometimes the teacher wouldn't give us exits at the ends of combinations. It's OK if you're ending with a syllabus figure (look up the follows), but it's harder when you're ending with an open figure, especially a picture line. I have books at home that must cover additional lines, too. It's just that I've really never learned many of them and it would be nice to have a few more I could use now and then.

As a comment on your reply to Kevin, our teacher told us that in picture line type positions, it should feel like the man is underneath the lady providing support for her from below. I don't think you're really in that position physically, with the lady kind of over the man, but I think his point was where the man is directing his energy. He shouldn't feel like he's coming down over the woman in these lines, he should feel like his energy is directed up to help support her from underneath. That's kind of the same thing as you were saying about not having the man bend over the lady. It certainly takes some skill to get the lines right. I've found that the Contra Check isn't too hard to do and will often use that at the end of dance if I can get into position for before the song ends. I'd kind of like to start working the Oversway into other dances since I learned it in tango, but I'm not sure how the precedes and follows work when you bring it to the swing dances. And usually I do a Drop Oversway in tango, not the plain Oversway, so that would change things a bit, too. Anyway, picture lines aren't really the same as dips, so maybe we should make a new thread for talking about picture lines if we want to continue. I certainly wouldn't mind continuing, but I also don't want to side track the original topic too far.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall