toe dance

• toedance, toe-dance

toe dance (plural toe dances)

1. 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.

2. 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.

toe dance (third-person singular simple present toe dances, present participle toe dancing, simple past and past participle toe danced)

1. Alternative form of toe-dance
   1. 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.

   2. Avoid an issue
      • 2013, Lori Micken, Eighty Years in Montana, page 205:

        Doctors toe dance around diagnosis of the disease, too.