I know this wont help, but i think its a fun annecdote. to fix the "Butt out" problem i had, my friend who was teaching me, it a collegic team with very little funding for a real teacher and hes a close friend of mine, he lead me through repeated basics while holding right above my butt. it really worked. i dont stick my butt out any more. while i would be appaled if a professsional teacher ever did that to any one, it worked well in my situation. ovbously dont go asking your teacher to grab your butt, but i just thought it was a nice "butt out" problem related story.

Hi Anon
I'm confused by this: "unless you do a perfect job of moving your body over your foot and not letting your foot move ahead of your body".
How can you move forward without letting the moving foot go ahead of the body? I think you possibly meant to say something different
But i agree with the general point - working on leg/foot action and correct body flight in relation to these is very important, as is maintaining good posture at all times (this i find most difficult)

No, I said precisely what I meant: you must move your body with your free foot under it - you cannot put your free foot out in advance of your body. At least for going forwards: for backwards and sideways steps, there is room for legitimate debate. But for forwards, the demands of closed hold are, well, demanding.

Hi again Anon
I've watched a couple of dancing videos, including the latest waltz one on this site, and it's clear that the moving foot often does travel in advance of the body.
Look at the very first step of the waltz video here - man's left foot forward, lady right foot back. It's clear that the man's left foot must be pretty close to the lady's right, otherwise when they do the (reverse) turn that follows, the man would still be on the starting blocks.
As you say, the demands of closed position are demanding, and if the lady puts her right foot back, the man must put his left foot forward, otherwise turnng would be impossible.

Yes, that is my principal complaint with the videos here: they demonstrate exactly the posture problems that result from reaching your foot ahead of your body.

Hi again
It's not just the video here - i used that because we both can see the very same movement - it's others as well. i'll get back on this one

That is absolutely incorrect. In fact, just the opposite is true. If you try to keep your foot literally underneath your body, unless your step is tiny, you will invariably pitch -- forward over your partner on forward steps, or back on backward steps.

To resrict the leg swing to half of its normal range of motion is like swinging a golf club until it points straight down, and then attempting to come to a dead stop. The transfer of energy through the ball is compromised. In ballroom, if you don't allow the leg to finish its swing, your transfer of energy through your own foot and ultimately through your partner is likewise compromised, and you end up with a very bumpy ride. You also completely defeat the purpose of taking a heel lead.

I've had a few students come to me from other teachers with the same mistaken notion. Unless the teacher himself was also mistaken, the student's misunderstanding usually stems from the concept that the foot and body must be in motion at the same time. This much is true: If you move your foot without moving your body, it gives an appearance of being disconnected, and when taken to an extreme, will result in the pitching of the body in the opposite direction (eg back-weighted on forward steps, forward-pitched on back steps). But that is not the same as saying that the body must always be positioned over the moving foot.

Whether moving forward *or* backwards, the rule is exactly the same: The body and foot must always be in motion at the same time, but almost never at the same speed. A good (albeit overly simplified) rule of thumb is to make the foot travel at an average of approximately twice the speed of the body. This means that the body is usually half-way between the feet, give or take.

Different speeds, sizes and qualities of steps will call for slight variations of the technique. Sometimes the body moves slightly faster, being closer to the speed of the foot (say, for example, on a Tipsy or Scatter Chasse in Quickstep), and sometimes the body moves a lttle slower than half the speed of the foot. Even on a basic slow walking action, the speed of the body and feet are not perfectly constant throughout the single movement. As the feet part, the foot may be moving at 2.5x the speed of the body, and as you approach mid-stride, the foot may be down to equal speed before it stops moving and takes weight. It's extremely complex, and not worth trying to measure every moment and every inch. In the end, if you just think of a 2:1 ratio of foot to body speed, you're in the right ballpark. The rest will take care of itself.

For those who still believe that the foot and body move at the same speed, just take a look at a video of any champion dancing a Feather step, and pause in the middle of the step. Or read the ISTD Technique book's description of a basic walk:

... a position which cannot be achieved when the body is vertically aligned over the front leg. If you try to keep the foot under the body in this way, your weight will not be "equally divided", but immediately transferred from 100% on one foot to 100% on the other. This is an incredibly awkward way to move, unless the step is so small that it doesn't involve any type of leg swinging action.

Regards,
Jonathan Atkinson

The proof is in the videos: reaching the feet distorts the bodies. Learning to move the body with the foot hanging underneath eliminates this problem - but yes, it's possible to fall until you get the hang of it.

Whnever arguing efficiency, we must remember that what is most efficient for a single body is not necessarily what would be most efficient for two bodies pressed together: closed hold involves a sacrifice - like many other areas of dancing such as shaping, it is as much about judgement as about physical capability, and often the top couples are doing LESS than the semifinalists. You can refuse to make the compromise for posture/connection and instead optomize for travel, but if you do so you will never achieve the clean look of the couples who optomize for partnering and achieve their travel through projection off the standing leg.

I didn't realize we had such posture problems. Thanks for letting me know.

Naturally there's always room for improvement. If you video tape yourself, you will always find little things that bother you, just as we do. I can look at any one of my video clips on this website and say, "My left side should have been more picked up here" or "I lowered a little bit late there", etc. But looking at the last Waltz variation, I see no major fundamental posture problems.

When I do have an occasional posture mistake, I assure you, it's not related my leg speed or leg division. If I were to do as you suggest and stifle my movement in such a way as to never allow my leg to swing, it wouldn't make things better. In fact, it would do just the opposite... I would suffer serious posture problems. Not to mention movement problems, partnering problems, and a whole host of other problems not worth mentioning.

When you say, "What is most efficient for a single body is not necessarily what would be most efficient for two bodies", you're absolutely correct. But that has nothing to do with the price of anchovies. If you can't move efficiently with proper leg division while in dance position, that's only because you haven't figured out how to do it yet, not because it can't be done.

You also say that "The reaching of the feet distorts the bodies", another statement which is only half-true. It *can*, if you do it wrong. But any correct action has the potential to be done wrong. (Just to clarify, the feet don't "reach", they point or flex. It's the *legs* that extend). It's not the extension of the legs that distorts the bodies, but the attempt to over-extend by including the hip in the reaching that causes the body to pitch or distort. The legs do not have to affect the torso, as can be proven by doing the splits. When done correctly, the body can stay perfectly upright and totally unaffected while the legs continue to extend outward away from the body. Likewise, when walking, the legs can extend away from the body, and as long as the hip doesn't tilt, and as long as the legs extend more or less equally, the body can remain prefectly upright, still and unaffected as it moves through space.

It is just as much a mistake to put all of your stock the standing leg as it is into the moving. If you only move one leg away from the body, it soon causes distortion whether it be the standing or moving leg. Attempting to restrain the moving leg under the body causes the same undesirable results that "reaching" does. The only difference is that you are "reaching" the standing leg instead of the moving leg. The best solution, therefore, is not to "reach" either leg, but to extend them both away from the body at about an equal rate. When moving from foot to foot, this translates to extending the moving foot away from the body at approximately the same rate as the body is moving away from the standing foot.

We've trained for years with top industry pros and champions, and I have yet to hear any of them argue in favor of holding the moving foot directly under the body. That's because they don't do it themselves (not even the top 6), and it can be easily proven by watching them on tape, or by taking a lesson with them. To imply that the semi-finalists extend their moving legs and the finalists don't is a ridiculous proposition. The differences between semi and finalists on a technical level are far more subtle than that -- the primary differences are non-technical, such as power, volume, artistry, and athleticism. Anyone in the top 12 or even 24 could teach you and I a great deal about dancing, but not a single one would have you keep your leg directly under the body throughout the walking action. Not the 12, not the 6, not even the world champion.

The only people who even come close to what you're espousing (and it's not really *close*, just *closer*) is not competitors, but the ISTD exam types. There's definitely a difference between the philosophies of the "book" crowd and the competitive crowd. The book crowd prefers a slightly smaller leg division and a later lowering with greater foot pressure to the arriving foot, whereas the competitive crowd prefers an earlier lowering, resulting in a greater drive and leg swing on the following action. You can probably tell from our videos that we prefer the competitive technique -- I've had enough training from the book crowd to know how their technique works, and I don't like the look or feel of it. Nonetheless, as I said earlier, even the book crowd doesn't have the moving foot directly under the body. They know, as well as the competitors, that it's imperative to have the moving foot get out ahead of the body. The only way the two philosophies differ is in how much.

But if watching videos of the pros doesn't convince you, you might just want to take a cue from your own body. It is designed to move smoothly and efficiently. When you walk or run in everyday life, your legs naturally swing out ahead of the body. Having a partner in front of you does not alter your physiology, nor does it restrict you from completing an action as fundamental as the natural swinging of your leg.

Regards,
Jonathan

You can believe what ever you want.

But high level dancers in the English tradition do not put their leg ahead of their body, because doing so causes it to interfere with their partner's body. Those who do put the leg there arch their lower backs to create space for their partner's leg while maintaining a belly contact. Once you know what to look for, this shows up quite dramatically - and indeed, it is often one of the most clear differences between semi-finalist and finalist quality dancing, because while they are so similar in all of the areas people usually watch, the difference in this aspect can be like night and day.

It's interesting how the top few actually dance far closer to the book than anyone else - while everyone else argues that the book is just for beginners.