Anonymous. The rear foot that is the one we call the moving foot, goes to the full extension, which in its self must take the step to the very toe otherwise is is not a full extension. What I am looking at is the ladies toe, not ball, on the floor still moving. The lady is already in a high heel and still manages to show a heel which is well clear of the floor. I can assure you that I am not looking at a moving foot which early in the stride disapears before it becomes the standing foot.
About the lowering. What have I been saying all along.It would seem to me , if I was on the jury, you are trying to do an about turn as if I wrote anything other than that as the moving foot passes under the body the standing heel will gently lower to the floor. If you wish you might say as the moving foot draws level to the standing foot. Same thing. That is as written in the technique book and has been with us since the Foxtrot was first introduced..
Dancing below the level of your feet. Where did that come from. How much lower does a person who does bend their knees want to go. Latin is into the floor. Ballroom skims the floor showing rise and lowering, not into the floor.

"Anonymous. The rear foot that is the one we call the moving foot, goes to the full extension, which in its self must take the step to the very toe otherwise is is not a full extension. What I am looking at is the ladies toe, not ball, on the floor still moving."

Early in the step when the leg division is in actuality mostly from the bend of the moving knee, the shin will be more horizontal which will make the foot nearly vertical, only the tip or even top of the toe on the floor. But later, as the leg division rises to encompass the entire leg and the back knee straightens, the shin becomes more vertical and the foot is closer to the floor - with the ball and not just toe touching before the weight actually arrives. Remember, in foxtrot we have no foot rise on the backwards action - to arrive high on the toe and then lower would be pure foolishness.

"If you wish you might say as the moving foot draws level to the standing foot. Same thing. That is as written in the technique book and has been with us since the Foxtrot was first introduced..
Dancing below the level of your feet. Where did that come from. How much lower does a person who does bend their knees want to go. Latin is into the floor. Ballroom skims the floor showing rise and lowering, not into the floor."

You cannot make beneficial use of your knees in the modern manner if you wait so long to lower your heel - you have to flatten your foot out and use your knee to continue down below the level of your foot - in this way, the swing of ballroom cuts figuratively below the level of the floor.

Or you can dance above the floor, high and spindly like those blackpool videos of yesteryear. Your choice.

Anonymous. On the opening page at the top there is either a Latin couple and sometimes a Ballroom couple the picture changes from time to time. In the Ballroom they are in a picture step. Do you see how high the heel is from the floor. Do you see how straight the ladies right arm is. Where would you say the left hand is. Is it on the outside of the man's upper arm. Can you just make out the outline of a knuckle. As the couples dance this is what you will see. Heel high off the floor. Arm towards being straight rather than bent. Left hand on the outside of the man's right upper arm. The arm positions are created by the lady being more to the man's right side. No need for the man to come up with any strange poses. The lady has taken her head and upper body well clear of her partner. Again . Do you see that foot position. If you have any tapes look for yourself at the feet. then look at both arms.

"On the opening page at the top there is either a Latin couple and sometimes a Ballroom couple the picture changes from time to time. In the Ballroom they are in a picture step."

First, do you not see how much is wrong with that picture? This is a relatively unskilled couple. And it's also a picture line, which is not ordinary dancing, but a specialized unmoving pose.

"Do you see how high the heel is from the floor."

What of it? She's not going to be moving onto that foot from her present posture, so it bears no relation to the situation where she would be. And as I said before, such development of the foot exists early in a progressive step while the knees are still close together, but dissapears later.

"Do you see how straight the ladies right arm is."

Actually it's not straight, it has a nice graceful bend to it. But the man's left hand is too far out. He looks rather lost - can't decide if he should shape left or look at the lady.

"Where would you say the left hand is."

Can't see, but you're a fool if you seek to learn technique from this couple, other than as an example of what not to do.

"No need for the man to come up with any strange poses."

It would help a lot if he had some leftwards stretch. Instead of being lost as he is.

Anonymous. Going back a couple of writtings. If you can roll your standing foot, you for one brief shining moment have a feeling of buoyancy ( floating )which won't be there if the lowering is lacking in technique.
So you can see how far from the floor the ladies heel is. You have also passed a comment about the ladies right arm, which means you did look. And also the left arm, it is easy to see from the shape where it is. You looked at these things. Which means you should now be able to see exactly how todays dancer dances in poise and in Foxtrot. Also how far to the man's right the lady is now positioned compared with yesteryear. If you can see none of these things, then I would be a bit worried about tunnel vision.We have a few teachers here who I think never see the feet judging by the lack of rise and lowering in there pupils. One very well known celebrity said, he would never judge sitting on a platform,
because he needs to see the rise and lowering in particular in the Waltz.
Regarding stance. If the lady is in the right position there is no need for the man to have any sort of shape to his left. If the lady is, on her setup, to close to the center then the man might feel that to create distance between the heads he needs to shape to his left. If he does he is completely wrong. If he were to hold that position then his weight would be permanently to his left (instead of dancing from foot to foot). John Wood's tape.

"So you can see how far from the floor the ladies heel is."

Her unweighted, non standing heel early in a step or in a line. What of it?

"You have also passed a comment about the ladies right arm, which means you did look. And also the left arm, it is easy to see from the shape where it is. You looked at these things. Which means you should now be able to see exactly how todays dancer dances in poise and in Foxtrot."

That is not an example of how today's skilled dancer poses. Her right arm is not bad. Her left arm does not look particularly good, but is too dark for me to see. However, the man is terrible... completely stiff and clueless.

"We have a few teachers here who I think never see the feet judging by the lack of rise and lowering in there pupils."

Or perhaps you have a poorly calibrated idea of how much rise and fall is actually appropriate for the limited amount they are moving.

"One very well known celebrity said, he would never judge sitting on a platform,
because he needs to see the rise and lowering in particular in the Waltz."

You don't need to look at feet to see that.

"Regarding stance. If the lady is in the right position there is no need for the man to have any sort of shape to his left."

Yes there is... and this couple amply demonstrates how lost and clueless the man appears if he fails to accomodate his partner and instead stands there as if partnering is her problem.

"If the lady is, on her setup, to close to the center then the man might feel that to create distance between the heads he needs to shape to his left. If he does he is completely wrong."

No, you are completely wrong. Both parnters must stretch to the left, even if their partner is doing their job as they should. To do otherwise is to demonstrate typical male ignorance... "it's not my problem, it's the lady's"

"If he were to hold that position then his weight would be permanently to his left (instead of dancing from foot to foot)."

Again, ignorance of the difference between shape and stretch vs weight position. Both partners must stretch their upper body forward and left _relative_ to the position of their body weight. They don't move their body weight in that direction, they stretch their body relative to their center of weight.

TO Anonymous:

That is an argument which can help neither side. It is no more true that you repeatedly denying the existence/necessity of something makes it not present or not important than it is true that my repeatedly asserting its presence and importance makes it present and important. These are just words. The proof is in examining the actual dancing, which you are yet to do with sufficient attention to detail."

I'm not trying to help myself or you. You can't be helped because your dancing is beyond redemption based on your past posts in this and other threads (You may run but you can't hide anonymous ) . My aim is really to establish sufficient doubt in the minds of other dancers, who seriously want to improve their dancing, that may read your posts and mistake your conviction in your ideas for the 'truth'. Clearly you have thought long and hard to understand the technique of dancing but the flaw is that you are applying a technique of reasoning and problem solving from another discipline (something in the sciences I suspect). That combined with your ego has'nt prepared you for the subtle nuances of analysis required in an artistic endeavour.

This is for my fellow dancers:

Anony says: "It is suffienctly controlled, because control comes from carefully aiming the departure in the desired direction, not from correcting a mistaken aim after you are already moving in the wrong direction. The more careful aim, the less force you will later have to apply to achieve your intended motion."

I'm not suggesting a overuse of the receiving leg to 'break' the receipt of the weight on every step taken. The fundamental argument is being confused by the anonymous character for his own ends. Every thing else being equal there are two points of view. One, that one receives the weight only after having standing leg point of pressure at 0. My point of view is that one receives the weight when the standing leg 'point of pressure' has reached it's absolute maximum and is on the very verge of diminishing. In other words don't let it diminish to 0 before receiving it, RECEIVE THE WEIGHT AS THE POINT OF PRESSURE DIMINISHES TO ZERO ON THE SUPPORTING LEG.

The 1st claim is supposed to lead to more 'flight'. I say that unless one's willing to allow both feet to leave the ground as in a true run, which I know is not being suggested by the proposer of this point of view, you'll find in practice there is really no noticeable gain in flight. The 2nd point of view on the other hand will give you the same flight and also more control. Control in the sense of something happening more gradually and therefore greater awareness over. There are times when the 'receiving' leg will absorb the weight and movement, yes, and other times not. It depends which step in the figure we're talking about, which figure and also the choreographic interpretation.

So ballroom swing dancing for the most part is really about a walking technique of weight transfer versus something bordering on running(except for certain figures, mainly in the quickstep). So use the knees, ankles, leg swing, body swing and lateral swing to create long, flowing, powerful, gliding walks in time with the music. If for the most part you feel like you're running (even though your feet may not be leaving the floor) then you're either doing the quickstep or you're not dancing well.

Happy dancing,
Rha

"You can't be helped because your dancing is beyond redemption based on your past posts in this and other threads"

I certainly would not be helped by adopting your ideas, however I have been helped enourmously by the methods taught by my teachers, which have formed the basis of my posts here.

"My aim is really to establish sufficient doubt in the minds of other dancers, who seriously want to improve their dancing, that may read your posts and mistake your conviction in your ideas for the 'truth'."

Doubt is great... but doubt does not mean closing your eyes to ideas you have not seen before, it means doubting what you already thought you new. I do it constantly... do you?

"Clearly you have thought long and hard to understand the technique of dancing but the flaw is that you are applying a technique of reasoning and problem solving from another discipline (something in the sciences I suspect)."

Of course - but applying it to systemize knowledge gained first hand from some of the world's leading teachers. If you attempt instead to systemize inferrior dancing... well, then you have a nice description of how to do inferrior dancing.

---

"The 1st claim is supposed to lead to more 'flight'. I say that unless one's willing to allow both feet to leave the ground as in a true run, which I know is not being suggested by the proposer of this point of view, you'll find in practice there is really no noticeable gain in flight."

No, there are two things you are missing. First, while a foot must be on the floor to bear weight, being on the floor does not mean it will. I would strongly suspect that I actually leave my departed foot stationary on the floor far longer than you do - even though my weight leaves it earlier with respect to my arrival on the moving foot.

The second misunderstanding is when weight (really pressure) arrives on the moving foot. For me, that is much later than for you. While you eventually will need your moving foot to support your body weight vertically, the usual reason for wanting it early is to control your arrival, or even to keep from falling over once you have overbalanced on your standing foot. If you instead achieve this by the aim of your departure, the point at which you start having to use your moving foot to influence the movement of your body will be much later - in a lowering step for example, it won't occur until the body is over the foot and the foot is flat.

"Control in the sense of something happening more gradually and therefore greater awareness over."

But is the thing that you make happen more gradually something that should be made gradual? Or are you spreading out one action to compensate for letting another happen too fast? I maintain that the split weight people over-use their muscles in the arriving leg, to make up for the fact that they have not yet learned to sustain the freely falling phase.

Consider a diver in flight. Is he in control? Of course not! he can't stop, he's falling, and he's going to hit the water soon, nothing he can do about that. But despite having surrendered, is he in control? Absolutely. He jumped when he wanted to. He is orienting his body precisely as he wants. He will hit the water when he wanted to. Unlike a layman who might condense the period of falling into incapacitated fear, the diver has found the slowness in that fall. Similarly, a dancer must learn to inititate movements aimed carefully enough that she can live with the unfolding aspects of timing and path that will be briefly beyond her ability to influence - while still maintaining perfect control of body alignment and posture, even as she falls.

"There are times when the 'receiving' leg will absorb the weight and movement, yes, and other times not. It depends which step in the figure we're talking about, which figure and also the choreographic interpretation."

The receving leg will be active much earlier in a rising step than in a falling step. If you look at the distance to fall, and time available, it's relatively easy to see that for a lowering step, the first half of the lowering needs to occur at about free fall acceleration (no weight support) to cover the distance while allowing for the slower travel that will occur near the bottom of the swing once the legs finally have started actively slowing the body. Note that in a championship action this period of slowing doesn't even start until the foot is flat on the floor and the knee bending phase well underway. During the first part of the fall you accelerate - only during the second do your slow.


"So ballroom swing dancing for the most part is really about a walking technique of weight transfer versus something bordering on running(except for certain figures, mainly in the quickstep). So use the knees, ankles, leg swing, body swing and lateral swing to create long, flowing, powerful, gliding walks in time with the music. If for the most part you feel like you're running (even though your feet may not be leaving the floor) then you're either doing the quickstep or you're not dancing well."

Actually, what you are describing is body flight in the absence of swing or rise/fall - such as you might see in an extended weave action or a foxtrot exercise flat all on slows. When you add rise and fall, you get dynamics that touch on those of running, though of course the technique is not the same as running.


Happy dancing,
Rha

Reply to this message

Anonymous. I've been looking at some of your previous postings.
Nobody has ever done the first three of a Natural correctly.
Anne Lewis doesn't know what she is talking about, or words to that affect, neither does John Wood.
The administrator doesn't do the second step of the Feather correctly.
Also when Jonathan posted a row of stills showing that the leg is in front of the body, plus I refered you to on this site some computer images doing a Forward and Backward Walk. According to you they were both wrong.
Then just recently. You have a complete missunderstanding on what happens when the leg extends to the toe, not ball. For some reason you apear to think that when they arrive they are high on the toe. How stupid is that.
Your biggest missunderstanding is slit weight. You seem to think that we come to a standstill. No absolute rest. Here is an example. You are on a train which is travelling. You drop a Ping Pong Ball. You drop it onto a table and it bounces twice to the same spot one second apart. Outside the train a stationary person sees the ball land about forty meters apart, because the train would have travelled that far down the track in between bounces. So what do you think is happening as our weight reaches dead center between the front and the back leg. It is stil travelling.
It might be of interest to some to know that Gene Kelly of "Singing in the Rain"'fame was responsible for a moving a camera on a rail to travell the same speed as the dancers. He realized that there was a better idea than to pan the camera.
I would like to hear from you a blow by blow description from a position where the feet are along side each other, and one step is taken to arrive at the start again. This is a Backward Walk as in the Foxtrot. I was going to say a nuetral position, but you once told me there isn't a nuetral position , even though I was quoting John Wood. But then he can't even do the first three of a Natural, so you. say. Oh well, back to the Rubber Room till next time.
.

"Nobody has ever done the first three of a Natural correctly."

Of course not. We are as a community still figuring out how it should be done, and coming closer to being able to do the things we already know to be necessary. It is a collective work in progress.

"Anne Lewis doesn't know what she is talking about, or words to that affect, neither does John Wood."

On a specific issue, which may well have been an out of conflict quote, but could also have been a genuine error. These folks are only human.

"The administrator doesn't do the second step of the Feather correctly."

Yup. He doesn't. Just look, and see how the motion dies late in the first step.

"Also when Jonathan posted a row of stills showing that the leg is in front of the body"

Outside leg, not comparable to the situation of the inside leg in an inside action. Which you won't find video that clearly showcases, because the sight lines are obstructed.

"plus I refered you to on this site some computer images doing a Forward and Backward Walk. According to you they were both wrong."

The computer images, even more than the dance clips, only document what the person creating them believes. They are by definition artificial... and in this case based on oversimplified theories.

"Then just recently. You have a complete missunderstanding on what happens when the leg extends to the toe, not ball."

No, you continue to insist on confusing the position of an extended foot (which I have REPEATEDLY pointed out I DO NOT DISPUTE) with one of a standing foot. The ARE NOT THE SAME THING!

"For some reason you apear to think that when they arrive they are high on the toe."

Well you did appear to say that, and elsewhere someone likely you complained that dancers don't get high enough in their foot rise. I'm glad it wasn't what you meant.

"Your biggest missunderstanding is slit weight. You seem to think that we come to a standstill. No absolute rest."

No, of course not. But you slow too much. That's the whole point of using split weight - using the arriving leg to slow you down. Which is a mistake, pure and simple. If you had not gotton yourself moving too fast, you would not need to start slowing down until you were well over the standing foot.

"So what do you think is happening as our weight reaches dead center between the front and the back leg. It is stil travelling."

Such a position may or may not ever be achieved. But if it is, the mere presence of the weight dead center between the feet does not in a dynamic action imply anything about floor pressure through the feet. You have to provide more information to detemerine what if any floor pressure will be present.

"I would like to hear from you a blow by blow description from a position where the feet are along side each other, and one step is taken to arrive at the start again. This is a Backward Walk as in the Foxtrot."

For a flat walk with no rise or fall, essentially what alex moore wrote, with the exception that there really isn't any overlap of split weight unless you dance it small and overly deliberately. But note that this specific actions is extrememly rare in dancing - we almost always modify it with rise or fall.

"I was going to say a nuetral position, but you once told me there isn't a nuetral position , even though I was quoting John Wood."

I objected to a claim that there was a basic position that was somehow neutral, yes. Now you can define any postion you pass through in the course of a cyclic action and decide you want to call that home... but it is in reality no more special than any other - such is the nature of cyclic actions that there is no true beginning and no true end, only continous evolution from one state to another and around again.