"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."

The book's use of the word lowering is fairly restricted - it does not cover all sorts of changes of altitude.

Any watching of dancers who move smoothly (rather than in starts and stops) will show that the lowest point of altitude is about where the feet are furthest apart moving into step 1. This is not technically a lowering action, but it is important still.

Beginners are often taught to lower in place over their standing leg and then not go down any further as they move. Thats to teach some initial idea of body alignment, and to avoid having them fall heavily onto the step. But it's only an initial idea - advancing dancers will have to modify it. Smoothing out the motions requires that the path of the downswing continue downwards as it project outwards off the standing leg, flatten out, and then start upwards again as the body arrives over step 1. There again, foot rise won't start until shortly before the feet pass, but the body is already headed slightly up before even that.

The book gives you a series of waypoints. Beginners will connect these with straight lines. Advanced dancers will more accurately fit a curve to the altitude waypoints, and move much more smoothly and easily as a result. But they did first have to spend some time doing vertical rise and fall to start to learn some of the ideas.

BTW, the truly insightful teachers do not put their couples in contact during the vertical rise and fall phase, because vertical rise and fall (if continued into the knees) makes it impossible to achieve closed hold in an aligned posture unless one is overweight. It's only when the true downswing and upswing movements keep the body more forward over the knees that aligned contact hold starts to be possible - force it before then, and all you learn is bad posture.

I don't always agree with apects of the video clips here, but for this issue the demonstration is good. Open up the waltz natural turn clip and pause it.

See the starting position, feet flat on the floor and knees unbent? In the mind of some people, that is the end of the lowering, and maybe it is, officially speaking.

But use the arrow keys to move the man into the step and see what happens. Compare the position of his head to the paintings on the wall, and see how much he drops until the lowpoint with his feet apart? See how he does not do this in place, but moves forward? Look at the near alignment of his left shoulder, hip, and knee - all moving forward together as the knee bends. True, his moving leg gets out a bit eagerly and that causes a brief problem, but the standing leg and body action basically demonstrates what it should be - which is in pretty stark conflict to the beginners methods some have been advocating here. Look at other sources, and you will see these elements in all good dancers.

Check the step 3 to step 4 transition, too. Heel lowers, then knee bends with bodies already moving. Here the lady has the harder job... and this is the one that actually gets danced, as the men tend to avoid that tricky action at the beginning by taking a travelling prep step (which ain't in the book either!)

There is no one more blind than those who wouldn't listen.

It is commendable that someone [one of the ANONYMOUS] has the patience or diligence to describe TRULY HIGH-END dance mechanics here--thank you by the way.

However you consider the tone of that person's post (whether condescending, trite, informative or matter-of-fact)--realize that you are being treated to a world-class level lesson by the same.

For the guilty, stop being a dilletante and start understanding what is being said by this one person--the person who describes THE BOOK as a series of waypoints--if it is indeed just one--it's so confusing with so many anonymouses here.

Learn from the post and consider it (and accept it or discard it, if you will).
And even argue if you want--making sure your points can stand on their merit.

But stop trying proving the superiority of your inferior knowledge which is so obviously insufficient for this discussion.

Hurts the ears when someone does that.




m

Madmaximus. I like your comment when you wrote Stop trying, proving your superiority of your inferior knowledge which is so obviously insufficient for this discussion.
I think you will agree that even with the most learned they still have disagreements on how a step or steps should be done. One thing they would agree on is, if we spread our legs wider and wider apart, without trying we will lose height. Can this be called lowering compaired to the person who believes we do actually deliberately lower.

"One thing they would agree on is, if we spread our legs wider and wider apart, without trying we will lose height. Can this be called lowering compaired to the person who believes we do actually deliberately lower. "

It is not the same thing as the rise and fall mechanism described in the book, but it's not purely incidental either. You may not have much choice in the geometry - dividing your legs will of course reduce your body center height. But it has benefits too - it lets us smoothly blend the downsing into the next upswing. So you might say it is both incidental and deliberate as well.

Anomymous. You mentioned down swing. Swing is a sideways motion. First step being a forward step, we turn sideways at the end of the step to complete 123 of a Natural Turn. So where did you find the swing on the first step. Drive yes, but swing no. Now sway. Swing and sway are part and parcel to each other in these steps. We are turning so we sway. This is a natural law.

"Anomymous. You mentioned down swing. Swing is a sideways motion. First step being a forward step, we turn sideways at the end of the step to complete 123 of a Natural Turn. So where did you find the swing on the first step. Drive yes, but swing no. Now sway. Swing and sway are part and parcel to each other in these steps. We are turning so we sway. This is a natural law."

Quickstep, you are missing the forest for the trees. It's true that the sway part of swing is sideways. But that's not the whole story.

Swing is a complete cycle of motion, from the peak of one one down through the trough that you call drive (but which is mostly coast) up through the peak of the next. During the course of that, the side lead usually changes. So there's a point in the middle where the body is briefly (very briefly) square to the movement. The whole thing is one complete swing - a down and an up.

As to that brief moment of body square to the movement, in well coordinated dancing, that actually tends to be fairly early - by the time the legs are fully divided into step one of a a typical waltz action, the opposite side lead should already be strongly apparent. This is important, because development of an opposite side lead before the moving leg reaches its full extent is, along with movement of the body ahead of the leg early in the extension, a major contribution to keeping that leg in ones own space, rather than lifting the partner's crotch away from the floor.

If we could return for a moment to the loss of height frem leg division. That is simple geometry and there is no choice in the matter. The part that is intentional is using knee bend to carry the body lower when it is leaving the standing leg and when it is arriving. Without that, using only leg division geometry, we would drop into a "V" shaped trajectory and probably get stuck between our feet - and if we did come out, our upswing would always lead a heel turn. Bending into the knees as we leave the foot - before our legs are divided - and softening into them as we arrive is what lets us make the downsing -upswing cycle into a very broad "U" with a trajectory that changes only gradually. A mathemetician would call such a gradually changing path piecewise-linear, a dancer would call it easy and efficient, and an observer would call it art.

Anonymous. How do you propose to swing on a forward step. Swing after, not on. And that (U) you mentioned had better be flat at the bottom don't you think.Unless you are plowing a field.

"Anonymous. How do you propose to swing on a forward step. Swing after, not on."

You still are not seeing the big picture. The swing encompases the lowering, the flatter movement at the bottom of the trough, and the rising again. It cannot just be one piece of that, because the whole meaning of swing is that the movement is a continuous path, converting the energy of rise to the energy of motion and back again. Go find a children's playground, sit down on a swing, and do some thinking about why that word has been chosen to describe the action in these dances.

The movement at the bottom of the trough may not feel so much like swing, but it should definitely feel like drift - there is some drive, but only on top of the drift that carries your through it. If you look at this piece in isolation, you might think it flat, just as in any small region a curve looks like a stright line. But look all the way to the horizon, and you will see that it is indeed a curve - in this case a swing.

"And that (U) you mentioned had better be flat at the bottom don't you think.Unless you are plowing a field."

The point is that a "U" is flatter at the bottom than the "V" that would be achieved if you dropped from a straight leg to between two straight legs and popped back up onto a straight leg. Using your knees to smooth it out into a curve is the conscious addition that makes it dancing.

Anonymous. It is as simple as this. Do you believe that the first step is a down step. Down is into the floor. Or do you believe it is along the floor with drive from an already lowered position. Which brings us to commence to rise and turning at the end of the first step where swing comes into the picture after or during the second drive. Refer to Dynamic Balance in Dance Vision 4.