Basic outside partner techique. You are in error to point your feet in the direction of motion. Outside partner requires moving across the feet at a small angle, because it requires swinging the legs an angle to the hips in order to achieve partner clearance. If you point your feet straight, your will damage your joints eventually. In your example, you should leave your feet pointing LOD and move slightly DC, with your hips turned slightly DW.
The outside partner clip. Notice how the man never fully extends his right leg? If you look at the actual axis of his body, his foot, hip, and shoulder are fairly well aligned. I've had many arguments with those who erroneously want full straight leg extension here - thanks for finding an example of a top couple doing it correctly. (The leg would be fully extended for an outside partner step 3 as in a feather, but that has a different dynamic we'll talk about below)
You talk a about body staying over the standing foot and argue that it won't work. Actually, that's precisely the error in the waltz clips on this site - the leg developing forward while the body stays in place visibly forces the partner's hips out of position.
There also seems to be some confusion about the precise constraint of moving foot under the body: To clarify, the moving foot cannot swing ahead of the body, because that is the partner's space. But it can, and must, be far behind the body at certain points. Moving backwards, we could say that moving off the standing foot and leaving it behind (in front of the body) presents the same problem in reverse. Do a degree it does, however if we use a well timed toe release we can change the angle in a way that creates more space.
Finally, there's still confusion between driving steps and swinging steps. In driving steps the foot is vertically under the body for most of the step. But as the body line begins to incline as a result of swing, the position that is "under" the body is actually further across the floor, at the point where the inclined body axis intersects the floor. So on step 2 of a natural or feather you will see the foot pointing ahead of the position of the body, but you should not see the leg breaking forward of a line joining the shoulder, hip, and foot. This is a quite common error if one neglects to initiate foot rise before the end of step 1. Granted, the more you lower into a driving step the more your knee will project towards your partner, but we really try to minimize that projection and emphasize the movement off the standing leg - lowering is a means to achieve motion, it isn't a goal all by itself. Reply to this message |