Hi quickstep
""So to go down my body stays up. To go up my body stays down.In other words the body stays where it is and is controlled by the knees"""
I don't entirely agree with this. the body doesn't stay where it is. The concept of "think UP when going down and think DOWN when going up" is, in my view, to prevent slumping the body down when going down, which is the easiest thing in the world to do. and also, presumably (but less obviously )to avoid straining upwards when going up, which looks unnatural

Phil. Those words of wisdom were spoken by Steven Hillier. Stay up to go down and stay down to go up. There was a demonstration to go with this. Keep your upper body still and sit down. Now sit down and let your upper body go down. Which do you think is correct. It can always be seen who is not correct. There bottom sticks out. Another way would be to think of an elevator in an elevator shaft. It goes up and it goes down but never losses it's shape.

"Those words of wisdom were spoken by Steven Hillier. "

Quickstep, next time you have a lesson with Stephen, you should ask him about your thoughts at the start of this thread on when the rise is supposed to begin.

I think you will be mildly suprised by the way the answer differs from what you believe.

I have viewed some of Luca's videos and others that explain technique. I find them very valueable.

My problem is trying to focus on to many technical items at the same time. We spent the majority of our lesson time on technique, but once the teacher recommended 2 technical changes in a particular dance, we would not let them recommend anymore at that time, because thinking about more than 2 was just to much for us.

In each dance they would review our dancing and recommend 1 or 2 technical improvements to work on and focus on when we danced. We would repeat this cycle over and over, hopefully improving all our dances over time.

We do the same thing with technique videos, we pick out 1 or 2 items to work on for awhile, rather than trying to immediately apply everything that they bring up.

I think technique is the foundation of dancing well, I just only can deal with so much at one time. I rather make 2 technical improvements in a dance over a month or two, rather than get frustrated trying to change to much.

I think it looks terrible when people do advanced Waltz/Foxtrot etc manuevers with terrible technique. I think doing basic moves with good technique looks much better, than fancy moves without good techique.

dennis
You're spot on. Absolutely agree.
It's the same when teaching beginners. they want to go home and tell their friends about all the new 'steps' they've learnt. If you teach good solid technique and make them practise it, they think they're learning nothing.