toe dance
English
editAlternative forms
editNoun
edittoe dance (plural toe dances)
- A dance performed on the balls of the feet or en pointe.
- 1962, W. Cleon Skousen, So You Want to Raise a Boy?, page 65:
- In the excitement of trying to get the ball launched he may do a momentary toe dance, then crouch, stand, skip, or run before finally lobbing the ball a total of perhaps seven feet.
- 1983, Roger Copeland, Marshall Cohen, What is Dance?: Readings in Theory and Criticism, page 40:
- Even the toe dance, so much despised by Isadora Duncan and by the schools she inspired, is essentially creative, not athletic.
- 1985, Frets - Volume 7, page 23:
- This is a toe dance that alternates between the toe ( more specifically, the ball of the foot ) and the heel.
- 1988, Judith Lynne Hanna, Dance, Sex, and Gender, page 125:
- The eclipse of male supremacy in dancing onstage began in the 1830s when Marie Taglioni established a foothold for women, employing the toe dance as an essential element of ballet.
- The act of avoiding an issue by equivocation, complicated diplomacy, or changing the subject.
- 1994, United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Foreign Relations. Subcommittee on African Affairs, U.S. policies toward Liberia, Togo, and Zaire:
- One of my concerns, frankly, is that we are just kind of, you know, we hold a hearing and we talk about it a little bit, and then it disappears from the limelight, and we are kind of doing a toe dance around the problems in Liberia rather than really addressing the problems as forcefully as we should.
- 2010, Linda Francis Lee, The Devil in the Junior League: A Novel:
- Even though the wealth is mine, Gordon manages it, which means I still do the toe dance to convince him that “our money,” as he now calls it, is put to good use.
- 2014, Benjamin C. Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy:
- We arrived at Quonset Naval Air Station, where Kennedy warned us as he got up to leave the plane that he had a “little toe dance to do” with Rhode Island's Republican governor, John Chafee, who was meeting the president at the airport.
Verb
edittoe dance (third-person singular simple present toe dances, present participle toe dancing, simple past and past participle toe danced)
- Alternative form of toe-dance
- Dance on ones toes
- 1955, Louis Salisbury Leatham, The Letham or Leatham family book of remembrance:
- It was a common scene for one of the older boys to play the fiddle while the others toe danced.
- 1996, Judy Hogan, The Shade, page 339:
- Twyla Tharp could have toe danced on the counter, and the president wouldn't have noticed.
- 2001, Marshal Royal, Claire P. Gordon, Marshal Royal: Jazz Survivor, page 44:
- He was a big guy, weighed about 260 pounds and he toe danced in ballerina shoes!
- 2007, Katie Kubesh, Niki McNeil, Kimm Bellotto, The History of Footwear, page 13:
- Historians have different opinions how this custom started, but the most accepted theory is that Prince Li Yu, who ruled a southern China kingdom, had a favorite dancer who toe danced inside a high platform shaped like a lotus flower.
- Avoid an issue
- 2013, Lori Micken, Eighty Years in Montana, page 205:
- Doctors toe dance around diagnosis of the disease, too.
- Dance on ones toes