Anonymous. With the lady wearing a competition dress it wouldn't be possible to see the contact low down. On a teaching tape in ordinary cloths I am sure you would not see a seperation between the couples. If you have ever done a Wrong Foot Lunge into A Telespin you will know what a lower contact point is. A Wing might be another.

I can't see a couple with a great height difference looking better than a couple where the different in height in shoes is only a couple of inches. I haven't worked this one out, but a lady with long legs and a short body, might have a higher hip contact than a person with short legs and a long body even though they are the same height. The height of the hips for comfortable dancing in my opinion is of prime importance.

"Didn't the Pilpenchuk's have a height difference of almost a foot? With the height difference, you just have to set up your priorities differently, and yeah body contact won't be as high on the list."

Interesting. We are the Pilipenchuk's students and they always emphasize the importance of keeping body contact, whether it is the knee or the torso.

Does any taller male dancer lower their legs for a shorter partner? I have been told this doesn't work and will really throw off you movement together.
What I try to do is keep a light contact and sometimes no contact and attempt to keep our movement about the same. I am 7 inches taller than my partner and have long legs and arms, but she can keep up with me on long strides, but we do have a tendency to loose contact. With long arms it is an effort to keep a good frame with a shorter partner since she will pull down on your shoulders at times. With long arms my full frame takes up lots of space, especially during social dancing and I often have to drop my frame to avoid whacking other dancers. This creates another problem of resetting up with our position together over again. Floorcraft can play havoc with length of steps, holding a good frame, and keeping a close contact position. It's like we need about 6 variations of the above to keep dancing and moving along.

There is something that came up on our Dancing with the Stars from one of the experts, and that is that if there is a height difference between couples try to do as many steps outside the partner as possible rather than in line. This was the Waltz. Clever choreography can make or break. Makes sense to me.

My wife is 9 inches shorter than me. I do not change my posture and dance the same way I do when I dance with a taller lady. The adjustments I make, are in my left hand position. The bigger the height difference, the closer my left hand is to my body. That makes it easier to have a hold that is still centered and effective. I learned this from studying videos by some top smooth dancers.

Despite the height difference, smooth is our strongest area. We also spend more time practising smooth. There are some techniques were we find the height difference is a problem and just do not use them. Example - shadow moves just do not work for us.

"Despite the height difference, smooth is our strongest area. "

Note that by the time smooth develops any serious movement and close coordination, it has adopted almost exclusively outside partner actions, with none of those pesky inline steps of the right leg where a taller partner has trouble moving at a shorter one.

I never thought of it that way, but after seeing your message. I thought about it and in our case, your are definitely correct. Particularily the right leg at partner part. We can do Vienese Waltz right turns in normal position, but for Waltz and Foxtrot, it is always outside.