#floorcraft

Pista Definition In its simplest form, pista is the Spanish word for the dance floor. But here, in the heart of Buenos Aires, to call it just a floor is like calling a Stradivarius just a violin. The pista is the sacred ground, the canvas, the breathing entity upon which the story of tango is written, night after night. It is the fifth wall of the milonga, the one that holds all the…

FEIN Floorcraft Flooring Tool fits the FEINest floors!

This issue we join Jasper, a young self-employed joiner to discuss his work, his views on buying tools and his review of the newly launched value pack range, focusing on FEIN’s new Best of Flooring set.

Jasper Cochrane is a 24-year kitchen fitter who last October started his very own joinery business, specialising in flooring.

Following years of testing out different careers, he decided to follow in his dad’s footsteps, with him and his younger brother both taking on joinery apprenticeships.

“My dad was kind (and patient) enough to put us both through the 4 years of training, creating a family business. After completing my apprenticeship, I worked for bigger joinery firms but decided that I would rather start up my own company, as I wanted to guarantee an excellent finish every time – something which wasn’t possible working for a large firm.”

So it was that Floorcraft was born, which finds self-employed Jasper undertaking all levels of flooring jobs, ranging from small-scale domestic to large-scale commercial jobs.

“I often work with high-quality materials, which can be pretty nerve-wracking sometimes, because if anything goes wrong, it’s all down to me.

The perks of being self-employed! As well as flooring, I ensure high-quality finishings and can extend my work to other aspects of joinery; whatever is needed to complete the space.

Starting out as a new business can be tough, but I have received support from family and firms, which has enabled me to purchase high-performance tools.

I love researching tools, saving up and buying the ones I think are the coolest, but also have quality and power. Let’s be honest, you get what you pay for in life.

Bottom line – If the tool helps me get jobs completed well, and faster, then ultimately I make bigger profit margins, which is good for the wallet, and for a start-up like Floorcraft.

This is why FEIN is now one of my favourite brands because the quality of the tools they produce is excellent and without compromise, something hard to find in modern power tools.

Things like the anti-vibration features on the FEIN MultiMaster is world-class, and I jumped on the opportunity to test their ‘Flooring Value Pack’ in the UK, which contains an HSS segmented blade, an E-Cut saw blade and a scraper blade.

I used the pack on-site while loading six ceilings with service hatches for a hotel based in Glasgow, and while delivering new flooring for a property that was experiencing damp issues around the owners UVC front door.

For the hotel fit, I used the HSS blade to cut out sections for the hatches in the plasterboard ceiling, before plastering.

I then used a round sanding pad on the multi-tool to sand down the heavier bits of plaster, and some of the MDF hatch pieces, before painting.

For the property, I used the E-Cut blade to deliver undercutting of the doors, and facings before sliding the flooring underneath. I also delivered some small cutouts on the flooring itself.

Despite putting money down on the machine, I had used other manufacturer blades in addition to FEIN’s, FEIN’s blades clearly being of higher quality. I’ll be filling my toolbox with FEIN Starlock from now on.”

As a lead, floorcraft begins with your own awareness on the floor. Your movement and space occupied at any given time, where you came from and where you are going to be; at least one move ahead, or perhaps even within the next 2 bars of eight.

Then secondly is the awareness of your dance partner, taking into account their direction of movement, momentum or their inertia nature. They could just be spinning on the spot.

Third and final point is the immediate group of dancers within your vicinity. This is often just two or three sets of dancing couples. Although I wouldn't expect the lead to know where the other sets of dancers are heading, leads should at least know where they are relative to the direction they are heading.

If the lead is very good, they can often evaluate the single closest set of dancers, the people who are immediately within range of interaction; where they have been and where they might be heading too.

In Lindy, the leads stay anchored to one spot most of the time. So most of the time it’s only really only the follows the leads need to be aware of, to help aid in the avoidance of colliding them together.

If it is easier for the lead, rather than thinking of each individual dancer on the dance floor, think of each dancing couple as a single unit, which stretch open and closed at various points in time.

Let’s look at the swing out. If the lead is moving with the follow during the swing out, oppose to the been the anchor (staying in one spot) the lead is not only making it harder for other leads to observe, the lead is doubling if not tripling the chances of collisions on a tightly packed dance floor. Also for a follow this normally equates to sub par swing outs because the lead is not acting as an anchor, by moving around the lead is disorientating themselves from their follow. Generally, stay in one place leads otherwise follows have a hard time too!

Let’s keep with the swing out example here and talk about saves. So your about to send your follow into a swing out, you are on the count of four and a bit, you’ve looked over your shoulder to make sure it is clear and you spot out of the corner of your eye a potential collision. You’ve managed to keep hold of your follow and pull them in for a closed Lindy circle. Okay fine, but what if you weren’t an anchor and you were moving too much in the direction of the swing out? Yep you guessed it! As both you and your dance partner swing around each other in the lindy circle, the travelling nature of you not remaining the anchor will cause you to collide with the other dancing couple.

Arguably we are not pointing fingers to say whose fault it or isn’t, it just an insight to preventative measures against colliding on the dance floor.

Let’s now talk about a travelling move, like the promo-not with pecks. You know the one Frankie used to do a lot. You can use the fact that the follow moves backwards and the lead is slightly offset. Not only can the lead see behind the follow, the lead can take a pre-emptive measure to avoid collisions and also any knee knocking! Whenever both of you travel it is ‘mostly’ the leads responsibility to look out for any potential collisions. In a situation where the follow cannot see the path they are travelling but the lead can, then the responsible entirely rests with the lead.

So now you’ve done everything you can; your collision rate has dropped significantly, however you’ve just collided either you and/or follow into someone else or they have into you. What to do? Politely apologise making eye contact while you do to both, ask if your follow is okay (just the once is fine) build connection and continue to dance. By the way I can not express enough how much a good connection helps with Floorcraft, but that discussion is beyond the scope of this article.

Another example would be a double outside turn. The connected hands, which are above the follow's head plays a vital role, without the quality of connection, to perform a save would be very difficult for us leads. Knowing the way the hands are connected and the changing compression and tension as the follow spins is a skill in it self, however an arm places between the follow's waist and the direction they are heading is an acceptable measure, rather than just watching your follow collide into another dancing couple that is...

Okay how about a really bad collision? You’ve just performed a pop outside jump spin or something to that effect, and either you or your follow has either knocked over/out or drop elbowed someone in the head, basically anything beyond a simple collision. Guys; especially if you lead that move, hang your head in shame. You should not be performing ariels on a crowded dance floor or any move which involves a high energy rotational and/or jump into or from it. Get some help, are you doing these moves because that is all you know how to do when you excited by the music. Are you trying to impress your follow or others, because you just failed at it. Ask your teacher for a hand or classes in Floorcraft, or go else where to learn these techniques.

From what I gather the moment you lose your awareness on the floor and you collide your follow more than a few times, they normally lose trust in you and the dance and you have to work damn hard to get it back. But the follows won’t often let you catch on to this minor detail because in general they are all different with their opinion in the rate at which you fail at good Floorcraft. This opens up yet into another field, but it is yet again beyond the scope of this article.

So please be nice, build the trust, build your awareness, be polite and most of all have fun!

Different Types

I have tried to categorise the dancing styles which influence floorcraft and how it can be perceived.

Aggressive

Smooth & Subtle

Wreaking Balls

Beauty & the Beast

Chitty Bang Bang

Odd One’s Out

Aggressive

These guys are normally intermediate to advance dancers, they know the moves and are in fact pretty good. However they dominate the floor with such aggressiveness, no one really wants to be near them just in case. Of course these guys don’t see it as aggressive. They are just been expressive and displaying their attitude on the dance floor, which isn't always a bad thing but when every dance involves aggressive floor craft maybe it time to learn how to be different on the floor and produce a different look & feel.

Smooth & Subtle

Can you fault this style? Yes, depending upon the situation. Is there any dynamics to your dancing? If you are always smooth and subtle, this could get boring? Is the space on the dance floor? If so, why not use it? (Note: this does not mean that you should try and use the whole of the dance floor, just enough so that you are comfortable)

Wreaking Balls

Yes you know who they are! Taking the biggest rock steps, fully extending and smashing into every dancer on the floor. If you are involved in more than 2 - 3 collisions on the dance floor, unfortunately  you could be classed as a wreaking ball. Don’t immediately blame others, think carefully about where you are in relation to your dance partner. Also as painful as it may be to have someone step on or kick you, be courteous at all times and understand that these guys aren’t out to hurt you but hopefully they will get the message when others keep away from them. Leads look at where you are placing your follows, and follows help your lead and keep him/her in check! Even when there is plenty of space, I’ve wittiness wreaking balls jumping into others and even once a follow was spun on an outside turn and slapped the other follow in the neck.

Beauty & the Beast

This is either way around, a good lead with an over energetic follow or a follow trying their best to keep their steps small (and their balance) to compensate for the “crazy ride” they are receiving, yet keeping that cool collective smile on their face and giving credit where due.

Chitty Bang Bang

The beginners on the crowded dance floor. Stopping, starting, bouncing on the spot while counting to eight. I have nothing against this, but maybe there are some people out there who believe there isn’t space to accommodate these types of dancers especially on a social night designated more for the intermediate dancers?

Odd One’s Out

Yep, they aren’t lindyhoppers, in fact I don’t think they’ve had a lesson in their life but they sure are doing everything they can to emulate the others around them. Some would argue that this is how the Lindyhop was learnt back in the day by watching and emulating to the best of their abilities. I get a little annoyed by these guys, sure they are having fun but not for the follow when the guys almost dislocated their shoulder with a spin. A lot of the dancers have put time and effort into learning what is safe for the other dancers and how to dance by paying for lessons and investing time in their dancing. These guys come on the dance floor dance at each other while looking at everyone else and not their partner and realizes it’s not as easy as it looks. Luckily they are normally gone or moved on before the track has even ended, and hopefully enlighten that they should come to a lesson too ;)

Overview

So there are a number of things you can do to “improve” floor craft. Namely smaller steps, not making your moves so big that it would encroach upon others on the dance floor. Improving your quality of connection can enable change and to save your follow where required too. Awareness plays a huge part. One thing I notice between the newer and the more experienced dancers is that the newer leads will always be looking out for space on the floor, where as the experienced leads will be mainly looking at the already occupied spaces on the floor and where the other dancers are in relative to themselves and the directions they are heading. This almost leads to sixth sense of where spaces will open up on the floor oppose to where other less experienced leads are about to send their follow into at the same time during your swing out.

As well as technique and picking appropriate moves for each given moment on a crowded dance floor, personal judgement is also greatly involved. Judging timing, musicality, the ability of your dance partner as well as yourself all plays a factor into good floor craft.

Floor craft isn’t just about the awareness of other dancers on the floor and their movement, also your own placement relative to your dance partner.

Anything to add, email me: [email protected]

About a week ago a lead that I admire and enjoy dancing with made an off-hand comment on the social dance floor that took me by surprise. It was blunt and unexpected. For the rest of the night his words haunted me and made me question certain things about my dancing. We parted ways that night still friendly, but his words still hung in the back of mind.

My fear of losing this lead's respect by asking him for an explanation was as great as that nagging thought that I was in some respects a terrible dancer, so going to him about it was not an easy thing.

Last night I ran into him again at a social function, and took a moment to speak with him in private about the issue. Turns out those words were simply tactless, not a cruel critique. He was perceptive enough to notice just how shaken I had been by a thoughtless comment and offered a hug and a private lesson to make up for it.