Yes, he gets it wrong. On the positive side, what he does is consistent with what he suggests, so you can see the problems it causes in the videos here.

Why are you avoiding writing your definition of balance? Also what about a description of a forward walk. I believe I can say this that, Jonathan and I plus many others are keen to read the correct walk action.

because balance is incompatible with continuous motion

It just goes to show you. I've always thought that if I was walking or running and I fell over I had lost my balance. Never mind, you live and learn.

Hi Puzzled,
Guy Howard in his tec book for the IDTA, wrote the following /* The distribution of the weight of the body over the feet. When taking a forward or backward walk there are two points of balance; forward, and when the weight is equally distributed */ Alex Moore wrote /* The correct distribution of the weight of the body when dancing */ And the great Len Scrivener, he wrote /* When dancers talk about balance they usually mean control of the body weight in motion */
Hope this helps you, Puzzled.

I think that the balance of moments during walking should be considered.

The moment of a force is a measure of its tendency to rotate an object about some point. A force is gravity.

Let us assume that the point about moment is the ball of the standing foot and there are no upward or downward movements while walking. If you move your moving foot slowly or at constant velocity you can not move the foot far from the standing foot until you lose the balance on a foot because gravity and the forward moment pulls the weight of the body on the moving foot.

While walking steps can be longer. Thus there must be a backward moment equal to forward moment until the moving foot falls on the floor. Pushing force of the standing foot causes body to accelerate forward. The acceleration forward creates a backward force and moment.

At balance moments mgx=may. Where m=mass of the body, mg=gravity, a=horizontal acceleration of the body, x=horizontal distance and y=vertical distance of forces from the ball of the standing foot.

I hope that somebody with better knowledge in English and terms of physics could describe the balance of moments more clearly.

"Let us assume that the point about moment is the ball of the standing foot and there are no upward or downward movements while walking. If you move your moving foot slowly or at constant velocity you can not move the foot far from the standing foot until you lose the balance on a foot because gravity and the forward moment pulls the weight of the body on the moving foot.

While walking steps can be longer. Thus there must be a backward moment equal to forward moment until the moving foot falls on the floor. Pushing force of the standing foot causes body to accelerate forward. The acceleration forward creates a backward force and moment.
"

You are almost right. Initiating a step, or even lowering for a forward step while maintaining proper body alignment, will take your body weight forward of your most forward support point, and you will start to stumble forwards.

But there is no backwards force that a dancer in an aligned body position can apply to balance this. Instead, they apply an upward force. The vector sum of the stumbling torque, and the upward force from the standing leg is a forward force - so your body accelerates forward.

Many will mistakenly try to pace out their steps by misaligning their body to create a backwards balancing force - really, by keeping their body over their standing foot too long. The problem with this is that they've misaligned their body (put their knee in their parnter's space), and failed to turn the lowering into forward movement, loosing energy.

In coordinated dancing, the lowering's induced stumble is converted directly and proportionally to forward movement. There is no holding back. To make timing, you have to pace the lowering to when you want the step to arrive - don't try to lower and then time your step, time your lowering.

Hi,
It looks like the end of the thread for this query. I wish to thank all contributors for some very interesting comments and surprisingly it did not develop into another topic.

"And the great Len Scrivener, he wrote /* When dancers talk about balance they usually mean control of the body weight in motion */"

Len has an uncanny ability to get to the heart of the matter, avoiding a lot of the potential confusion in the writing of the others. In this case, he's the only one who mentioned the key issue - body weight in motion. When that is true (when you are actually dancing) a lot of what the others wrote in the way of abstract intorduction does not apply.

no im sorry i dont no ethir im kinda puzzled to!! im trying to find a latin ballroom danceing class in st pete for my kids can you help?