... and on a good day? A nice 16-bar routine ...

telemark: are you a sequence dancer by any chance ?

Telemark. You can fit a Natural Turn in the Foxtrot into a stict 8- bar unit. Alter the timing so that your first step of your Feather following the Heel Pull is on beats 1 2 and not 3 4. Take an extra Slow.
Another way is to alter the timing after the Heel Pull to a Quick and alter the Feather Step to all Quicks starting on beat two.
What we shouldn't be doing is dancing back to front like 3 4. 1 2. with the music. Done this way a Rever5se Turn for instance should feel awkward if you are at all musical. The same should apply if we dance a 2/4 choreographed Tango to a 4/4 being played . We wont get into the Samba or even the Jive which are counted in eights by the elite.

Hi to all,
I'm sure I've heard Slow Foxtrots played with the second and forth beats accented. In a case such as this, would we start a Feather on beat two?

Taking your first suggestion, I regularly put in an extra S after the H Pull, so as to step LF fwd on beats 1/2 of the next bar, but if I continue with a Feather, SQQ on bar eight, I have started to repeat a seven bar amalgamation, not an eight bar one.

My question, to those of you who consider matching the choreography to the phrasing to be the Holy Grail of dancing, was to say WHAT you would dance, in multiples of eight.

Counting Samba in the way you suggest is beginner stuff - how else would you do it? Elite!

"My question, to those of you who consider matching the choreography to the phrasing to be the Holy Grail of dancing, was to say WHAT you would dance, in multiples of eight."

Did some thinking and experimenting on your question, and have some observations to share:

- Foxtrot is probably the dance where the essence of the action itself is prized more than any other. In many case, showing sublime mastery of the physical part of the dance may be more of a priority than echoing 8-bar phrasing structure in the choreography.

- For me, the ends of phrases are more important than the beginnings. Outside of a show context, nobody is going to watch your dance all the way through, but when the music is rolling through the big cadence at the end of the phrase, it would be nice to reflect that in the dancing. Instead of constraining yourself to follow a set routine throughout, I like the idea of hearing the approach of the end of phrase and reacting to it. That reaction might be in the choice of figure, or it might be in the character of how you execute the figure.

- 8 bars seems impractically short to try to get yourself into a musical and geographical position to repeat from a feather. I think 16 is probably the shortest useful, and 16 at least gives you the chance to cover a long wall and a short wall, and then start over from the opposite corner.

- Starting over from the change of direction with an extra slow on the first half of the last measure and then the prep step on the second half in order to put a feather on the first bar of the next phrase sometimes feels right, and sometimes feels like hanging out waiting too long. A lot depends on the mood of the music and your ability to sell the pre-movement energy while waiting.

- Consider dancing linear figures down the long wall and ending the 8th bar in a line into the corner at it's end. Then dance 8 bars of more contrasting figures across the short wall, and start over on the new long wall. Example - not stellar, but workable:

1 feather
23 reverse wave
4 extend it with back feather
5 f.finish
6 fallaway reverse and slip pivot
7 double reverse
8 contra check into corner
9 heel pull to curved feather
10 back feather
11 f. finish
12 1-4 of reverse wave (checking action)
13 chasse to right (or basic weave)
14 weave ending
15 change of direction
16 extra slow, and prep step
reprise

(There are _lots_ of potential substitutions)

- If you extend a basic sequence with two measures of reverse wave action as above, you can end the phrase with a natural turn SQQSS on bars 7 and 8. Begin the next phrase on the short wall not with a feather or natural figure, but with an open reverse turn either into a f.finish or more reverse waving. Noodle across the short side and set up for another linear passage on the next long wall.

Its pretty unusual for me to agree with anyone here (!), but I agree with Cyd that we should avoid dancing 34 12 patterns, and with anymouse that the 'essence of the action' is prized more than any other'.

Both viewpoints lead me to conclude that strict (slavish?) adherence to an arbitrary 'match the choreography to the musical phrasing' rule is going to restrict, and not enhance my choreography. There IS no such rule anyway, and I, for one, couldn't care less about the particular requirements of the dancesport scene (where, anyway, the 'rule' is a cop-out for the lazy who couldn't otherwise work out for themselves how to dance musically, and who are just flapping about like performing seals at a circus).

Eights are too short, but I would probably agree that choreography that fits sixteen bar units is tidy, and will always look well, if danced well. As I said in another recent post, we should aim to dance at a standard where the technique is our servant and not our master.

This very topic came up on another site recently.

It reminded me of times past, when the " giants " of the genre were competing, they just " danced ".. of course they had certain small groups they used, but often, they would be forced into adaption on the "fly ".. the hallmark of the truly great performer .

Terence. Making a change with the choreography on the fly shows more in the Tango where it is possible to stand still and maybe use a head flick. In the other dances they may Hover or go into a Lunge. What they will do is wait for the correct beat before continuing. John Wood on his tape calls it having Elephant ears. He added. Or you can go ahead like many others around you and dance out of rhythm and out of phrase.

I,m not talking about the " new " guys.. I,m speaking about those in the 40s and 50s ( you,re probably too young to know ?).