Anonymous. What a heap of writting just to try and prove that if you were with a shopping trolly you would push the shopping and not the trolly. Or with an infant. would you push the child or the trolly. Your legs are the wheels of the trolly. By your comments on Latin it is obvious you have had very limited teaching. All those who have Slaviks DVD are aware of our wrong you are. Just to refresh the memory of those who have the disk either Rumba or Cha Cha. Go to the teaching section. Body Weight and Movement. Position A then to position B at this point the weight is split.Then to position C (check the amount of lean to the front) Then to position A. which is catching the weight. That must jog the memory of those who have the disk, or any other from a reliable teacher.It will be the same.
With your Modern all you have to do is stay on the standing leg longer, and build your dancing around that. The standing leg will tranfer your weight to what will become the new standing leg. I feel you may be one of those who mistakenly believe that the body travels in front of the legs. You probably heard somewhere that the body instigates the move forward, which it does, but the foot will alway get to the front of the body first. I mean when we walk we don't start by sticking the leg out do we. There are a few other things going on. We don't let the body weight go in front of the foot except in Latin.Instead off theorising and bringing physics into it. Dancing Modern is simply an exagerated walk. If we want to get the fundamentals right just analyse how we walk, or how we would draw our feet together in a sideways action.

"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."

Sure, an imbalance of external forces on a body will produce acceleration but will the body then be decribed as being 'out of balance' because it has acceleration. That is the question and the answer is NO.

Anyway besides that, you need to think about the idea of 'balance' in a much more profound, dynamic and interconnected way than it is described in the dictionary.

Lastly, some of your fundamental understanding of movement is severely flawed. A lot of your universal dance 'truths' are plain nonsense.

Rha

"Sure, an imbalance of external forces on a body will produce acceleration but will the body then be decribed as being 'out of balance' because it has acceleration. That is the question and the answer is NO."

To an educated person, the answer is yes. To someone who ignorantly tosses words around for emotional value without bothering to learn their meaning, perhaps not. But such a person cannot communicate their ideas with accuracy!

"Lastly, some of your fundamental understanding of movement is severely flawed. A lot of your universal dance 'truths' are plain nonsense."

Actually it is you who are mistaken. Watch the videos. Run the experiments. take the lessons... eventually you will learn.

Rha

"Anonymous. What a heap of writting just to try and prove that if you were with a shopping trolly you would push the shopping and not the trolly. Or with an infant. would you push the child or the trolly. Your legs are the wheels of the trolly."

Legs are not wheels... think about it. Wheels move across the floor while bearing wait, but legs cannot - they must bear or move in turn, not do both at the same time. Your moving leg can't bear any meaningful wait until it's stopped. Until then, all weight is either in your standing leg either balanced, or unbalanced. In fact, both phases occur - you are balanced while your body is over your standing foot, then you go through an unbalanced phase where you are past any possible balance on your standing leg but your moving leg has not yet stopped and prepared to receive weight.

That is unless of course you make the mistake of trying to keep your body between your feet, which makes closed hold impossible without pushing out your belly...

"All those who have Slaviks DVD are aware of our wrong you are. Just to refresh the memory of those who have the disk either Rumba or Cha Cha. Go to the teaching section. Body Weight and Movement. Position A then to position B at this point the weight is split."

Yes, latin uses slit wait... modern does not, except when taught by the ignorant.

"Then to position C (check the amount of lean to the front) Then to position A. which is catching the weight."

A very minor detial in latin, but it becomes infinitely maginfied in modern. Latin movement is between feet and basically stable, with only brief periods of imbalance. Modern movement on the other hand is basically unbalanced, with only the briefest periods of balance.

"With your Modern all you have to do is stay on the standing leg longer, and build your dancing around that."

On the standing leg yes, but you had better not try to stay over it, or you will stick out your posterior...

"The standing leg will tranfer your weight to what will become the new standing leg."

Yes, but during that there is a time when your body is no longer over your standing leg (though still partially supported by it) but net yet at all on your moving leg... unless you like to kick your partner that is.

"I feel you may be one of those who mistakenly believe that the body travels in front of the legs."

That would in fact be the proper and required action for all the modern dances except tango...

"You probably heard somewhere that the body instigates the move forward, which it does, but the foot will alway get to the front of the body first."

The foot only gets ahead at the very end - most of the travel is with the body ahead, unless of course you like kicking your partner.

"I mean when we walk we don't start by sticking the leg out do we."

Nope, but watch how many unschooled dancers make that mistake!

"We don't let the body weight go in front of the foot except in Latin."

100% backwads. You let the body go much further in front of the foot for much longer in modern than in latin. In latin, doing this at all is a moderately advanced detail. In modern, it's the whole basic idea from day one.

"Instead off theorising and bringing physics into it. Dancing Modern is simply an exagerated walk. If we want to get the fundamentals right just analyse how we walk, or how we would draw our feet together in a sideways action."

Yes, so why do you insist on doing it differently? As any person who researches it will tell you, normal walking is unbalanced. Modern magnifies that. Latin on the other hand reduces it - there may still be periods of imbalance in advanced dancers, but the basic action is more stable and balanced than ordinary walking. Latin - more stable than ordinary. Modern - much less stable than ordinary.

Keep in mind that in addtiion to the foot to foot action, in latin each step has a point of balance and static stability. Not so in modern, where most steps do are unstable for their entire duration - the body swings on, right through, and right off again with no static stability at all. This is the essence of body flight and swing movement. Only on rare steps - generally the highpoints of the swing, plus picture lines, is stability achieved. Modern is stable for part of maybe one step in three, latin is stable for part of every major step (the middle of jive tripples perhaps excepted)

Something that has been missing here in this discusion and that is we are dancing to music. Apart from some basic truths like what goes up must come down. I think that science is best left out and applied to where it belongs. Dancing is an art. We may dance the same dance to the same music on the same day and it will be performed differently. The groups will be the same but never a carbon copy of the last time out. Change the music and different again. My point is you cannot put dancing into pigeon holes. Last from where I observe dancing. I see the same mistakes most of the time. The main being a misunderstanding of the use of CBMP. In some schools it isn't even spoken about. Without the correct understanding and use something will always be missing. Try this. Quickstep From a standing start it's easy, but wait till you get to the second CBMP.
Tipple Chasse. First step CBMP. Running finish , all Quicks. Then CBMP into another Tippler Chasse. If you can get that second CBMP in as it should be, then you are good. Are you on the same alignment as the first or is it a bit down the floor.

Somewhere above, or was it below.An Anonymous person was trying to seperate beats from steps. I would just like to say that without music there are no beats and therefore there will be no steps and consequently there will be no dance. Can steps be seperated from beats. I don't think so. In his books was it necessary for Alex Moore and the Imperial Society to mention beats.
123. 1 2 and 3 They are beats if I want them to be, or steps if you want them to be. Think. Lower on beat 3 and. Then step on one. One being not only the first beat but also the first step..

You get confused because waltz has both three beats and often three steps - yet it would be a serious mistake to imagine that they coincide exactly.

They don't.

The book is writtin in terms of the durations of the steps, not the beats of music. The relationship to that is far more complicated, and only hinted at.

Regardless, in fully developed dancing there is substantial loss of altitude during the first part of step 1. To a novice, this would turn out as falling heavily onto the step. But to an advanced dancer, it is merely a well executed downswing - because an advanced dancers flattens out the trajectory and starts it upwards in time.

Novices make some mistakes in incapability, and make others out of fear of getting things wrong. Advancing dancers gradually learn finer shades of distinction - they learn things such as how continuing downwards during the start of step one is a good and necessary thing, quite different from the falling into step one mistake of the beginnner.

Quickstep has posed and answered his or her own quandry without evern realizing it...

"Something that has been missing here in this discusion and that is we are dancing to music. Apart from some basic truths like what goes up must come down. I think that science is best left out and applied to where it belongs."

How about applying the science to the true cause of the problem you note?

"Last from where I observe dancing. I see the same mistakes most of the time. The main being a misunderstanding of the use of CBMP. In some schools it isn't even spoken about. Without the correct understanding and use something will always be missing. Try this. Quickstep From a standing start it's easy, but wait till you get to the second CBMP."

Elementary mistake - you are focusing on the application of CBMP without bothering to define what that position literally means in the body. Teach the internal stretches that create it - any fool can quickly learn where it's used, but precious few students ever learn the details of how to create it. Once your body knows the feel of that position, you will never have to worry about CBMP again... it will just happen when needed, and not when not. Which is a good thing, because there's not much time to think on your feet in quickstep... do your thinking beforehand, set good body habits, and then trust them.

Anonymous. We have to be carefull here. Even though you might not have meant it the way it came out. A less experienced person might think that you are lowering into step one. As we all know we have lowered on step three. To quote from our book we Commence to rise at the end of one. There is no lowering on one. I think you should have left out the word downswing. To most that would mean swing down on one.