Leading FAQ

As these actually are, unlike most "FAQs", somewhat FA, I thought I might as well write down my current answers.

Why do you lead?
I like good dancing, I enjoy working on my dance, and I want to dance with the women as well. They're great. I was also really curious to find out what it felt like.

Do you find you keep trying to go the wrong way and do everything the wrong way round?
Yes, at first, but it wears off quickly. Having other people around seems to sort it out. Doing the mirror-image of whatever I was trying to do, also seems to be less common with time. The more I practice, the better I can visualise whatever it is I want to do.

Do you have a hard time remembering to keep your eyes open?
Yes, at first! But this also wears off very quickly.

How does it affect your following?
It's made it better. The very first thing it did, the first time I tried it, was tune me into the music a bit differently. The next thing was to give me confidence as a follower, because you discover what you've been doing right, especially just how magic it feels if you follow well and move well. When I started doing it more seriously, it improved my technique, making me stronger and better grounded. After a bit more practice, I started to learn how good the women are, and what that actually means, and what it feels like when they really start to get into it, which is enchanting. And I also find it improves my concentration and frees me from the pressure to do too much and try too hard as a follower; I usually feel in myself that I am dancing better just after I've been leading.

That's so brave!?
If you're already a good follower, and then you start leading and taking it seriously, you just have to accept that you're going to go back to not being very good for a while. You had the privilege of learning to follow first, which saves a lot of work. But it's still a lot of work; so if you want to do it, and you have the opportunity, you do it, and if you don't specially want to do it, you don't bother. The men seem to manage it.

How do the men react?
I have yet to encounter any negative reaction from anyone, male or female. The men I regularly dance with as a follower have without exception been enthusiastically encouraging, and they are often interested to hear my perspective and experiences as well as share their own. I have also found it's a real and particular pleasure to share the floor amicably with someone as a fellow leader and then later dance with him for the first time. Sometimes - often - they make some pleasant remark about having seen me leading.

How do you find the floorcraft?
Some places are obviously much harder than others. It does take practice, especially to avoid getting too close to the couple in front. I started out at emptier times and places.  It takes miles on the clock to be able to deal with the cognitive load of leading, responding to the follower, and keeping track of where other couples are and how they are moving. That's one reason why there is always so much you can do in practice that you can't do in the milonga. If the floor is chaotic and stressful and generally hard to deal with, my technique will be weaker and I'll make a lot more errors, my improvisation will be much more repetitive, and I'll deal with it much less gracefully if I accidentally do something I didn't know how to do.

In some places, it's very difficult, and in others it's easy, but I find I can deal with it; better or worse depending on the difficulty level.

Do you always lead?
No, it depends on the situation. To some milongas I go to to lead, to some milongas I go to follow, to some milongas I go to do both. In that case, I usually start the milonga leading, then switch, and sometimes at that point I will change my 'look' in more than just the shoes. Sometimes I decide when I get there.

Which do you prefer?
Supposing other things to be equal, I usually say that I prefer following because I'm much better at it. I don't think I have enough experience at leading to say whether one is more fun that the other under ideal conditions. I'm finding leading very addictive, perhaps because I've had less experience, and therefore improvement with work is so much more noticeable. The process of discovery is also fun in itself. And the social side is fascinating. At the moment, I'd say that they are very different states of mind and it is a bit like saying whether I prefer steak or icecream. It depends on so many things. Equality is not equivalence.

Leader interaction

I asked Rob for permission to post this photo because I really like how you can see the two men interacting. They're sharing the space, playing in a friendly way, and dancing with each other as well as with their partners.

© Photo Copyright Rob Maskell - social dancing at Abrazos 2, Dartington Hall, Devon, 4-6 May 2012

The ability and desire to do this, is a thing that all my very favourite leaders like about each other. They don't really care about styles, or, when it comes down to it, any specific movements or rules, as such. What they care about is, is he fun to dance behind, near to, in front of? Is he really aware of where other people are? Does he interact with me, take his own space, and use the space in a fun, friendly way?

Richard (on the right), says:

“I remember the moment, I was taking a step forwards and Alan was moving towards me and we both backed out, caught each others eye and smiled about it. I was quite happy to share the floor with him. He's a dominant dancer but you've just got to have confidence in both your own dancing and his. I can see why some might be nervous around him on the floor but I liked him”

Alan (on the left) says:

“but of course you can publish the photo ... I like ...
for what concerns what I felt at that moment ...
pleasure ... only absolute pleasure ..”

And from an earlier post, a friend of mine:

“I really like dancing behind M, it's like he's dancing with me as well. He's quite cheeky, he sort of takes and gives space, with permission. I really enjoy it.”

You can do a lot more when the dancers have such confidence in each other, themselves, and the situation, that they don't need to see each other as obstacles (or indeed missiles) to be avoided. Humans just work better that way. But getting there takes a lot of work from a lot of people.

Fair Play on the dancefloor

A gentleman wrote to me about this photograph (taken by me standing on a chair) of dancing couples at about midnight on a Friday night in Devon:

Abrazos Devon

“What we loved about the line of dance photo was the beauty of men collectively dancing together,and fair play triumphing. So suitable for most Englishmen, when they're given the option.”

I think 'fair play' is exactly the right notion for tango. It is play - it is not art. It can, optionally, be sort of  competitive, when people feel like it, and that's totally fine and all part of the fun and satisfaction. But when it comes down to it, it's play, and not playing fair doesn't make you a creative genius, it makes you a sociopath, or at least a pillock. It makes you, in short, a cheat, and not fun to play with. You play as well as you can, and if it's better than someone else, everyone respects that. But you play fair.

The above rather lovely line of dance  is exactly what you would expect British dancers to do, given the choice, if they just behaved normally and made tango their own, something they do for fun in their own warm and fuzzy way for their own reasons, and might do rather well if they put some work in -  instead of treating it as some exotic bullshit that isn't supposed to make sense.

My correspondent - who is visible somewhere in the photo, but I don't know where as I don't know him by sight - described this large-scale cooperative dancefloor as 'particularly moving', and added:

“I think you might be surprised how strongly some of our men feel about this. They don't like the men who try subtly to cheat the system.”

As the under-13 street cricket club in my car park say, "You got to do it properly! If you don't do it properly, it's Not Out!"

A perfect British queue

Abrazos Devon, Friday night: 85% UK attendees, maybe 1.5m space per couple, absolutely bloody perfect 2-lane ronda with a clear space all the way down the middle. The revolution has already happened.

Abrazos, Devon, Friday 6th May 2011 at some point between 11pm and 01:30

This happened totally naturally: nobody had to announce anything or put up any notices: nobody had think about it: everyone knew perfectly well what to do: it happened as easily as driving round a roundabout, standing on the right of the escalator and walking on the left, or forming a single queue for three automatic ticket machines. Pretty much as you ought to expect in Britain, if you thought about it.

Minor Injury, with picture

Now, this is a very minor injury, and a very common one, but it hurt a lot for quite a while. It had more or less already healed by the time I took this picture. It happens all the time, and it's caused by one couple invading another couple's space to such a degree that one woman's heel passes across the other woman's instep. If this happens, and you caused it, it probably means you were tailgating. Don't.

It's difficult in London because the standard of dancing is generally low and varies wildly from place to place and night to night, but it's not rocket science.

There's a comment on Arlene's blog today which appears to say (I cannot believe it sincerely means this, that's just too bizarre) that the writer suffers from a psychological problem that prevents him having good floorcraft, no matter how hard he tries. If this is you - what entitles you to take out your psychological problem with violence on women's bodies, or indeed men's, is exactly nothing. Intentional or otherwise. Seek appropriate professional treatment; if it is ineffective and your illness means you can't dance, it means you can't dance, it doesn't mean you have a right to come and batter me. I am sorry for you, and I hope you get better soon, but that doesn't mean I should put up with being battered and say that it's OK. Nope. It's not OK to come dancing if you have the measles, either, or a streaming cold. That's what it means to be an adult human being.

Nobody thinks you did it on purpose, and nobody cares. We just want you to stop hurting and embarrassing us. Just stop it. Do whatever you need to do. Print this out and take it to your therapist, or your tango instructor, if that would help.

This injury is not the fault of the woman whose heel did it: she is keeping her heels down near the floor, or this wouldn't even be possible. And she doesn't have eyes in the back of her head.

I got this on my first Friday back after Les Cigales. At Cigales I did seven milongas, all as long or twice as long as a normal London one, without a single injury of any kind.

Some interesting emails

From a couple of weeks ago. Emphasis mine.

Email 1:

“Contents: This class is designed to help students understand the notion of connection in tango as a technical tool. We will teach you to dance from your centre with the whole body using your intention to connect with your partner, the music, the ground and the rest of the dancers on the dance floor.”

I don't remember that last bit being mentioned in the ad for a class at Negracha before. I could be wrong. Sounds like a good thing, anyway.

Email 2:

“n.b :We welcome all styles, and with a dance floor as large as ours we are happy this is possible. Our only request is that we respect each others space (no overtaking, stepping back into someone else's space, wild crossing into other peoples lanes etc!), making our milonga a happy social gathering, where everyone can safely and blissfully dance together!”

I don't remember reading that message before, either, but that could be because I live too far away from this particular place to think about going under normal circumstances, and didn't read that far down. Nice, though, I like it. It definitely encourages me to consider going there.

Email 3:

“we're running - for the very first time - a course on choreography. ... By the end of the course, you will not only have learnt new skills, but you should also find that your social dancing has indirectly benefited.”

What interests me about this one is that the writer felt that mentioning that possible benefit would be a good idea. It's nice to hear they have that in mind.

Postcards from the Salon

[Update 25/01/10: The milonga at this venue is cancelled, probably permanently - they're looking for a new one]

I think that some people I talk to who haven't danced anywhere but London, sometimes assume that there are only two points on the continuum, London and Buenos Aires, with nothing in between. They take it for granted that the standard of dancing and the standard of experience in London must be at least normal, and they conclude that defensive driving, being frequently kicked and bumped, and continually having to master fight-or-flight in a zigzagging, jerking, braking, crashing, bouncing, incoherent, amusical, unpredictable dog's dinner of variously oblivious, incompetent, maddened, tense and frustrated people is just what comes with the tango territory.

With no experience of the real normal, as you might find, say, an hour away in Eton, or a few hours away in Scotland or Germany or the south of France, they're not convinced that any change is possible or necessary. It is, but they will only be convinced by experience, not assertion.

So I think it's important, and it makes a real difference, to create at least one space where people can experience an orderly floor and a relaxed atmosphere. They're trying to do this at 33 Portland Place with the “salon room” downstairs. They have a dedicated room, with a playlist that's trying hard, a notice on the wall and sweet little flyers with basic instructions. Their website is pure Flash so I can't copy and paste, but I've taken a screenshot which should be readable if you click on it. (I think the rather un-idiomatic English is because the first version was dictated by Adrian Costa).

So far, whenever I've gone there, it's more or less worked and delivered an orderly floor on which I could relax and dance properly at least 70 percent of the time. The first four times I went, I didn't get kicked or bumped even once - not a touch. There were people who didn't realise there were rules, and there were people who did but who had technical problems following them (more on that another time) but not enough all at once to screw it up completely.

It tends to work best for the first half of the evening.

I don't actually agree with the flyer's implication that this represents a particular style of dancing beyond the literal meaning of tango salon, that is, tango for a social dance hall as opposed to a stage. For example, I wouldn't, based on my own experience alone, contrast it to ‘nuevo’. Twenty-odd people on the First Friday of each month who have all said Yes to a Facebook page that says, among other things:

You will be expected to dance in an anti-clockwise route around the dance floor, not overtake, and dance appropriately i.e. no drops or aerials etc. Practice moves are not to be done on the dance floor but to the side out of harms way."

have in my experience actually delivered a very orderly and relaxing floor for at least the first two to three hours downstairs at Negracha, where the music is definitely ‘nuevo’. (Last Friday I could even live with a lot of the music). However, I understand why it makes sense to talk about it as an alternative ‘style’. It's easier for people to consider learning a new ‘style’ than it is to consider becoming courteous and competent - and if the result is the same, I'm willing to overlook a little therapeutic lying to smooth the transition.

I don't know about you but it's shocking how much better I dance, and for how much longer, when I'm not in physical fear.

Who was General Melée, anyway?

I have noticed recently that as soon as there isn't a general melée, it becomes possible for people to tell when they personally do something that eats space or disrupts the flow, because now it makes a difference, when it didn't before. People who always assumed their own floorcraft was fine and all the bumps were someone else's fault, suddenly have convincing evidence that something they normally do, doesn't work.

So they change it. Two or three partners have told me that they were changing their dance for this reason, and I have heard the same about others.

And on the occasion I'm thinking of, even though quite a few people were beginner-to-middling dancers who danced rather mechanically, and so found maintaining the flow quite challenging, it still worked and I didn't get a single touch, even though it was full enough to go to two lanes.

Luckily, it seems the things that do work are often the ones that are simple to lead and follow, which doesn't hurt at all. Ghost noticed that, here, and he experiments with some easy but powerful skills, here.

Convoy observations

A few friends practiced convoying again last Friday. It was a hoot and Ghost has written it up here. (I know I said I wasn't going to Negracha that night - I changed my mind when I found I could get a lift home and remembered they serve coffee downstairs now).

It was fun to do. All three leaders reported feeling more relaxed as part of a convoy, regardless of their position in it. From the woman's point of view, I'd add that all three followers were able to abandon active follower floorcraft (by which I mean keeping watch, as opposed to merely keeping your heels down and not interfering with navigation) and just dance.

As Ghost says, the leaders didn't need any advanced skills to do it. A recent beginner would probably find it quite easy - and very enjoyable - to join in, although it may help if you can dance small and in close embrace. He felt as though it enabled him to get a lot more joy out of simpler dancing. To that, I'd add that likewise the followers only need to be able to follow basic things in a predictable way. (But the predictability IS necessary. If you decided to stop following, stand still and waft your knees around for half a minute, you might or might not look decorative, but you'd be sabotaging navigation and none of this stuff would work).

It took more determination and experience than we had available to try it upstairs as a group at a packed-out Negracha with a band playing. Sexteto Milonguero, however, were top-class.

My own observation was that if I think about only good and considerate dancers, I feel those who try to maintain a relatively constant speed and let everything wash past them still bump me less, on the whole, than those who actively try to avoid bumps by navigating around problems in such a way that they have to speed up and slow down a lot. I'm tempted to say that 'passive' floorcraft seems to work better than 'active' floorcraft. The problem with it is, if you're on your own, that a sort of pebble-sorting process tends to spit you out into the middle of the floor, where you rotate on the spot, stranded. But purposeful cooperation with known allies works strikingly better than either. You need your friends to help you.

Questions for further research included:

• What is the best response to someone cutting into a three-inch gap directly from the tables?
• What is the best response to a couple who are completely stationary and oblivious, whether wittering, snogging, dancing salsa or trying to exchange knees?

Floorcraft experiments, Learning Tango, links and thinks

Recently the guys at Learning Tango (mostly Ghost and David Bailey, who regularly comment here, especially Ghost) have started to think about more general questions of why the London tango scene is like it is, rather than like anything else, and what kinds of things have an influence on it.

In particular, they've been studying floorcraft.

They'd written a lot about floorcraft already, but after I wrote something about a class on it, Ghost and DB wanted to test the ideas. We tried some small-space dancing at a practica, using some chairs and bags to make boundaries and fit four couples in a space the size of a rug. That made sure everybody understood what works.

Then, with me and another lady, DB and Ghost tried an experiment downstairs at Negracha. We wanted to find out what happens if two leaders in a challenging environment (general chaos, including at least one couple who were "stationary and dancing salsa") intentionally cooperate to create a line of dance. That is, not just one couple following another but the leader in front also working to keep a constant distance to the one behind. (We had this idea from someone who'd seen it done in Buenos Aires on a visit a week before). Ghost describes what happened in Join the Conspiracy.

David Bailey then has a think about it and considers declaring War on Hoggers, but being a humanitarian type he also reflects on why people hog, and refers to Ghost's piece on Milonga Self-Defence, which refers to Sun Tzu. Then Ghost tries to work out how all that fits in with musicality in Flowing Floorcraft.

And Simba, on his own blog, has a post on floorcraft here, partly in response to the one of mine where I was asking whether the length of songs matters, and how you would know. He considers a lot more factors and continues to make good arguments in the comments thread.

"Learning Tango" (previously "Jivetango") is basically a sort of peer-to-peer approach to the difficulties of learning tango, specifically when you've started from another dance, like Modern Jive. The articles are interesting. I don't always agree with what they write, but both Ghost and David Bailey have the gift of making productive mistakes, and even when I don't agree with them I usually still learn something that makes me think more carefully about what I thought I thought, and think new things. There are lots of articles about the process of learning, and passing advice around that seems useful. Ghost has also been trying out the 'nod' in MJ, with interesting results, here and here.

Floorcraft and the length of tangos

Lengths of tangos in my collection, by Traditional and Nuevo, including milonga and vals:

Why?

Ghost, a frequent commenter on this blog, observed to me that when he was last downstairs at Negracha, the lane system was much more noticeable than usual.

He put it down to there being a live band, who were playing short songs, so that "the log-jam effect was for a significantly smaller portion of the time". There were also fewer people dancing than usual, and they may well have been the more competent or experienced than average, and more able and motivated to create lanes, but I think the observation about song length is quite interesting.

Does the length of a piece influence the problems of floorcraft? It seems quite plausible. What the log-jam video shows is that small errors accumulate over time. It seems reasonable to suppose that when everyone stops, they sort themselves out and start again.

It also seems quite possibly testable. DJ readers: is this something you think you already knew?

I've divided it into traditional and nuevo because the mix of lengths seems to be very different, and that difference presents a problem for testing Ghost's theory — the problem of controlling for musical style. You'd have to play short and long tracks in the same general style, and ideally in the same tanda, to make a good test. Then, of course, you would have to work out some way of measuring the results, ideally without relying on self-reporting. A video camera placed well above the floor might be one possible way.

In the traditional tracks, there isn't that big a range to work with. Now, that could be because traditional compositions have been subject to a longer period of selection by dancers and DJs, and have converged on an optimum range of lengths for dancing. Or it could be because they were written to be played live, and musicians prefer short ones, whereas CD players don't care. Or both, or something else. I don't think my classification of any track as one genre or the other would be controversial; my collection's not that interesting.

It's also small, and contains a lot of Di Sarli in proportion to the total, so that may be distorting the results. Here are the numbers:

          Traditional     Nuevo
1:30-2:00       1            1
2:00-2:29       27           1
2:30-2:59       101          8
3:00-3:29       46           4
3:30-3:59       13           7
4:00-4:29       2            4
4:30-4:59       1            2
5:00-5:29       0            1
5:30-5:59       0            1
6:00-6:29       0            2
6:30-6:59       0            0
7:00-7:30       0            1

I think that traditional music also includes more milongas and valses, and maybe these are characteristically short; I have not looked at that. It might be interesting to do so. If you were going to test the effect of length on the number of bumps, it might be very good to do so in a tanda of milonga or vals, because the relatively fixed rhythmic patterns would somewhat smooth out the differences between individual pieces of music. But you'd need a big music collection, I think.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it:

In the comments (or by email) I invite you to suggest a possible three or four-track tanda that could be used to measure the effect of track length, if any, on bumps.

Or, of course, you can say whatever you want in the usual way.

Raising expectations

Yesterday I went to the Crypt earlier than I usually would because it was Adrian and Amanda Costa, and I wanted to take the class. Unfortunately I still missed the first third, partly because of the rugby, but mainly because I'd forgotten my Tube route was partially down for some scheduled repairs. It would have been rude to join at that point, and it was also extremely full (good thing, too) so I just watched and listened with a cup of tea. But I was told this:

Adrian had started the class by explaining and demonstrating the rhythmic distinction between milonga, tango, and tango-vals, and how to tell the difference.

And I am pretty sure of this:

This simple, necessary information was new to a large proportion of the students, most of whose faces were not new to me, and most of whom had been dancing for more than one year. And important parts of it would have been new to me, too, if I hadn't happened to take that class with Joaquín Amenábar.

Which — is a scandal. And here I cut two paragraphs of rant: but I think it's a scandal and I don't really give a bugger what the excuses are.

So, back to the class. Adrian gives pretty good quotes and I really wished I had a dictaphone, but in running for my train I had neglected to bring even a pencil and paper. So paraphrases of what stuck are the best I can do.

"If the traspié it is there in the music I can choose, to do it or not to do it. If it is not there I cannot do it."

(The class was working with a tango here, not a milonga, and by traspié he meant what is usually called "double-time" in English, in the sense of double the number of steps, each of them in half the time.)

The class was asked to dance doing whatever they liked, but mostly just walking, and always doing the double-time only when it was there in the music, not always then, and not otherwise.

And the women were expected to listen, too! Amanda assumed that we could figure out ourselves how to do whatever ornament we liked, and told us to do one for the traspié if and only if the traspié was there but the man didn't put a step in himself. The women were not treated as being there to serve, nor were we treated as lawn ornaments, studying to look as nearly as possible like a tasteful display of identical plastic flamingos. It was assumed without apology or discussion that we were there to learn to dance well, for our own pride and enjoyment; that this was a possible goal; that it was worth attaining, without other justification; that we were capable of attaining it, with some work; and that we wanted to do so. Yay!

Towards the end Adrian made the class stand still and listen again to the entire tango, pointing out that it repeated the same pattern, with the double-time in the same place each time, and a suspension (opposite of a double-time) also in the same place each time, and if you missed it the first time, the ability to count to seven and find the start of the musical phrase gave you numerous other chances. He pointed out that this is very common in tango. There are repetitions following some structure that you can understand and predict with fair reliability if you can count to eight and listen as you do. Yay!!

The class concluded with a rather long lecture, and hardly anybody dropped out. They all appeared to be listening carefully. All of it would, if applied, make anyone who heard it dance better. Yay again!!!

"There are two kinds of dancers, dancers and movers. If I don't know why I am doing what I am doing, I am just moving. If I hear it and I choose to do it, I am dancing, even if I am like this [contortions, posture of an old man]. If I choose not to do it, I am still dancing."

That last one reminded me of the class they gave on Friday at Conway Hall, which was about floorcraft, and nothing else.

"If I am this close to him [too close to the man in front] I cannot go here, because he is there. I cannot go here, because the woman is there, and I cannot see. I cannot go this way, because it is a backward step and I cannot see. I have no possibility at all. But if I am this close [leaving a metre of space] I have many possibilities."

Yes! It was made explicit that you do not step into the blind spot. You do not step backwards. You leave space, just like on the motorway. You look where you are going, not at the steering wheel. You do not weave from lane to lane. Whenever you learn a new figure, said Adrian, before you make use of it in the milonga, you have to practice it; and when you do that, you find out which way you'll be facing when it ends. If it's any way other than forwards in the line of dance, or if the figure means that you change lanes, step backwards, or step into the blind spot, it's your responsibility to work out how to start it or adapt it so that you don't have to do those things. You can make your salida diagonal so you don't have to cross lanes sideways into traffic. Women were given advice about posture and footwork that helped to keep everything straight and the couple to move with confidence and safety and control.

I know!! Shocking!!!

And the point was this: if everybody follows these rules, it does not matter at all what style you dance — you can do whatever the hell you want, whatever you think is right for the music, whatever appeals to you, because everybody is respecting each other and giving each other enough space and not taking more than their fair share. Everybody gets to share the love. Everybody gets to see what you create. Nobody has to feel restricted. Again, I wish I'd had a dictaphone, because that's what I heard rather than what he said, but you can ask anyone.

The whole class was made, through various exercises, to follow these rules for one dance, and it was a revelation. Everybody had space; the whole room was dancing together, each couple doing its thing, not a chaotic mess of predators competing for territory, but a large gathering of consenting adults there to have fun.

It only lasted five minutes and it instantly fell apart when we tried to do something else as well, but I can only hope those five minutes left an impression on the participants that the skills of basic respect for your fellow dancers were skills worth aspiring to, worth giving some attention, and worth encouraging in other people. And I at least had fewer bumps for the rest of the evening than I usually do there. I think the total was one and a bit.

And since those little rules of thumb sound more complicated than they are, here is a diagram of Adrian and Amanda, with the green arrows showing safe directions and the red dotted line showing the contrary. Suppose that the couple are in the outside lane, the wall or seating is to the right, and the boundary with the inside lane is about where the arrow marked 'line of dance' is. (For example, you can see that they could rotate a little bit to the right about their centre, and walk straight; or they could go the way they're already pointing and zigzag, pivoting at the boundary; or if they took one step in that direction they could then quite safely do a clockwise turn about the woman's axis).



I don't think A&A are coming here again till October, but I hope they do because this sort of teaching, and the sort of dancing they do, raises people's expectations of themselves, of their teachers, and of each other. More, please.

xx Very Stroppy Phase of Moon Hedgehog

Traffic Jams

While I'm feeling scientific, I'd love to compare this - below - with a video of a dance floor. I don't see why you couldn't do exactly the same experiment.



Would the traffic jams - if any - follow a similar mathematical rule? Specifically, would they propagate backwards at two-thirds of the average speed the dancers go at when there's no traffic?