I know what you mean, but from a technique point of view we do need to lower and rise again with each figure, but the style requires that we do not interrupt our body flight as we do it. Compare that with the swingboat action of the Waltz, and you find that Quickstep has a very different feel.

Beginners often spend too much time on the balls of their feet, and having not acquired the skill to control their movement, they go where their body momentum takes them. Dancing is not about taking the next step, or risk falling over, but taking the next step at the moment, and in the direction, that we choose. Balance and control: key skills that are not learned in any hurry.

The journey is great fun, though.

I understand, it is like the precision in the music that is Quickstep, such as "Puttin on the Ritz" each word is precise, each note clean, and the precision is done at speed.

I've had enough voice training to really really adore songs like that, and the sheer difficulty of singing them properly--quickstep is the dance of that precise music.

One can spit out the words of that song, to use it as an example, but that is a far cry from the careful exactness of a really great rendition of it!

"and having not acquired the skill to control their movement, they go where their body momentum takes them. Dancing is not about taking the next step, or risk falling over, but taking the next step at the moment, and in the direction, that we choose. Balance and control: key skills that are not learned in any hurry."

Dancing is not about avoiding the step-or-fall situation, it's about aiming for that deadline to coincide with the point when you WANT to be taking the next step.

That's what the control is all about.

You make it sound as though you have a novel suggestion for us to experiment with. How else can you dance a Quarter Turn to R? The Rise & Fall requires us to be Up on 4 & to lower at the end of 4. We can't possibly lower before we have weight on the foot, for that would be to be Down, and I can think of nothing worse for arresting forward flight than to sink into the floor prematurely, just as we should be moving on. Heck - it almost sounds as though I agree with you - that would be a first.

""Quickstep try this. Quarter Turn 4th step. Only lower as your weight is completely over the left foot."

You make it sound as though you have a novel suggestion for us to experiment with. How else can you dance a Quarter Turn to R? The Rise & Fall requires us to be Up on 4 & to lower at the end of 4. We can't possibly lower before we have weight on the foot, for that would be to be Down, and I can think of nothing worse for arresting forward flight than to sink into the floor prematurely, just as we should be moving on. Heck - it almost sounds as though I agree with you - that would be a first."

I'm not sure who you are replying to as the passage you quoted doesn't appear in this thread, but regardless.

This situation must be interpreted through knowledge of the difference between what the book means by "lower" and what the man on the street means by that word.

To use the idea of lowering in the everyday, rather than book technique language, sort of meaning, we would infact say that we start lowering as we move towards the final step in the situation where the final step is positioned apart from the preceding one. We most certainly should not arrive up and then lower, as that would un-natural break the flow of the dance. Instead, we want to be smoothly descending throughout the entire step.

That extended descent is made up of many parts, both ones considered by the book description and ones ignored by it. For certain interpretations (rarely seen today), the specific part of the lowering considered by the book - mostly with regard to the feet - would happen when the book says it does. But at todays scale of dancing, the overall lowering beyond the time when the foot is flat is such that the foot needs to be flat on the floor substantially earlier than described for the case contemplated by the book. The difference is that today, having the foot flat is not the end of the lowering - it's barely even the midpoint. Descent will continue into the knee and projection past the position of the fourth step, until the lowest point is reached on the way to the first step of the next figure.

In today's dancing we being our descent earlier than described by the book, using mechanisms not contemplated by the book. We then use the mechanism considered by the book a bit earlier than given in the book. And we then continue much beyond the total lowering contemplated by the book, again using mechanisms that it does not contemplate.

My answer was in response to a post by Cyd (if I recall correctly), that has since disappeared.

You can talk of lower in any sense you like: I'll stick with the established technique meaning, thanks. According to that technique, lowering the heel is NOT, as you imply, the end of lowering. The figure is characterised by gradual rise: start to rise e/o 1, continue on 2 & 3, up on 4 lower e/o 4. The basic technique will always exist in a more developed form at the highest levels of dance performance, but it has served the dance community very well for decades, and nothing is about to change.

"You can talk of lower in any sense you like: I'll stick with the established technique meaning, thanks. According to that technique, lowering the heel is NOT, as you imply, the end of lowering."

Actually, it is the end and totality of the book's treatment of the descent. There is no mention of any other mechanism, or anything occuring before or after the end of the step (passing of the feet). This description is obviously quite incomplete, but it's a footwork-dominated text.

"The figure is characterised by gradual rise: start to rise e/o 1, continue on 2 & 3, up on 4 lower e/o 4."

"The basic technique will always exist in a more developed form at the highest levels of dance performance"

In this case the more complete form is commonly seen in silver, if not bronze.

"but it has served the dance community very well for decades, and nothing is about to change."

It's not clear that the figure has ever been danced as the overly simplistic reading might imply. It is unlikely for example that "up on 4" was ever intended to mean that one should arrive on step 4 with the same altitude as on step 3 and only then lower, instead it refers specifically to the fact that there is still foot rise.

However, as movement has increased the incompleteness of the book description has become a lot more obvious. In particular, reality shows that the foot rise disappears quite quickly once the foot is weighted, well before the body arrives over the location of the foot. That is because keeping the foot up until arriving over its location would require the subsequent foot lowering to be too steep and disruptive for compatibility with continued movement.

Hmm.



No one has suggested anything so daft, except you. I can only have the same degree of rise between steps if I am down on both or up on both. Not here.



Of course it does. It would, wouldn't it? It was Cyd who was implying that lowering after weight was taken on the foot (rather than before) was a novelty. But of course we lower through the transition to the next step: that is exactly what the technique describes.

I really do hope you don't have some other outlet, like teaching (!) for the rather unusual views you promote.

"Actually, it is the end and totality of the book's treatment of the descent.

"Fall is the lowering of the supporting foot from the toe to the heel and the subsequent flexing of the knees, as the next step is taken." [Howard]"

That's a different "book".

"It is unlikely for example that "up on 4" was ever intended to mean that one should arrive on step 4 with the same altitude as on step 3 and only then lower, instead it refers specifically to the fact that there is still foot rise.

No one has suggested anything so daft, except you. I can only have the same degree of rise between steps if I am down on both or up on both. Not here."

But you are "up" on both 3 and 4. According to the book, you do not lower until the end of 4. That could easily be misinterpreted to mean that at the arrival on step 4 you should be at the same altitude as on step 3, since you are not yet at the end of step 4 when you should be "lowering". However this is not the case, because the movement towards step 4 accomplishes a descent by a mechanism not contemplated by the book - the division of the legs.

"reality shows that the foot rise disappears quite quickly once the foot is weighted, well before the body arrives over the location of the foot. That is because keeping the foot up until arriving over its location would require the subsequent foot lowering to be too steep and disruptive for compatibility with continued movement.

Of course it does. It would, wouldn't it?"

The book described loosing foot rise only at the "end" of step 4. However, the end of step four does not occur until the feet pass. If you loose foot rise when your body is not even over the foot yet, your feet are still a long distance from passing.

"But of course we lower through the transition to the next step: that is exactly what the technique describes."

Howard apparently describes continued lowering through the transition from the fourth step to the first step of the next figure, though Moore does not.
But neither would seem to suggest that there is descent from step 3 to altitude of arrival on step 4, when in fact there obviously is. Scrivener noted this and included it in his descriptions, but neither Moore nor from what I've seen quoted, Howard, took this into account.