Can someone remind me when Alex Moore's book was written, and do we have any videos from that time?
May i suggest the movement analysis be done using some more modern teaching tapes by recent world champions.
In my job, i would be criticised for recommending a text even just 10 years old.
Suomynona is correct about a lot of competitors stalling the second step, and it destroys the flight.

It's old, but the best competitors still dance in accordance with it. The human body hasn't changed much - the general population has put on weight, but dancers have if anything gotten thinner.

And more impatient, but that's another story.

In every other sport, there has been huge progression over the last 50 years. Training methods have improved, there is more knowledge about diet, physiology, motivational psychology....and of course the tesching environment is much better. Even this discussion page, which has its own useful leatures, only existed recently. So things are very different. Human bodies start out the same maybe, but the top dancers keep dancing for longer, and this in itself will progress the sport, and 40 and 50-year-old sports people of today are in much better shape than 40-or 50-year old sports people in the past

May i suggest the movement analysis be done using some more modern teaching tapes by recent world champions.
---------------------------------------
Vicky Barr explained each step of natural turn of slow waltz for several minutes each...
I'm afraid it's pretty little to add something after her lesson. The task is to move like her...
Igor

Suomynona. Your words. Watch ordinary competitors you will see both stalled second step and an overshot second step.That is what I have been suggesting
but maybe in different words and harder to understand. If anyone cares to go back to the original question. It was is todays top teachers teaching a smaller second step than used to be taught. Maybe I could have chosen a better example than I did way back. Heres another. A carpenters folding ruler flat on a table. Half open it. It is twenty inches long. Raise the end . It is still twenty inches long . But some of the distance has been used to elevate one end. If the full measure is used. You may see a stalled second step or an overshot second step.

Hi again Nod
The carpenter's ruler example - that's a static thing, whereas dancing is of course dynamic, and this makes a huge difference.
The original question about shortening the second step to 'improve' rise? In my view the answer is a definite no.
I took out my Alex Moore book again. It's the 9th edition. Is there a later one? The natural turn slow waltz is shown very clearly as turning a quarter turn on the right foot before planting the left foot 'to the side' (since the body has already turned through 90 degrees) on beat 2. This is not how the top dancers dance this step these days. They don't turn on the right foot, but turn on the left foot (through quarter turn with the foot, 1/8 with the body)on beat two. There is 1/8 CBM body turn between 1 and 2. Maybe there is a later edition which has this in it. It's more difficult but the flight is better and thus more energy to convert into body rise. I've been practising it this way for about 6 weeks now and it's beginning to happen and it feels great. Doing it the 'old' way feels stunted by comparison.

Phil. The latest book is by Geoffry Hern 2004. For advanced dancers. A Technique of Advanced Standard Ballroom Figures. This book explains the latest ideas on swing,rise & fall and so on . I don't know where you can buy it. But the discusions we have on this website are better for learning than any book published, sill no substitute for a GOOD teacher. Dave

Hi Dave
The good teacher thing - i well appreciate that. I go to a good teacher too

Phil, it sounds like you may be misreading Moore.

There is a substantial body turn during step one, which is the CBM. Not sure if you meant to imply this or not, but the foot does not really turn during step one. Step two is placed in the same direction of movement, still forwards with respect to the feet, but because the body has turned it is now called sideways. Only after step two has found its place on the floor do both feet turn. During the closure of step three, there is a small additional turn of head and feet, but the body doesn't really need to turn any more - it's left in a nicely wound up position to commence the next figure.

The issue for potential confusion is that the book alignments are the orientations of the feet, but the book directions are relative to the orientation of the body. It's not written as a very good coordinate system to explain how to do figure, since you have to translate the directions to figure it out. What it is good at doing is letting you stop at any point and see if you are in the right position. And the drawings help, but they can't show the sequence of actions, so you have to read the text to find out when the departing foot rotates to the dotted outline drawn.

Hi Suomynona
I'm sorry, ubt i can't accept what you're saying here. The diagrams in Moore's book (edition 9) clearly and unambiguously show the right foot swivelled by the time the left foot is planted. I*t clearly shows the left foot planted across the line of movement. You can't say that the diagram has to be re-interpreted because the positions shown refer to the body position, which is changing. If that were necessary, the diarams would be worthless.
In any case, referring again to Sinkinson's approach on his teaching tape, his right foot doesn't swivel AT ALL until it closes for beat 3.
I don't mean to criticise Moore's book. his book and the later editions were really a work of genius. I'm just saying that dancing, like all sports, is evolving all the time, and things have, and are changing.