Jonathan-

In an interesting recent post you commented that it was possible to do "amazing things with only the man's right hand to lady's shoulder blade"

In competitive contract bridge, regular partnerships develop highly complex bidding systems that noone but the partnership might truly understand.

The individual tournament (out of favor now because players like those systems) requires that each individual play with different partners throughout the contest, and therefore the signals have to be much more standard.

I find myself wondering what would happen if a bunch of world class dancers had to change partners for each dance segment. How much would they dumb down the complexity of their dancing and of the signals they could transmit with only the man's right hand to lady's shoulder blade.

Comments?

Jerry

I find that to be a really interesting suggestion. I do know this happens in Hustle and Swing dances...even pro level...where there are "Jack and Jill" competitions....a person enters as an individual, not knowing who their partner will be and so they are judged only on their own skill as a follower or a leader. Is that the reason it isn't done in Ballroom? Because the level of dancing would suffer?

Our teachers occasionally would make us dance with just that connection. They did that because it was the key connection for many moves and was a way of insuring, I was leading the manuever properly. Sometimes because of congestion, I move my left arm to a position, were it does not help the lead at all ( to fit through a small space ) and we do not have problems because that connection is lost for a period of time.

Emphasising that really helped our smooth dancing. I see a lot of men trying to do way to much with their left hand in smooth.