HI

Im having difficulty mastering how to pivot correctly.
Can anyone please give me a breakdown of pivots and fallaway slip pivots to cross line in foxtrot/waltz.

Thank you

Pivots make me cry. I suck at pivots, other than the little dinky bronze promenade pivot promenade close one in foxtrot. Ok, that one's kind of sucky, too.

But when my coach is grinning like a devilish fool and whipping me right into multiple pivots at Warp, I have to think "head-weight counter-balance" and "contra-body rotation" and "maintain contact" and "don't slip the center and fall out through the butt".

Man, I really want a candy-bar and a foot-rub now. :'-(

Yes DivaGinger is so right!!

Sniffle...Pivots are a brutal thing. I mostly don't suck as much as I used to but its been one of those surprisingly difficult skills to master.

Two or three things helped me. Your body really does have to be in proper alignment, including your head or they aren't going to be good. Commit to them with your entire body, I was always holding my shoulder back which threw me off balance.

The other thing is that you really need to activate your abs and make them control you. It hurts and it burns and you will get used to it and find out without them all your dancing ends up looking kind of floppy. You'll find its a lot easier to follow through and have them look clean when you have those suckers as tight and activated as you really need them to be. It doesn't sound like it will help...but I promise it really does. (Much easier to say it then to do it)

Belle

Tighten BOTH your abs AND glutes. They work together.

jj

For continuous pivots, remember a lot of turn happens when you change from your heel to toe.
For fallaway slip pivot, make sure that you don't cross man's center. Try to stay behind man during entire figure.
(I assume you are a lady.)

Eliza,
Here are a few thoughts and what I have learned over the past four years about pivots.
There are givens such as proper structure, balance, standing on one's own feet and general good dance posture. Not rigid and not loose. Just a beautiful balanced stance from both partners. Tension is pivot killer.
Number of posts have mentioned tight abs, gluts and so forth; I call it the individual center first, then the center of the partnership. This is not a very static thing as the dancing is not static. Center of the partnership stays consistent throughout the dance and balance is not static, but very dynamic.
One of the most common mistakes men do (as I am a man and guilty as charged) is the mental approach that we can muscle our way into the pivots and take the lady for a ride. As it is possible to do so, it is very unpleasant, too much work and very tiring. Not allowing the lady to do her part, create the rotation and the spinning feeling of the pivot. This means that the ladies need to be very active and know when they need to power through.
With the above in mind, most observers and students think of pivots as rotating steps. The rotating steps are called spins. I never confuse the two. If you think of and treat the pivots as rotating steps, then we are doomed from the start. I think of pivots as linear steps. How else will it travel along the line? And if you take the corner from one wall to the next, partnership will cut the line shorter or longer.
Also most dancers come to the center of the turn to do the pivots and kill the momentum of the movement. We need to respect the circle of the top lines and keep our big heads in their respected positions and not to pull in with our arms as it compromises the integrity of the frames.
Fallaway is simply going back in PP. If we are not comfortable in PP, then the fallaway will not feel right either. In PP, top line, turns more that the hips and head moves in unison with the top line, not more, and not less. If we try to keep our heads too stretched, then physically we are retarding the motions of the top line.
I hope this helps…………..r.

"Fallaway is simply going back in PP. "
If we are talking about fallaway slip pivot, the above statement is absolutely not true for a lady's part.

""Fallaway is simply going back in PP. "
If we are talking about fallaway slip pivot, the above statement is absolutely not true for a lady's part."

The name of the figure is "fallaway reverse AND slip pivot"

There's a fallaway reverse.

And then there is a slip pivot, which begins with an exit from fallaway position.