"I will put it to you that as the heel touches the floor the knees have finished bending."

Not even remotely... the knee has barely even begun to bend at that point!

"Any further your bottom will start to stick out."

Only if you fail to advance the body over your knee... If you do fail to do this, then you've hit on the obvious problem.

"Also you will be chasing that first beat there just isn't that much time."

You have plenty of time. In fact the invariable problem is to not take the first step too soon.

"In other words do you lower the heel to the floor and than bend."

Yes, in the vast majority of situations this is what you must do.

"Or do you bend and then lower."

This is rarely appropriate. Not never, but rarely.

"The first way will put you into a sitting position, don't you think."

Not if you do it right.

"Go to that door and try it."

Saw the door off and move it with you. You must keep vertical alignment of the body, but to do that, the body must move as the knee bends forward - regardless if you do that before or after lowering the heel.

"Concerning the Foxtrot. I can only repeat what is being taught at this time. That is there are two balance point. One is when the third step is in position"

This is a false balance point which exists only when the dance is done in a stop and go fashion in order to talk about it. In actual dancing, the body is accelerating there which by definition means that you are out of balance. If you stop instead of accelerate, then obviously you are in balance, but that is a distortion of the actual technique done in order to teach other concepts.

"But if your movement is body weight forward are you going to be able to control the CBMP and the CBM. and when exactly are you balancing."

The position of your body weight in the standing foot is not constant - it develops throughout the entire time you are on your foot - it starts at the back and moves to the front, and then off the front at which point you can no longer delay the step (you would fall). The further you can take your weight forward before you fall (the stronger your foot) the greater control you have. But the absolute limit of control is the point in the step when your body weight passes the end of your toe.

There are things you can control in dancing, and things you just have to ride through to their conclusion. Use the things you can control to carefully aim in time and space so that the things you just have to ride with end up where you want them.

Don't make the mistake of folding up your body to stay balanced over the standing leg and reaching out your moving foot. Don't make the mistake of failing to lower in the knees. Instead, learn to lower in the knee and move the body, in a way carefull aimed to create the step you want to create when you want to create it, and not an instant before.

Anonymous. First who said you come to a standstill by finding your balance points in, this case the Foxtrot. The shoulders and body are still moving. How much of a micro second does it take to balance.
Waltz. You are at your highest and your lowest on beat three. So we count it Three And. We divide beat three into two a half a beats. The lady (and) has already started to move the moving foot back . If she didn't she would most likely be pushed onto the step.That's on three (and).If there is any further lowering, you would be lowering at the beginning of one, and as we all know we rise at the end of one and not at the beginning of one. So if you contiue lowering after the third beat you are lowering at the beginning of one. It will look heavy and you are putting yourself into a hole which you have to get out off, and you will be chasing that beat one because you have used up all the time you have by continuing to lower after the heel has touched the floor and beat three (and) has gone.
The main point here is after beat three (and) has gone, are you still lowering through the knees. According to your writting you are. On three (and) you should be at your lowest, no further.

Anonymous. That is the one we mistakenly believes that we ever in Modern get to the point of imbalance. Somewhere along the line this person has mixed his Latin with his Modern. In a Rumba Walk we do go to the point of imbalance. In Modern never. In Latin we deliberately delay our movement forward to the point where the foot has to travell fast to its forward position to stop us from falling forward. In Modern never, to even think so is laughable. Please dont write about something you obiously know little about.

"Anonymous. That is the one we mistakenly believes that we ever in Modern get to the point of imbalance. Somewhere along the line this person has mixed his Latin with his Modern. In a Rumba Walk we do go to the point of imbalance. In Modern never. In Latin we deliberately delay our movement forward to the point where the foot has to travell fast to its forward position to stop us from falling forward. In Modern never, to even think so is laughable. Please dont write about something you obiously know little about."

Anna, you message is 100% backwards.

Latin is a balanced dance, because it does not have body flight. Modern is an imbalanced one, because it does.

But please take you own advice in the last sentance and stop spreading your ignorance!!!

"Anonymous. First who said you come to a standstill by finding your balance points in, this case the Foxtrot. The shoulders and body are still moving. How much of a micro second does it take to balance."

You can only be in balance if your movement is constant, in both velocity and direction. Being stationary is one answer, moving at a constant speed and direction is another. But neither situation hardly ever occurs in the foxtrot, except in figures with an intentional artistic pause.

"Waltz. You are at your highest and your lowest on beat three. So we count it Three And. We divide beat three into two a half a beats. The lady (and) has already started to move the moving foot back . If she didn't she would most likely be pushed onto the step.That's on three (and)."

Replace the word beat with the word step and your comment would be more literally true. All of the technique is written in terms of steps - the relation of bits of steps to bits of beats is more complicated, and not written down anywhere. If you disagree, please quote something specific!

"If there is any further lowering, you would be lowering at the beginning of one, and as we all know we rise at the end of one and not at the beginning of one."

Bending the knee does not always count as lowering in the official technique. Nor does dividing the legs. Read it and compare it to what you see in dancing. Bending the knee is a necessity, as is moving the body over the bending knee. True, you don't want to fall heavily onto step one, but that is a function of aim - which you will never achieve if you try to lower in place and then move.

"So if you contiue lowering after the third beat you are lowering at the beginning of one."

You are confusing beats and steps again...

"It will look heavy and you are putting yourself into a hole which you have to get out off, and you will be chasing that beat one because you have used up all the time you have by continuing to lower after the heel has touched the floor and beat three (and) has gone."

Again, confusing beats and steps.

To create a light look, you must round out the bottom of your lowering into travel, such that about by the midpoint of movement into step one is your lowerst point of height (which bears only distant relation to 'rise and fall' as an official concept). Then you gradually curve upwards as your arrive over step 1. None of this works if you drop in place and then move.

Failing to continue down into your knee is fine for very stilted, small social dancing, but not for the further development of grace and movement needed for competition.

"The main point here is after beat three (and) has gone, are you still lowering through the knees. According to your writting you are. On three (and) you should be at your lowest, no further."

Again, beats vs steps... please!

"My contibution , if we want to be clinical, is with partner maybe an extended hold might be better. Each stand on a small block of wood about 2 inches thick just enought to fit the feet onto and do your rise and fall as on the third beat in the Waltz.. You will very quickly find out where your balance points are. As one gets better then get closer. Then we duplicate that feeling as we dance."

This works at first with a visible space between the bodies. However, if you want to move into a true closed hold that can have the possibility of contact (without arching the back to push out the belly) then things have to change. You can no longer rise and fall over a fixed spont on the floor. You can still do the foot rise there, but once your knee starts to bend the forward partner will have to move their body - hip and shoulder - to keep them in near alignment over your knee. This will cause the backwards partner's body to move back making space. If instead the forwards partner keeps their body stationary as they bend their kneee, their advancing knee/thigh will bump into their partner (unless they are substantially shorter than their partner, in which case the problem will be more severe when the directions are changed)

Purely vertical rise and fall works with seperation, and it works when the shorter partner is moving forward. But for well matched partners, once they start incorporating both full usage of the knees and trying to dance in a well algined closed hold, they will have to get in the habit of rising and falling along curved paths, which keep the forward partner's body more over the knee.

This in turn impacts balance and aiming the timing of the step. As soon as the forward partner's weight advances forward in their foot beyond the point where they could support it in balance, they have to finish the rest of the step - no more option to delay. So they have to time the whole lowering so that they get to that point of commitment exaclty when they want to be, and no earlier. If they get there late, that's great - they can just push a bit more and speed up into a bigger, more powerful action to catch up.

BTW, any survey of actual dancing will show that no one is later into step one than they should be... and in a dance like foxtrot, it is appropriate to make step one about as late as physically possible - remember it's a slow, yet on most people it comes out halfway to being a quick!

I agree with you Anna. Confusion over this idea of mid-stride practice and what balance is has been going, in this and other threads, over the months.

At no point in the dance must one feel that one has lost control over one's weight tranfer, that is, how the sending leg sends the weight and how the receiving leg can possibly receive that weight. One can even have both feet in the air and be upside-down, as long as one has consciously decided to be there and one is fully aware and capable to deal with what follows then one is in control and in balance. I'm not talking about control or balance in the sense of capable of bringing the body to a normal upright position, weight stationary at any and every moment in any movement.

Practicing or testing one's control by consciously being able to stop in 'mid-stride' is not an uncommon practice and can be a useful practice aid (don't take this to mean a absolute split-weight position). What you doing is forming an intent and testing the control/ balance you have in carrying out the action to fulfil that intent.

Of course this is not the intention in normal dance where one wants to receive the weight fully over the receiving leg, which then becomes the standing leg. So the idea of the mid-stride practice is not to be able to suddenly shout 'STOP' while the couple are normally dancing (full weight transfers) and have the couple come to a halt in mid-stride perfectly balanced. Intention matched action, remember.

What then is the point of the intentional mid-stride practice? Well, it will often highlights subtle problems in weight transfer to the dancer, ie. usage of sending leg and receiving leg. Full weights transfers can obscure these problems.

The control of the end-of-2nd-quick, weight collection in the slowfox is pivotal to mastering the slowfox timing. It will often be the case that there are subtle problems with the sending leg and/or the receiving leg. If one cannot INTENTIONALLY hit a mid-stride on the 2nd quick as a practice exercise then it's unlikely that the degree of control required for a full weight transfer is there. This often teaches the dancers to better calibrate the sending of the weight and the receipt of weight thereafter.

Note I'm not saying that one practices the slowfox by dancing intentional 'mid-strides' the entire practice session all the time. 'mid-striding' is a part of the valuable practice tools available to us if we understand how and when to use them.

Rha

Iagree with you Anna. Confusion over this idea of mid-stride practice and what balance is has been going, in this and other threads, over the months.

"At no point in the dance must one feel that one has lost control over one's weight tranfer, that is, how the sending leg sends the weight and how the receiving leg can possibly receive that weight."

Control is not balance. However, there are situations in which it is only possible to feel "in control" if you go where gravity would take you faster than gravity is taking you there. For example, after your weight is forward of the toe of your standing foot, you are technically falling. If you try to do nothing, you will fall. But if you send your body faster than it would fall off the foot, you are in control. However you are not balanced...

"One can even have both feet in the air and be upside-down, as long as one has consciously decided to be there and one is fully aware and capable to deal with what follows then one is in control and in balance."

In control yes. But not in balance. Gravity is acting on your body unopposed by a balancing force, therefore you are unarguably unbalanced. Even in the space station we don't call it balance, we call it 'free fall'.

"I'm not talking about control or balance in the sense of capable of bringing the body to a normal upright position, weight stationary at any and every moment in any movement."

Balance does not require being stationary, but it does require having a lack of acceleration, which means no change in speed or direction is possible. Acceleration is the result of imbalance, period.

"Practicing or testing one's control by consciously being able to stop in 'mid-stride' is not an uncommon practice and can be a useful practice aid (don't take this to mean a absolute split-weight position). What you doing is forming an intent and testing the control/ balance you have in carrying out the action to fulfil that intent.

Of course this is not the intention in normal dance where one wants to receive the weight fully over the receiving leg, which then becomes the standing leg."

The difference is not just in the receiving leg, but also in the position of the body over the sending leg. To stay balanced, you have to keep your body back, so that your center of gravity stays over a part of the foot strong enough to support you. But to dance in perfectly coordinated closed hold with a partner, you have to keep your body over your standing knee - therefore lowering in balance as an exercise requires a different body position relative to the standing foot than dancing properly does. You can see many dancers mistakenly trying to actually dance with the hips-held-back balance exercise posture... they end up having to push out their bellies if they want any semblence of contact.

"What then is the point of the intentional mid-stride practice? Well, it will often highlights subtle problems in weight transfer to the dancer, ie. usage of sending leg and receiving leg. Full weights transfers can obscure these problems."

On the other hand, the exercise also changes many of these things as described above. It has it's uses, but if you consider it the authoratative test you will be dancing with the wrong body position and leg action, since that of the balance exercise is differerent then that needed for smooth and coordinated dancing.

"The control of the end-of-2nd-quick, weight collection in the slowfox is pivotal to mastering the slowfox timing. "

In reality, if you keep your body weight properly aligned, the forward partner has little control there. Because of the direction in which the knee bends, the backwards partner has a bit more and should pace their action to match the forward partners. But the forward partner should not try to control this lowering - instead, they should simply not start it until they are ready to let it swing all the way through into the initial step of the next figure. Otherwise, they end up holding back their weight in an artificial, misaligned position.

"It will often be the case that there are subtle problems with the sending leg and/or the receiving leg. If one cannot INTENTIONALLY hit a mid-stride on the 2nd quick as a practice exercise then it's unlikely that the degree of control required for a full weight transfer is there. This often teaches the dancers to better calibrate the sending of the weight and the receipt of weight thereafter."

Yes, it can help you calibrate your body, but you will then have to use that knoweldge to produce a substantially different action of the sending and receiving legs for smoooth actual dancing.

It's a tool, but if you don't fully understand the ways in which it is different than the dance, you will end up performing the exercise and not the dance.

As I've said before, terminology and concepts as they are used in one context or field do not directly equate to the way they are understood or used in another context. So a lot of the concepts of physics do not translate directly to dance.

However having said that the concept of 'balance' is not defined anywhere in the science of physics. Therefore you would not find the term 'balance' used to describe the state of any body in any rigorous physics. Physics uses concepts of force, velocity, accelerating, momentum. A body may be stationary, it may have constant velocity, it may be accelerating, or have an opposing force acting on it, etc. but a body is never described as being 'in balance' or 'out of balance' because it is accelerating.

In movement, dance and otherwise, control and balance are just two different points of view of the same thing. One cannot have one without the other. Remember the old problem "is light a wave or a particle".

"The difference is not just in the receiving leg, but also in the position of the body over the sending leg. To stay balanced, you have to keep your body back, so that your center of gravity stays over a part of the foot strong enough to support you. But to dance in perfectly coordinated closed hold with a partner, you have to keep your body over your standing knee - therefore lowering in balance as an exercise requires a different body position relative to the standing foot than dancing properly does. You can see many dancers mistakenly trying to actually dance with the hips-held-back balance exercise posture... they end up having to push out their bellies if they want any semblence of contact."

The above stems from a misunderstanding of how the body maintains control and a dynamic balance through movement. To analyse this you need to understand not only the centre of mass of the body but also the possibility of two points of pressure into the floor through the feet and how these interact together in maintaining the dynamic balance or control of the body. Of course the other simple way of finding out is that you could give other ideas a chance and just try it on the dance floor.

Rha

"As I've said before, terminology and concepts as they are used in one context or field do not directly equate to the way they are understood or used in another context. So a lot of the concepts of physics do not translate directly to dance."

Consult any dictionary. You will see 'balance' defined in terms of equilibrium, balance of forces, etc.

"However having said that the concept of 'balance' is not defined anywhere in the science of physics."

Sure it is - more formally, it is a condition of equilibrium, aka a balance of forces. Wheras acceleration (of which change of speed and change of direction are examples) can only occur when there is an imbalance of forces.

"A body may be stationary, it may have constant velocity, it may be accelerating, or have an opposing force acting on it, etc. but a body is never described as being 'in balance' or 'out of balance' because it is accelerating."

Sure it is. That's the fundamental definition of what it means to be in or out of balance - to be in a state where the net some of forces acting on you is zero.

"In movement, dance and otherwise, control and balance are just two different points of view of the same thing."

No, they are very differnet concepts. You can be in control in numerous cases where you are not in balance. However, being in control may require continued effort. For example, once you are past
the standing leg but do not yet have weight on the moving leg, you can retain control only if you move yourself faster than you would passively fall. This is still excellent control seen quite frequently in dancing (and in walking down the street) but it is not balance.

"One cannot have one without the other."

Sure one can, as they are completely different!

'"The difference is not just in the receiving leg, but also in the position of the body over the sending leg. To stay balanced, you have to keep your body back, so that your center of gravity stays over a part of the foot strong enough to support you. But to dance in perfectly coordinated closed hold with a partner, you have to keep your body over your standing knee - therefore lowering in balance as an exercise requires a different body position relative to the standing foot than dancing properly does. You can see many dancers mistakenly trying to actually dance with the hips-held-back balance exercise posture... they end up having to push out their bellies if they want any semblence of contact."

The above stems from a misunderstanding of how the body maintains control and a dynamic balance through movement. To analyse this you need to understand not only the centre of mass of the body but also the possibility of two points of pressure into the floor through the feet '

You cannot gain anything from having two points of pressure in the floor through the feet, becaue your moving foot is still behind the standing foot at this point. However by keeping the weight of your moving leg still behind you, you can increase the forward travel of the body before you overbalance past the toe of your standing foot. Remember, the primary action of taking the step is sending the body off the standing leg. Swinging the standing leg to catch up and move slightly in advance happens very late in the sequence of events and plays a very minor role (except in the minds of beginners who tend to get the funny idea that swinging the moving leg is how to take a step)

And even once your moving leg has swung past your standing one, there is still a lot of body travel that needs to be accomplished before the moving leg stops moving and becomes elgible to receive weight.

If you try to keep your center of gravity over or between your feet, you will simply never learn the proper continuity of motion and body alignment for good modern dancing... you have to be willing to send your entire body beyond that while maintainint its internal alignment, and learn to aim and sustain such imbalanced actions to build the necessary control.