A body is in balance when the net some of the forces on it is zero.

For a dancer with respect to gravity, this can occur only when the center of mass of the body is located over the standing foot or between standing feet.

Clearly this is not preserved in dancing - all good dancers can often be seen projecting their weight well oustide their footprints.

Some have said that the above is "static balance" while the thing that must be preserved is "dynamic balance". I would challenge them to come up with a strict definition of "dynamic balance" which can satisfy two real-world constraints based on how the term "balance" is used by dancers:

1) It must be obviously preserved by good dancers

2) It must be easy to propose situations where less skilled dancers would loose it.

In reality, I believe that when dancers use the word "balance" what they really mean is the never letting gravity take you somewhere you didn't want to be going or at a rate at which you didn't want to be moving. The important point being that you are often off balance and gravity is moving and accelerating you - but only in the ways you wanted it to, because you aimed your movement taking the contribution of gravity instinctively* into account.

(*instinctively for a trained dancer)

Anonymous. If you want to know what balance is. Hold your car keys out and drop them. If you are as straight as that you are balanced.

"Anonymous. If you want to know what balance is. Hold your car keys out and drop them. If you are as straight as that you are balanced."

That is a useless definition - if you body maintains head to toe vertical alginent over your standing foot, you can never move anywhere!

Quite obviously, no dancer satisfy that definition of balance, because they could not move while doing so!

Care to try again?

Anonymous. Yes I can. With my weight on one foot or the other I walk in a manner which most would call verticle. I walk just like the book says RF forward. I haven't yet found anything that tells me to move my body ahead of that RF. I don't think I ever will.

"Anonymous. Yes I can. With my weight on one foot or the other I walk in a manner which most would call verticle."

If you do that, at some point your weight will not be vertically located over your standing foot.

So please define how you are balanced then.

You could dance a latin type of action by moving your weight only in between your feet, but that is not what you wrote. And that is not the way any healthy person ordinarily walks or dances standard.

Keep in mind that until your moving foot stops moving and becomes a standing foot, you are off balance if you body is not located over your standing foot.

That means that unless you keep your body in place over your standing foot until your moving foot has finished moving, you will be off balance for part of each walk.

Some people do dance latin that way, but no skilled dancer would ever do so for the swing dances of standard, because it is entirely incompatible with the type of motion that characterizes these dances.

Forces are always balanced. If there is an accelerating force is there always an equal and opposite force produced by inertia.

If an object is off static balance is there always acceleration or deceleration and a force produced by inertia.

http://www.answers.com/topic/weightlessness
http://www.answers.com/topic/newton-s-laws-of-motion
http://www.answers.com/topic/inertia

Sqq. I'll take your word for it. Does that mean when Mikhahail Baryshnikov is in the air, he is or isn't balanced. To be balanced must he have two feet on the floor. Therefor on a leap across the stage is he balanced or not. I say he is balanced all the time in the air or on the floor.

Anonymous writes:

'A body is in balance when the net some of the forces on it is zero.......
..In reality, I believe that when dancers use the word "balance" what they really mean is the never letting gravity take you somewhere you didn't want to be going or at a rate at which you didn't want to be moving.'

You clearly admit that dancers view the concept of balance differently so why do you insist on your definition in a forum for dancers where dance is being discussed. Dancers have very clearly chosen to use this word to convey a particular concept for good reason. When we dancers speak of balance we are describing a feeling. In dance you 'feel' balance. This is not a measurement or observation taken by an external observer outside the body itself as in a physics experiment. A lot of dance terminology has its roots in the description of feelings. You feel rather than 'do' or fulfil some external expectation of shape or form, to satisfy an external observation.

So clearly this not a discussion about about just external forces acting on an inanimate , unintelligent object. If you want to discuss balance as a physicist then bugger-off to some forum for physicists and discuss it there. I think that even there your narrow minded view would be challenged by gifted forward thinkers who understand that all concepts are relative to the observer.

Rha

Rha has made some very sensible points. we all know what good balance feels like, and similarly we all know what it's like to be off balance.
The movement of the human body is very complex because it's not a rigid object.
However, as a user of the term "dynamic balance" i'd like to try to respond to an earlier posting asking for a definition and situations where a beginner might experience lack of "dynamic balance". So here goes:...
First - i believe we don't have static balance unless we're static ( ) and we'd better have our weight between our feet if we are. We can keep static balance perfectly by not moving (as anonymous has pointed out)
Dynamic balance is a situation in which all the forces on your body are "balanced" and you control them so that you move exactly as you intended to.