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Your response is the most important reason for why I love HN, so many interesting "slight" off-topics.

Thank you.

So my slight off-topic to your slight off-topic: I want to learn dance myself but after using "barefoot" shoes for last few years when I see dance (men) shoes they scream to me moving in them will be painful, because of narrow toe box. There are no dance shoes with wide toe box, like anywhere.

So I ordered custom made and should get them next week. It was actually hard to convince shoe maker to create one. I checked them in the middle if fitting is OK, and even that they are not as wide as I would like they are still way better than any ready to buy set.

Hmm, at least when I was swing dancing .... most dancers just had shoes they like resoled. I never did it myself, as I had found some that worked, and I wasn't doing it often enough to wear them out.

Another option is to convert your regular shoes to dance shoes with a suede sticker [0] and scissors.

[0] https://www.soles2dance.com

Where did you order your custom shoes from?

He is in Poland (from my city Lodz): http://www.lewandowskiszewc.pl/ I know that he is making shoes for people from other countries.

He is artistic shoemaker and you can see some more of his creations on fb: https://www.facebook.com/szewstwoartystyczne/

He, unfortunately, like to have narrow toe box... That's why I was pushing him hard to make one with wider toe box and even left one of my Joe nimble pair as a example.

The variety of HN readers never ceases to amaze me.

I'm a record producer and co-owner of a general contracting company and I don't work in tech. The things that drew me to HN over ten years ago was 1) The breadth of intellectually stimulating essays and articles 2) The quality of discussion around said articles and 3) The quality of moderation and the culture that upholds it.

For the intellectually curious I don't know many other places in which to have these discussion online. Everything else seems to be corrupted in one way or another (trashy/unfocused content, poor/zero moderation, community not large or diverse enough).

If y'all know of another place that satisfies my three criteria above please let me know.

I instinctively lean forward because unless the other party has a large chest and is also 6'3" tall, we aren't likely to align properly standing straight.

I know this might be off-topic, but are you familiar with ballroom dance? If so, how does one learn to touch in a way that's not to stilted but doesn't, for lack of better phrasing, "overreach" into intimate territory?

Not the author of the comment, but I dance socially and from what I've seen and experienced it varies wildly depending on the dancers, style of dance, context etc etc.

Eg Sensual Bachata and Urban Kiz are embracing in a intimate way that can be difficult to get used to, but while it may look very overreaching to most people, overwhelmingly, it's really not sexual at all. (unless the dancers want it to be, which does happen but isn't really the norm or point of the dance)

It is part of the process of learning the dance form itself. Even in something like sensual bachata, you learn which parts of the body are "safe" and which are not. For example, upper back okay lower back not.

In Kizomba, the partners are pretty much always in a pretty close embrace. Kizomba is impossible to lead without a contact at lower ribcage/upper belly with the partner. In any other setting, this would be a pretty intimate position, but in Kizomba it is not. Learning to be comfortable with it is part of learning Kizomba.

In my swing club in grad school we once had a Balboa lesson. The instructor used me to demonstrate, and the way she taught it, the dancers basically mash their hips together and bounce rapidly -- like 3 times a second. It felt designed by rabbits. I was embarrassed but everyone seemed to think we looked cool.

That doesn't sound quite like the Balboa I was taught, where the contact is at the top of the chest (and along the arms and hands of course) and the partners are slightly offset to the side to avoid shin kicking and toe trampling. As you say, the footwork is very rapid and the hold is close - perfect for fast tunes and crowded dancefloors - but no hip mashing that I recall.

We were slightly offset, yes; her foot fell between mine, and vice versa.

Agreed, I had learned it as basically a continuous hug, still really close chest to chest and not something that everyone was comfortable with.

Was the instructor a working professional or another undergraduate or graduate student?

How comfortable were you in general when it came to Swing?

>How comfortable were you in general when it came to Swing?

Somewhat unrelated experience, but Kizomba also involves a close embrace with a contact at chest/belly and it feels somewhat uncomfortable/risque at first. But as you learn the dance, you have to really concentrate on maintaining the frame so as to be able to lead and follow correctly, and the whole thing feels in fact quite meditative and not sexual at all.

I think she was an undergraduate.

If you mean skill, I was one of the better dance students, okay at everything and excellent at a few things. If you mean emotionally, I enjoyed it a lot, even when I felt clueless.

I've only done International Standard, Smooth, Rhythm, and Latin dances and their American variations, but I don't recall doing Bachata and I've only learned about Kizomba as a result of this thread. With that said, I know of the obvious cases of where and how not to touch. It's other elements like hand pressure, control, silent looks, etc. the confluence of which constitute a "carnal communication" that I never fully comprehended when I still did ballroom dancing. If you have any information on what I'm trying to describe, I would be appreciative.

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 the bodies (a quick Vienna Waltz really relies on a shared center of gravity).

The thing to note with most proper ballroom posture is that the dancers are usually looking in opposite directions which I think reduces the intimacy aspect significantly.

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.

Ballroom dancers are connected, most of the time, (right)hip-to-(right)hip, not groin-to-groin; that offsets quite a bit of the awkwardness. On top of that, the shoulders must be apart (both dancers should lean away from each other), which further reduces the intimacy of a casual dance.

In my experience (casual dancer only), it's mostly in the tango where there's potential for overreach, because doing it properly means moving the hips closer to the ground by bending the knees, which increases the potential for upper-leg to groin contact -- that's pretty much where the tango originates from. But it's perfectly possible to dance a respectable tango with less bended knee, if things get awkward with your partner.

> abrazo

I've always found the use of loan-words with mundane meanings amusing and baffling. 'Abrazo' translates directly to 'hug', just like 'langsam' in music translates directly to 'slow(ly)'.

Wait, English speaker use the German term 'langsam' for musical tempo?

I'm Swiss and instead of using this native term, we were trained in music scool to use the Italian term 'largo' or 'lento' for slow tempi.

Parent is referring to tango, which originated in a spaniel-speaking area. "Abrazo" has meaning within the dialect, and that can be lost in translation.

What is the meaning in the dialect?

What brings you to HN? Are you interested in software as a hobby it from a previous career?

Yes, I have a master’s in computer science and was a PhD student in machine learning, before I decided to fully go for dance.

Interesting. In Tango Argentino, you explicitly lean slightly forward, because your upper body needs to move independently from hips & legs.

Reminds me of the ass-out hug remark in Seinfeld.

btw I couldn't remember that in Seinfeld so I googled it and found this rant from "wedding crashers" https://youtu.be/9Tn0fr7EMow

This is in the first episode of Seinfeld season 1