Hi to all.
When using CBM to rotate the body into a turn do the hips and shoulders finish on the same alignment of the new supporting foot at the end of a turn? Meaning, if the foot is pointing diag to wall are the hips and shoulders facing diag to wall or will they have turned to face the wall?

This hips/shoulders make the same amount of turn as the feet, but they tend to neither start nor end in the same alignment.

Consider a 123 of a natural turn in waltz, commended feet LOD and ended feet backing LOD. Typically, at the start the hips/shoulders will be closer to LOD, and at the end they will be backing closer to DC. This is the same amount of turn, but between different endpoints.

During step 1, the CBM is accomplished by making most of the total rotation of the hips/shoulders, before the alignment of the feet has changed much at all. during the later part of the figure the feet make all of their turn, and the body turns a little more.

In terms of alignment, the hips/shoulders lag the feet. But they make the same amount of turn, and the hips/shoulders make the turn that they are going to make largely before the feet do.

If you actually read the book in detail, the starting and ending alignments for the hips/shoulder are the same as for the feet. However, the book considers the exact instant when a step starts or ends to be later than you and I would by feel. If you are standing there ready to demonstrate a figure, you are not yet to the official start of it, and so your hips/shoulders do not match your foot alignment. If we snapped a picture of you during the course of the demonstration at the exact formal start of the step, then everything should be aligned - but it's a very brief instant as the hips/shoulders on rapidly changing from underturned relative to the feet to temporarily being ahead of them in the turn. Similarly at the end of the step - which is really the start of the next.

Hi Book Guy,

I have the Alex Moore ballroom dancing book, but according to your interpretation of CBM, there are a lot of information available from other books. Could you be so kind to tell me what books should I read to enhance my ballroom dance. I am a male and I have been doing ballroom dancing for about two years on a weekly base by following group lessons.

djsilver

Most of this is not written down explicitly in any book, but more of it is contained implicity in Moore's writing than in any other classic source. The book doesn't fully tell you how to dance, what it does do is give you a list of required details to serve as waypoints in the actions - when you figure out a natural way to connect them, you've achieved the dancing the book was written about.

Puzzled.Be carefull with CBM. Too many inexperience only turn the shoulder forgetting that the hips also turn. This will result in a spine out of alignament, twisted. Also nobody ever mentions that the muscles in your buttocks must be tight. This is Latin as well as modern. This is all the time whilst you are on the dance floor.

Hi puzzled
I'm not sure what level you dance at, but here's my tuppence-worth.
I first started to get to grips with CBM when i realsied one important fact - in something like slow waltz natural turn, the turning action of the upper body should be smooth and continuous, wheres the feet placements happen at discrete times, and the feet move generally in a straight line (i know not exactly so) .
This means that between feet placments the body must rotate and hey-presto, you have cbm. Step forward and by the time you've placed the moving foot, the body must have rotated. Stop there, and you have your cbm.
As for the feet alignments - nobody will agree on that!! The top dancers don't do what it says in the technique books.

Yes, the individual foot steps are in the general case straight lines. But some people with an un-natural fear of body twist curve their steps so that they can do CBM without creating it.

I will just relate my experience with an idiot teacher who tried to tell me that my CBMB on the second quick Feather Step was to be held into the first step Reverse Turn. Obviously he was one of those who don't believe there is a neutral in between the two steps.I never went back.

"I will just relate my experience with an idiot teacher who tried to tell me that my CBMB on the second quick Feather Step was to be held into the first step Reverse Turn. Obviously he was one of those who don't believe there is a neutral in between the two steps.I never went back."

Well it's not CBMP - there is none until step 6 - but the orientation of the shoulders should be held there until quite late (general rule for reverse turning actions, not applicable to natural turning ones). This sounds like a communication problem, not a case of bad advice.

With partners on each others right side I believe that we now hold the shape and sway through the lowering and commencement of the first step of a reverse figure.Turns to the left being slower than turns to the right.