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Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anon 3
11/16/2006  8:40:00 PM
Anonymous . What exactly is imbalance to you. How does it operate. I don't seem to be able to find it in any dance book that I have.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  6:44:00 AM
"Anonymous . What exactly is imbalance to you."

As I have posted several times, any sitution in which the center of mass is not located over or between points of support.

That definition is physical reality - if you are unbalanced with respect to that definition, your body will be accelerating due to the influence of gravity. With careful aim of precisely when and how you enter this imbalance, the resulting "fall" can take you in a wide variety of useful directions - but this cannot contradict the simply physical fact that you are off balance and falling.

Many dance teachers tend to use imprecise "feeling" words which do not reflect physical reality. So for example, if someone says "not anywhere in that sequency did you put me off balance" this is in fact false. What was meant was "not at any point did you put me in a position where gravity forced me to move in a direction or rate in which I didn't agree I should be going"

Gravity is an ally, not an enemy.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  1:39:00 PM
Anonymous. As you spoke. Could you do any of this slowely as we should be able to. It would seem to me that you wouldn't be able to walk down the floor as per Foxtrot unless you had full steam ahead.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  2:15:00 PM
"Anonymous. As you spoke. Could you do any of this slowely as we should be able to. It would seem to me that you wouldn't be able to walk down the floor as per Foxtrot unless you had full steam ahead."

Some actions can be slowed down, others cannot without changes. Any action which requires going off balance would have to change it's timing, as the longer you spend off balance the more your body would move.

For example, I challenge you to submit a picture of yourself standing in the position of figure two of the forward walk, with your back foot on the top stair of a flight of stairs. This would have your front foot at exactly the same altitute as in the picture, but hanging in empty space - insuring that you don't cheat and try to balance your body by using the moving foot as a second standing foot. Not going to pay your hospital bill though..

The fundamental idea which you seem unable to grasp is that just as in ordinary walking, you cannot avoid going off balance. What you can do is carefully time when you go off balance and what direction you go off balance, so that the resulting fall will take you exactly where you are supposed to go at exactly the speed at which you are supposed to get there. You can't avoid that... but you can learn to do it right.


Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  8:14:00 PM
Anonymous. I think it is a poor man's attempt to move. Where are we compressing to drive, Stay on the supporting leg longer is being spoken about and being used more than ever before.Dance from foot to foot. Wood's teaches that there is a neutral position where the couple are balanced. There is one after the Feather before the Reverse and any simular place. What gets forgotten is there is a movement of the verticle body moving from the back to the front of the foot with the foot still in the same position before leaving which should be used.But to sum it all up. Nobody can learn to dance or improve what they have got through correspondence. It has to be through a teacher.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  9:56:00 PM
"Anonymous. I think it is a poor man's attempt to move. Where are we compressing to drive"

You should not really compress, but you must lower to drive. The energy for movement ultimately comes from that lowering.

"Stay on the supporting leg longer is being spoken about and being used more than ever before."

Yes, you should stay ON the supporting leg, but you must not make the mistake of trying to stay OVER it in balance.

"Dance from foot to foot. Wood's teaches that there is a neutral position where the couple are balanced. There is one after the Feather before the Reverse and any simular place."

Perphaps - but have you now just finally confirmed that they are NOT BALANCED the rest of the time? You can be balance when you are directly over your standing foot, or when you are between two standing feet - that generally means two possible points in the cycle of a walk. All the rest of the time you are off balance.

"What gets forgotten is there is a movement of the verticle body moving from the back to the front of the foot with the foot still in the same position before leaving which should be used."

Exactly. But the body not only moves the lenght of the foot, it must project beyond the lenght of the foot. Once the center of mass passes the toe or the heel, the body is no longer in balance. It still receives substantial support from the foot, but it is unbalanced and technically must be considered to be falling. In effect, the standing leg (or at least shin) starts to fall over as an unsupported ladder might, but rather than tipping the upper body remains vertically aligned over the knee (shin tipping) or hip (whole leg tipping).

"But to sum it all up. Nobody can learn to dance or improve what they have got through correspondence. It has to be through a teacher."

Yes... though taking a very careful look at videos would elminate a lot of the misundersandings some people are getting from reading.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  10:45:00 PM
Anonymous. Reading these pages can make a person go and look for themselves.This is a good thing.
I'm still stuck on this one. If I arrive over my feet and at the same time bend my knees my knees are in front, no matter how hard I try my body will never get in front of my feet unless I fall on my face.
If I were to do a straight legged job here my foot will always beat my body. Just like a Rumba Walk.
Your paragraph third from last tells to me that your not big on bending the knees.
Reading that again I don't believe you bend your knees at all. If you sent your weight forward and the knee was bent like picture four how can your body get in front of your foot. The more you go forward the more your knee would bend. As I said I don't think you bend at all.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/17/2006  10:58:00 PM
"Anonymous. Reading these pages can make a person go and look for themselves.This is a good thing.
I'm still stuck on this one. If I arrive over my feet and at the same time bend my knees my knees are in front, no matter how hard I try my body will never get in front of my feet unless I fall on my face."

You obviously haven't really looked at picture two in the forward walk sequence yet. It quite obviously shows the entire body forward of the standing foot. The standing knee has bent forward, and the body is off balance over the standing knee.

That particular picture shows the moving leg forward of the body much further than it should be. If you mentally move the moving leg back to be next to the standing foot, you would see a picture of the body being entirely ahead of both legs.

Why do you find that so hard to imagine???

"Your paragraph third from last tells to me that your not big on bending the knees."

Do I or do I not keep stressing the important of bending the standing knee and sending the body forward in vertical alignment over that advancing knee, until it is off balance?

You obviously don't read the posts your respond to... I should just compose a singal reply and use it as a response to everything you write, as you clearly aren't reading anything I've written with the intent of actually comprhending the key ideas behind it.

"Reading that again I don't believe you bend your knees at all."

Pure proof that you are imagining and not reading...

"If you sent your weight forward and the knee was bent like picture four how can your body get in front of your foot."

Picture TWO sir, not picture four.

Is or is not the knee bent in picture TWO? And anyone who thinks that body in picture TWO is balanced over its standing foot is legally blind!
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/18/2006  2:21:00 AM
Anonymous. Your weight is leaving the rear foot. You don't agree with picture three so we leave it out.The next move is four. How would you get your weight in front of the front foot, we wont even bother about the knee, which will have to be over the toe to a point of imbalance and stay verticle and then to fall or catch the weight without leaning forward. As I said in the beginning the choice of words are unfortunate. To say imbalance is to be either leaning forward or backward. To catch the weight means like the feet are trapped and the body is falling ahead of its point of balance. If you like the same as a person going off a building when they get to the point of no return. That is a Rumba Walk off a very straight leg. Being that I do both style I have a image on my left which is a Rumba and one on my right which is Modern. The two don't mix.
Re: To Torque or not to Torque
Posted by Anonymous
11/18/2006  6:45:00 AM
"Anonymous. Your weight is leaving the rear foot. You don't agree with picture three so we leave it out.The next move is four. How would you get your weight in front of the front foot"

By dancing picture TWO without moving my front foot so far yet. The weight is in front of both feet at the beginning of the action, not at the end. You keep trying to jump to the end (picture FOUR) and pretend like it is the beginning.

"we wont even bother about the knee, which will have to be over the toe to a point of imbalance and stay verticle and then to fall or catch the weight without leaning forward."

The knee is not over the toe, it is in front of the to. And the body is perfectly aligned over the knee, with no leaning of the body, only an incline of the shin - if you still can't see that in picture two YOU ARE BLIND.

"To say imbalance is to be either leaning forward or backward."

ABSOLUTELY WRONG. Imbalance describes only the position of the center of mass relative to the supporting feet. It says nothing about the body orientation. Most imbalanced positions critical to dancing, like that shown in PICTURE TWO maintain VERTICAL ALIGNMENT of the body.

You've been fighting that idea so long that it is clearly not a failure to understand, but a willfill intent to pretened that you are stupid. The evidence is in front of your eyes - if you had any interest in learning, you would have now admitted that, regardless if it is a way you wish to dance or not, it is at least POSSIBLE.

"To catch the weight means like the feet are trapped and the body is falling ahead of its point of balance."

Catching the weight is a key skill taught by all good teachers. The feet would remain trapped only so long as their knees do not bend to let them move through - so the feet do not remain trapped. Falling ahead of the point of balance is precisely the GOAL - it is how humans have been walking ever since we came down from the trees.

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