Anonymous. What exactly does swing catch drift mean, if it is not just another way of counting S Q Q. Do you really mean to say you would teach a class not to be aware of the beats. That there is not two beats for a slow and one for a quick. Why do you think on a DVD they call out the timing on everything they are teaching. Is that so it can be ignored. With you, you must turn the sound off. You don't need it whilst you are learning the steps.

"Anonymous. What exactly does swing catch drift mean, if it is not just another way of counting S Q Q."

It is not. It is one of many ideas people have put forward to try to match the nature of foxtrot action.

"Do you really mean to say you would teach a class not to be aware of the beats. That there is not two beats for a slow and one for a quick."

Well since there aren't to most people's understanding of what actually happens, I would probably avoid getting caught up in the useless detail of trying to explain where the steps fall relative to the beats for slows and quicks. If you want a numerical standard for foxtrot execution, hit your first quick on beat three and just feel the rest flowing with the music - pretty much anyone who is off time will get that wrong, so getting that right will get you most of the way in terms of the strict part. Whears trying to count through the rest of the slows and quicks as individual steps placed to beats will only kill you movement and make the dance very halting and jerky.

In trught, the number one reason why dancers go off time in foxtrot has nothing to do with counting, and everything to do with the fact that they don't have the strength and knowledge required to dance slowly enough to match the music. Once they build that capability, matching the music isn't hard - before the build it, it's impossible.

"Why do you think on a DVD they call out the timing on everything they are teaching."

Because they are TEACHING. To do that, you break things down and structuralize them. But when it comes time to dance, you DANCE with your mind eventully unclutered by all that artificial, mechanical approximation. Perhaps you aren't to the point yet where it is safe to trust yourself to do that. If that's the case, then PLEASE, KEEP COUNTING.

As for why to present the slows and quicks, because it's important to understanding the ultimately amounts of time required for a figure, even though they are not actually danced quite the way that this implies. It's important to know if you have SQQ or SQQQQQ or whatever to understand how everything will fit together, but you don't want to get caught up in the trap of worrying about where the boundary between the last quick and the first slow is - that will only get your into trouble and very awkward movement.

SQQQQQQ of course

Anonymous. How would you know where beat three is if you don't count. Without counting it could be beat one.
Explanation. Starting 1 2. gives us 3 on the 3rd beat.
Starting on 3 4. gives us a third beat on 1. Which is wrong!!!.
If in your head the beats aren't registering how would you know when to start.
Your paragraph three. strength to keep in time. Try doing the Reverse Turn correctly and your two quicks will be balanced. Do it with a left side lead you will be off balance.
I would ask anybody to try it that way. Are you falling backwards or not. Could you stop on the first quick if you had to. If you can't then you are not balanced.

"Anonymous. How would you know where beat three is if you don't count."

By feeling it.

"Without counting it could be beat one."

No, beat one feels different.

You really have no experience with music, do you? If you listen to a great jazz soloist, do you think they are counting the beats and remembering the changes, and knowing that because this is the 3rd beat of the 5th bar they should play in a certain key? No, they listen, and the music speaks directly to them. They participate in the music directly, without having to go through the extra stage of numbers and conceptual names.

As will a DANCER, only their body is their instrument.

But music students, like dance students often need to count as they first learn to figure things out.

"Your paragraph three. strength to keep in time. Try doing the Reverse Turn correctly and your two quicks will be balanced. Do it with a left side lead you will be off balance."

That's not where is strength is needed. The primary problem with foxtrot timing is rushing the slow, and the primary cause of that is not being strong enough to fully sustain the final quick. You can make the task simpler by not rising very much at all - but usually when people get ahead of the music, they rise more to try to slow down (making it waltz-like) and that just means they will have even more trouble with getting into the slow after that too early...

Anonymous. There is a positive rise at the end of step one on the Reverse in accordance with the correct technique. This where we do not want no foot rise, we want foot rise. For a brief moment the feet are apart on two toes as the weight is transfered perfectly balanced. If you were asked to take your left foot off the floor you should be able to staying perfectly balanced. Which as a test we do regulaly to make sure we dance from one foot to the other and not stay in the middle which causes a dancer to fall onto the next step.

"Anonymous. There is a positive rise at the end of step one on the Reverse in accordance with the correct technique. This where we do not want no foot rise, we want foot rise."

You are laughably wrong. Look it up. You will see "Rise slightly e/o 1 NFR"

True, the forward partner has foot rise, but you'd have to be a total idiot to get into an argument about that, because NFR is unique to backwards actions.

Anonymous. You must have a different book than me. It still says rise at the end of one.
If you are now looking at the ladies steps there is body rise only at the end of one.
The reason I drew attention to step one for the man on the Reverse is bacause you will see this step danced badly which ruins the next two steps. The step must come to a toe and not a flat foot. This is the left foot for the man which must become a toe.
We have a simular thing on step four of the Reverse for the man
where the TH must become a toe.
Is that laughable. I hope your taking this in.

"Anonymous. You must have a different book than me. It still says rise at the end of one.
If you are now looking at the ladies steps there is body rise only at the end of one."

In your post to which I responsed, you literally claimed that NFR was not appropriate and specifically said that foot rise was required. Which it is not as any copy of the book will tell you. Obvioulsy, any time NFR is under discussion we are talking about the backward parnter.

"The reason I drew attention to step one for the man on the Reverse is bacause you will see this step danced badly which ruins the next two steps. The step must come to a toe and not a flat foot."

Yes, but it does not have to rise very high at all. The action is important. But a large quantity is not, provided that you dance the action clearly.

The higher you rise in foxtrot, the more effort will be required to not accelerate ahead of the music. Foxtrot really needs very little rise compared to waltz.

Anonymous. The way the end of step one and the following step is being taught is to be on both toes with the weight evenly balanced.It would not be possible to do it this way if I haven't risen to my full height. I would be down on one side. Please look at your DVD's.
NFR. if you read what I wrote correctly it is saying there is no foot rise for the lady going backwards, not on or at the end of. I also added you must have a different technique book to me by the quote you gave me