I know this is a difficult question, but what techniques do you use in your practise? Is there anything (that you're prepared to pass on!!) that you've found particularly good at improving the speed or efficacy of learning?

I meant to add something.. In learning piano technique, one of the established methods is to work on each hand separately, bringing it up to speed. Is it sensible for each person in a dance partnership to work 'separately'?

Yes,the effective way is to work separately first then to work together

One thing of many that I have learnt is that after a summer break of three months I have lost some of my muscle memory,good and bad habits. So this is an excellent time to work on replacing those bad habits with new ones befor getting back into the swing of things.
Don't practice to much on your own as it may not work out with your partner. The more you practice without lessons the more you enhance the wrong things as well as the right. Never work to long on one thing. It's important to dance a lot with your partner in order to stay in the groove and build up staminer. When you dance with your partner concentrate on helping each other to correct the partners mistake rather than your own so that you are dancing as a team and not as to seperate people as most couples do.

One thing i've noticed recently is that we occasionally dance a short sequence of steps with subtly different rhythms. I think Don posted something about this a little while ago. What's the best way to address this? And can the lady dance her steps on her own? Can she do a heel turn realistically without being led into it, for example?

Phil. This is just my own thoughts. I don't think a lady can dance a heel turn on her own. It's the man's movement around the lady that produces a Heel Turn, without that the lady has to do the step on her own which will never be the same. I'm with Dave on the muscle memory bit. Since I was told that we can not think of two things at the same time, but only in quick succesion, part of our dancing must be muscle memory. I was told that in practice we must analyse our steps. But in the competition don't because we have enough to contend with, the music, direction, posture , balance and so fourth. Just dance. Try thinking of that lot all at the same time. Anybody who thinks they can had better leave thir body to medical research.