May i suggest the movement analysis be done using some more modern teaching tapes by recent world champions.
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Vicky Barr explained each step of natural turn of slow waltz for several minutes each...
I'm afraid it's pretty little to add something after her lesson. The task is to move like her...
Igor

Suomynona. Your words. Watch ordinary competitors you will see both stalled second step and an overshot second step.That is what I have been suggesting
but maybe in different words and harder to understand. If anyone cares to go back to the original question. It was is todays top teachers teaching a smaller second step than used to be taught. Maybe I could have chosen a better example than I did way back. Heres another. A carpenters folding ruler flat on a table. Half open it. It is twenty inches long. Raise the end . It is still twenty inches long . But some of the distance has been used to elevate one end. If the full measure is used. You may see a stalled second step or an overshot second step.

Hi again Nod
The carpenter's ruler example - that's a static thing, whereas dancing is of course dynamic, and this makes a huge difference.
The original question about shortening the second step to 'improve' rise? In my view the answer is a definite no.
I took out my Alex Moore book again. It's the 9th edition. Is there a later one? The natural turn slow waltz is shown very clearly as turning a quarter turn on the right foot before planting the left foot 'to the side' (since the body has already turned through 90 degrees) on beat 2. This is not how the top dancers dance this step these days. They don't turn on the right foot, but turn on the left foot (through quarter turn with the foot, 1/8 with the body)on beat two. There is 1/8 CBM body turn between 1 and 2. Maybe there is a later edition which has this in it. It's more difficult but the flight is better and thus more energy to convert into body rise. I've been practising it this way for about 6 weeks now and it's beginning to happen and it feels great. Doing it the 'old' way feels stunted by comparison.

Phil. The latest book is by Geoffry Hern 2004. For advanced dancers. A Technique of Advanced Standard Ballroom Figures. This book explains the latest ideas on swing,rise & fall and so on . I don't know where you can buy it. But the discusions we have on this website are better for learning than any book published, sill no substitute for a GOOD teacher. Dave

Hi Dave
The good teacher thing - i well appreciate that. I go to a good teacher too

Phil, it sounds like you may be misreading Moore.

There is a substantial body turn during step one, which is the CBM. Not sure if you meant to imply this or not, but the foot does not really turn during step one. Step two is placed in the same direction of movement, still forwards with respect to the feet, but because the body has turned it is now called sideways. Only after step two has found its place on the floor do both feet turn. During the closure of step three, there is a small additional turn of head and feet, but the body doesn't really need to turn any more - it's left in a nicely wound up position to commence the next figure.

The issue for potential confusion is that the book alignments are the orientations of the feet, but the book directions are relative to the orientation of the body. It's not written as a very good coordinate system to explain how to do figure, since you have to translate the directions to figure it out. What it is good at doing is letting you stop at any point and see if you are in the right position. And the drawings help, but they can't show the sequence of actions, so you have to read the text to find out when the departing foot rotates to the dotted outline drawn.

Hi Suomynona
I'm sorry, ubt i can't accept what you're saying here. The diagrams in Moore's book (edition 9) clearly and unambiguously show the right foot swivelled by the time the left foot is planted. I*t clearly shows the left foot planted across the line of movement. You can't say that the diagram has to be re-interpreted because the positions shown refer to the body position, which is changing. If that were necessary, the diarams would be worthless.
In any case, referring again to Sinkinson's approach on his teaching tape, his right foot doesn't swivel AT ALL until it closes for beat 3.
I don't mean to criticise Moore's book. his book and the later editions were really a work of genius. I'm just saying that dancing, like all sports, is evolving all the time, and things have, and are changing.

The carpenter's ruler doesn't really match because the spacing is fixed or only artificially varied.

As a dancer, the amount of leg division we can safely use depends on how fast your body is moving. The faster it is moving, the more we can safely travel, but also the more we must rise to absorb our arrival without stumbling past the foot.

Suomynon. Forget the carpenters ruler then. It is very hard to find a model without drawing. Try this. Two CD cases open end to end. A pencil under the right side a match box under the left. The right side is as 3 and. The left side as much on the toes as is possible. That is roughly the type of curve which I believe I see on the tapes I am looking at. I wonder , have you ever seen officially the curve as a drawing from an instruction book. I never have. But to get back to the story. Lay the CD cases flat . Raise the two ends as suggested. The model is still the same length. but has a lift instead of just length. To get from one end to the other is still the same distance travelled, just part of it is down and then up and not straight across

Guys
forget these analogies, which are very difficult to perfect because human anatomy and body dynamics are so complicated. Just watch an intermediate, and then watch Andrew Sinkinson. The difference is clear, and it's obvious which is better