Talk:Snap (dance move)

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[edit] Snaps in tango

I've seen a couple of tango dance books that present educated guesses about the origin of the head snap in Tango. One of them refers to the influence of Apache dance on European Tango: The Apache dance depicts violence of a man towards a woman: when a woman is thrown away, her head naturally snaps. This may be a reasonable explanation in various oversways, checks/contra-checks and picture lines, where the woman is indeed kind of thrown away. Another half-serious explanation I've read is that professinal woman dancer's head snaps away upon a whiff from the mouth a drunk client.

However one thing for sure that the head snap in the Link is a very recent evolution. It ammened right on my eyes during 1970s. The venerable Alex Moore's basic variation "two walks, link, closed promenade" is SSqqSqqS, with lady opening her head into promenade position on the second "q", naturally quickly, but without special affect. After all, many quick turns in dnace involve quick head snaps, e.g., for keeping the point during chaines turns turns or pirouettes. As it always happens in competitive dance, some dance champions started putting more drama into this simple step, by doing the Link on "&S" (with & split off the previous beat), with head snap and a dramatic pause on "S", possibly with some action, e.g., collecting backwards before moving forward. The rest of dancers monkeyed it. So it was just a natural evolution towards the modern snappy style of International Style tango, without any of this "pimp beating the whore" or "drunken whiff" stuff.

On my spare time I can find references about the first paragraph. But I am afraid that my second pargf is my meroes only. `'mikka (t) 00:06, 24 July 2006 (UTC)