"Then you see a 'straight' alignment of body, hips and foot in the images, something that I don't see. I'm going to be kind and say that you don't see too well do you.
"

1) print out the pictures

2) find a ruler

3) tell me in which picture the ankle of the right foot is not in a line with the (right) shoulder and hip, or behind that line?

Turn-in and turn-out do not necessarily result in damage to the joints. Ask any ballet dancer. (Actually, a ballet dancer will tell you that turning the feet to a different angle than the knees is necessarily damaging, but any Latin dancer will dispute that. But I digress). In ballroom, when the feet point to an angle different from the body such as they do in PP and OP positions, what's actually happening is one leg turning out while the other turns in. It uses roughly the same muscles as turning in and out, but instead of turning oppositionally, they turn parallel. Thus it is no more damaging than your garden variety ballet turnout, and is much less extreme to boot.

At any rate, you're right that the line of travel is generally taken at an angle slightly greater than the direction the feet point in OP position (and even moreso in PP). But to travel on a line towards DC while the feet point LOD is extreme for OP position -- that would be referred to as "forward *and across* in CBMP". And such an extreme version of CBMP is reserved for very specific restrictive circumstances (of which OP position is not one), because it makes for particularly poor tracking.

You can get away with some angle differential between feet and line of travel in OP position, but I wouldn't recommend putting all your stock in it. The purpose of turning your feet (really, your legs, actually) is to minimize the amount the legs must cross. You don't eliminate it entirely, but you do decrease it considerably, resulting in better tracking and leg swing. The exercise I discussed earlier would teach a student how to turn the legs to the same angle as the line of travel in theory, but in reality they would turn slightly less. So the net result would be a *slight* difference between foot angle and line of travel.


That's entirely dependent on circumstances. The straightness of the legs at the full extent of the stride depends on how high you want (or need) to carry your center, and how long you want your stride. For a fully lowered stride, a tall guy like Victor has no need to fully straighten his leg. To do so on that step would have either caused him to dance 3 inches higher or 8 inches farther (or somewhere in between), which might very well have been out of the range of his partner... it was already a huge step.

But that's not to say that there isn't a time and place for a fully straightened leg stride. Think of any time you might want to carry your center higher, such as the third step coming off of a rise. Even on a lowered driving action, there's an appropriate circumstance for a straighter (if not completely straight, but that's debatable) leg: With a greater difference in height between partners, each needs to control his or her overall height by the degree of straightening. The shorter person dances slightly straighter legs while the taller person dances slightly deeper into the legs. In extreme cases of height difference, the man may have a mid-stride resembling that of Victor's in the photo example, whereas the lady might have completely straightened legs. I have a student who is nearly 12 inches shorter than I am, and that is exactly what undefeated U.S. champion Victor Veyrasset (different Victor) has her do to compensate for the height difference.

Anyway, none of this is relevant to the discussion at hand. No matter how much Victor has straightened his leg at mid-stride, his leg is clearly well in front of his body, having moved (as I keep saying) roughly twice the speed of his body. And you can see perfectly well that his leg is "in her space", as you say, without having compromised his (or her) posture.


And if we ever did that, I'd be the first to point out the mistake. Luckily, we don't. Nor have I ever espuosed such a technique. That's a horrendous misinterpretation on your part. Go ahead and look over all of the discussions so far and see if you can find anywhere I've stated that the body is to "stay" over the supporting foot. All along I've said that the body moves *between* the feet, that the body and moving foot always move at the same time (ie foot can't move without body), but never the same speed (ie foot moves twice as fast). And that's exactly how we dance it.

As I said, I don't deny that you might personally find us to be too slow in some places, or too fast in others, or whatever. You prefer a faster body-to-foot speed, no doubt. But that's an entirely different discussion, one that's based on personal preference. This discussion -- whether or not the moving foot stays directly under the body -- is a simple matter right and wrong. And if you think the foot stays directly under the body, you are, simply put, wrong.

I don't know about you, but I define my partner's space as that which her physical body is occupying. At mid-stride, she has one leg extended behind and one extended in front. The line directly below her body is not "her space" because she is not occupying it. So if I have one leg extended back and one forward in the same way, there is no conflict. Take a look at the photos and see for yourself.

Incidentally, in the last Waltz variation, the only movement where I see a major technical error is a step 3 coming off of a rise in shadow position on the right foot. Because we had to squeeze around a corner somewhat awkwardly (It was a very wide set, but had no depth), we arrived over the foot too quickly. This forced us to lower with very little progression, causing a sort of "dropped" look to the lowering. This is yet another problem with small, non-extended strides: You either have to limit your lowering to almost nil, or you drop suddenly and vertically. Neither one is desirable for what is supposed to be a progressive movement. But I find it amusing that in the video clip that inspired this discussion, the worst mistake we made was moving the body too quickly. Guess I'll have to take more lessons with world champions to learn how to get my foot out ahead.

Regards,
Jonathan

Not talking about the variations, but about the learning center waltz clips.

That said, if you don't have room to take much of a step, you shouldn't lower much past simply putting the heel down - knees drop to a stable position, but not really "down". Exception would be beginners who may need to work on remembering to lower at all, and willing to dance with an extra 6 inches of space in the hold to permit practicing this.

I had a look at the natural turn in the learning centre. I think it is a very, very good natural turn. Good balance, flight, shape, effortless power, technique, etc. Lovely execution.

Can it be improved? I think, yes. But that would go for mine and everyone else's natural turn in the world if one analysed it. The issue being debated here is: "Does the moving leg extend ahead of the body?". Without raising questions of when and how and at which point in the movement this happens, it's clear that this it does. Agreed, there many ways to do this incorrectly like keeping one's weight over the standing leg for far too long as one compresses and reaching out with the moving leg. This is the famous 'sitting' problem. The other is problem is 'over reaching' with the moving leg. These are problem cases. So it's incorrect to say that the moving leg must always be held under the body and never extends ahead of the body.

If I were to make a comment on the natural turn in the learning centre and I stress that this is just my personal point of view, and I'm being very, very picky. As the compression develops on 1, both the man's and lady's hips move a little 'back' or apart from each other. That in in itself is not wrong but it indicates certain preferences that one can reconsider in other ways.
I don't believe that this is a deliberate action but a reaction to the weight of man not being allowed to move even more forward to the ball of foot for the man and heel for lady as the compression progresses. The couple maintain a very proper verticality to the floor as the compression continues to develop, which is very good, but I think the man can allow himself to be inclined more 'over' the lady as the compression and movement develops forward. (Don't take this to mean a compromise in posture, a break at the hip line, on leaning on the lady). The lady can leave the hips more up to the man and allow the movement of her 1st step back develop more naturally from the compression over the standing leg. Both these are natural tendencies in the movement that should be allowed to happen. These ideas together will create a more dominant male profile, a stronger down-swing and a more flighted movement. These are miniscule adjustments that I'm talking about, from the point of view of a competitive dancer looking to make a very, very good natural turn perfect.

Rha

Didn't know we were talking about the Waltz syllabus clips. These are about 6 or 7 years old now and I shudder to think what they must look like, since our dancing has improved ten fold since then. As luck would have it, we just re-filmed the entire Bronze syllabus last month, so you're about to get an updated look at our dancing. (Well, ok, "about to" is a bit of an overstatement... it may take me the rest of this year to polish and upload all of the video we shot).

If I were to look at the old clips I'd probably agree with everything Rha said, and perhaps even add some thoughts of my own. But frankly I'd rather wait until the new clips are up. After all, it's much more useful to hear advice about what could be improved in my dancing now. I'm already well aware of what was wrong with it way back then!

Of course, that's all basically irrelevant to this discussion. Unless the answer to "What's wrong with the dancing in the old clips" is "They're not keeping the moving foot directly under the body at all times" (which it's not), the discussion of whatever faults may exist in the video, interesting though it may be, does not serve to move this topic forward.

Neither will it advance the topic to use our dancing as a model for correct technique, since our anonymous friend has stated clearly that he is not satisfied with the technique demonstrated in those clips. In fact, apparently even a world finalist won't serve as proof, because the frame-by-frame work-up of a top-tier world finalist English couple wasn't convincing enough -- His response was essentially (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Well, the couple above them wouldn't do that, and that's exactly what makes them so much better". I'd like to think that finding shots of the world champions would work, since there's nobody else "above" them, but if he's really that hell bent on believeing what he wants to believe, I'm sure he'll give some other justification. So it's not worth thr trouble.

If I've learned one thing in my many years of participating in internet discussions, it's that when two people disagree on something, it is an extremely rare case that either party will be "convinced" of the other party's opinion. I think we should expect that no matter what kind of proof is provided in the form of photos and video, and no matter who demonstrates such technique, nothing will change his opinion. What we're really doing here now is making our case for all others who might read it. And I think based on the photos, I've done that. (But if anybody besides Anonymous is not convinced, by all means speak up).

The only thing that would help move this discussion in a new direction now is if Anonymous would post photos or video of himself demonstrating the correct technique as he sees it. Then it would be very simple to compare the results, and people could decide for themselves which result they prefer. But seeing as how he won't even disclose his name, the odds of his posting a photo or video of his dancing are slim to none (Actually, forget slim). That being the case, I don't see where else this can go. So I suggest closing the topic and moving on.

There is one possible spin-off which might be interesting. Since we got sidetracked with the critiquing of the dancing in other ways, I'd certainly be game for continuing. But I would recommend starting a new thread for that, since it could involve any aspect of the dancing, not just stride and leg division. As I mentioned before, it won't really be interesting for me personally to be critiqued on my dancing from 3/4 of a decade ago, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be useful for someone else. So have at it.

Regards,
Jonathan Atkinson
www.ballroomdancers.com

We seem to be mixing up about three different threads of discussion.

Re Timothy, if that's the clip I think it is, I said that how he takes a step with the unobstructed outside leg doesn't reveal anything about how he would take a step with the inside leg. But speaking more generally, simply winning the top spot does not mean there is no room for improvement - I would assume he hopes to turn out an even better performance next year. Nor is every champion going to exceed the performance of every previous one in all areas.

With Victor, yes, there are some obvious differences between the rising star and the open that really jump out once you know what to look for (once you can see through the general amazement and compare details to what you've seen others do). Speaking about the rising star and lower half of the open final in general, determined couples can go quite far with artistic sense and hard work, but getting to the next level, the very top of the top requires a higher level of understanding of the technique - often this is what is most clearly making the difference of the final few places. It would be tempting to think these issues should wait for then, however many of them concern the most basic actions and when adopted can work wonders for relatively beginner dancers - the very best couples are not really better dancers than those a few places down, they simply have knowledge of better methods. As a result, they are not only better dancers, but also far far more effective at helping students build the skills for effortless dancing.

The waltz syllabus clips here are unique in being just about the only freely available demonstration of basics online. This has made them something of a reference, however they also illustrate a point I was making that Jonathan then made himself: keeping the body stationary over the standing leg while sending the moving leg ahead can cause problems. In terms of providing alternatives, I'd love to present information in an organized and illustrated fashion, online and in person, but the dance establishment in general is simply not very welcoming to new voices (even bearing a traditional message), so serious efforts are going to have to wait until after retirement from competition.

The one thing that is missing in this discusion is the position of the knees. Please not that they are allways close to each other. The feet are allways carried under the body and over the knees. THe length of stride can be as large as you like providing the knees are close enough to easily transfer weight from one knee over the other.

Dear Rha,
To think over the words: the lady can leave the hip more up to the man" on step 1 in natural time and try it at my clinic, I found it created smoother down swing and prettier shape. Great thanks!

Rha. Question for our panel. Modern Waltz Take the first three of a Natural. From the man's steps. Do we walk away from the back foot leaving it where it is going right to the tip of the toe. Do we after arriving on the suporting foot have a very slight movement of the hips in the opposite direction giving more swing to our next step. A bit like Tai Chi where there is a move in the opposite to the next move, which stops that stone wall then lets start look.

Jonathan. Well done . I'm really pleased that this came up. I hope the guy who said that the body goes first is watching. If I stand close to a wall and take a pace foreward my body does not arrive in front of my leg. I think most of the problems that others encounter is because their ballroom hold is not correct. The lady has got to be to the man's right . Right side to right side. If I wear a tie the ladies rib cage must not touch the tie.
Now what can be simpler than that to explain. Incidently the bit about the tie comes from a couple who's recent performances would make them eligable to speak on this matter. Anyway, a brilliant job well done Jonathan.