QUEENNNNWIGSTAN
@gay-impressionist and everyone else who might be curious: it’s all about the control they have over their muscles. Georgian dancers are renowned (at least in the theatre world) for having some of the most complex footwork— while the males are supposed to dance mostly through their feet and keep their upper half as rigid as possible, the female dancers are supposed to express themselves through their hands and heads only, their skirts concealing their walking/gliding.
What is happening is that Georgian dancers and ballet dancers are pretty similar when it comes to the effort they must use in order to show themselves as graceful on stage as possible, but while ballet dancers are using pointes to hold themselves on their toes during certain movements, female Georgian dancers wear shoes that have a bit of high heels and are, more or less, tiptoeing across the stage, with steps as small and quick as possible so the audience doesn’t have a chance to pay attention to the way their skirts spin everytime they take another step.
tl;dr The secret is that they are tiptoeing as fast as they can in the rythm of the music while keeping up the appearance that they are gliding across the floor.
I am not a Georgian, nor have I trained myself in their traditional dances, but I appreciate their culture’s dances so I thought I might explain what is actually happening (sorry if that didn’t make too much sense, I am not a professional dancer, just a very observant admirator).
That is very cool, and the explanation makes the dancing even more impressive! Thanks for the info!
On a similar note, when I read about some character moving so smoothly they appear to glide over the floor, I will be imagining they’re taking tiny fast steps.