I think you have agreed that walking is not dancing. To me you appear to hop from one side of the fence to the other.
The moving foot stays very close to the floor but it is not bearing any weight
Of course it isn't bearing any weight, the weight hasn't arrived yet. Our rear foot is still in control.
I was once told that if my front foot is moving and is off the floor the only time I am able to stop is only when the foot touches down.
If I have contact with the floor I can slow down or stop or accelerarate any time i wish. Try that with the foot clear of the floor. Plus it was added. Stand with one leg on the floor, your partner as well. I could cause you to lose your balance with the slightest pressure of my little finger. You only have momentum to keep you up

"I think you have agreed that walking is not dancing."

TOTAL MISCHARACTERIZATION!!!

The distinction I drew was between the exercise of nominal DANCE walks and actual dancing. These are not the same, as actual dancing adds many modifiers to the textbook exercise of a nominal "DANCE" walk.

However, there is still a lot of similarity between DANCE WALKS (the exercise) and everyday walks - and of course dancing itself. The differences are driving by the specific needs of each situation. Between dance walks and normal walks, the differences are largely driven by the footwear and type of ground (uneven ground or sticky soles and you have to pick up your feet higher). The difference between dances walks and actual dancing are driven by the needs of dance actions to evolve from one body situation to another, wheras the basic walk simply goes from one position to its exact mirror image on the other foot, and then back to the original position, with no evolution.

"The moving foot stays very close to the floor but it is not bearing any weight
Of course it isn't bearing any weight"

If it's not bearing any weight, then you have only one standing foot for balance...

"I was once told that if my front foot is moving and is off the floor the only time I am able to stop is only when the foot touches down."

Not true. If your weight (plus need to decelerate your forward momentum) has not commited your past the point in your foot where your toes can no longer carry your body weight, you can stop on that same standing foot. If you have commited past the strong part of your foot, then yes, you are going to have to arrive on the moving foot.

"If I have contact with the floor I can slow down or stop or accelerarate any time i wish."

Only by partially arriving on the moving foot. At which point you no longer have one standing foot, but two. I don't know about you, but I can put my moving foot down pretty darn quickly when I need to, even if it's "stepping over rocks and branches" height off a forest trail.

"Stand with one leg on the floor, your partner as well. I could cause you to lose your balance with the slightest pressure of my little finger. You only have momentum to keep you up"

That's ignorant physics... momentum can't keep you up.

As for the little push, sure. But dancing usually provides us the oportunity to take a graceful rebalancing step when an "accident" makes it necessary. If someone bumps you while you are in a raised line like a hover corte (most lines after all are lowered), you can just take a step into a new position and develop that.

I'm still not sure whether you are preaching that the foot stays in contact with the floor or doesn't.
I will take you back a few weeks when I was on about divided weight and I omitted to say that on a walk forward first the ball of the foot moves from under the body and becomes a heel. You quite rightly corrected me. Which I acknowledged as being correct. The foot being clear of the floor wasn't even mentioned. Is the ball in contact with the floor in your personal opinion or are you now lifting the foot from the floor.

With trepidation i'm putting my nose into this discussion!
i do have some control while my moving foot is off the floor. Not as much as when it's on the floor of course, but nevertheless my body flight is under 'control' as is my body shaping if i want to change it. On slow waltz and foxtrot i skim my moving foot over the floor (very lightly) but not to maintain balance, just to improve the 'feel' of my dancing (i hope) and improve my leg lines( i hope). I guess it's easier to control the movement of a foot which is lightly skimming the floor because there is a small amount of feedback from it.
On comparisons with walking - this is dangerous because there is no agreed 'syllabus' or technique book for walking. When i look at people walking i see all sorts of actions from lazy plonking to graceful flowing.

"I'm still not sure whether you are preaching that the foot stays in contact with the floor or doesn't.
I will take you back a few weeks when I was on about divided weight and I omitted to say that on a walk forward first the ball of the foot moves from under the body and becomes a heel. You quite rightly corrected me. Which I acknowledged as being correct. The foot being clear of the floor wasn't even mentioned. Is the ball in contact with the floor in your personal opinion or are you now lifting the foot from the floor."

I see really only two issues:

1) lifting the foot any substantial distance off the floor wastes energy, causes some instability (because it's mass is higher), and doesn't look great.

2) Having your foot on the floor (instead of merely quite near the floor) is of no benefit unless you put weight pressure on it

Thus it does not matter to me if your foot is literally touching the floor, or only very near the floor.

I can find in three books which I have, and there are more. All say foot in contact with the floor, skimming the floor. ( skimming, a thin layer of substance on the surface of liquid )
I doubt you will find any instructions in any book by any person that says the feet leave the floor.
If we go right to the very beginning of this on another thread. I said the person who lifts the feet you will always find they lift the rear toe off the floor not knowing it has to keep in contact with the floor. Once it is lifted it is airborne and will remain so for the rest of the step. Next time your out just take a look. This is how we walk and not how we should dance.

"f we go right to the very beginning of this on another thread. I said the person who lifts the feet you will always find they lift the rear toe off the floor not knowing it has to keep in contact with the floor. "

If you can see them lift their foot, then they are not keeping it near enough to the floor that there is no difference between "on" and "near".

I would think waltz and foxtrot would be closer to walking than tango. They both have body glide, where Tango is a dance without body glide.

I think teachers bring up the similarity to walking to get people over the mental block many have in waltz and foxtrot. To help them realize the steps are not something that is completely new to them. So many people stride into a room with nice big steps, than take baby steps when doing a waltz or foxtrot.

Dennis Beach. Why don't you go to Learn the Dances. Look at the Foxtrot and then the Tango. If you cannot see that the feet in the Tango are lifted from the floor something is wrong. Tango is a Walking Dance. Foxtrot . You will see the feet are in contact with the floor. When we walk we lift the feet from the floor. The foot is lifted from the floor whilst it is behind. In the Foxtrot Waltz we keep the foot, which is behind, in contact with the floor and keep it in contact with the floor through to under the body. The toe becomes a ball and then a heel as we continue . If the next step were a toe the ball of the foot will become a toe still on the floor. Go and have a look. If that isn't so then write. But look first. That's why they are there. If you are a walk around social dancer the videos will be of no interest to you. I mean no disrespect here. Where I live the amount of people who dance socialy , mostly are the older age group. I'll change that to all. Here it is possible to go to that type of dancing morning noon and night seven days a week. That is no exaggeration. But what they do is not dancing. It is walking around to music. Most of there dancing is English Sequence Dancing. There are hundreds of difference dances based on modern. Some are OK. The UK Foxtrot is one. Rumba Nevada Siversprings Foxtrot. I wouldn't know if they ran me over.I could go to a dance like this, take a look at the board and wouldn't know one dance out of a hundred or so. If anyone wishes to enlarge there knowledge on the dancing world take a look at Sequence Dancing Queensland. Its entertaining. music and all. Dancing with instructions &4 bring a plate. I think that's about US $3.20 Overseas visitors wellcome.

"Dennis Beach. Why don't you go to Learn the Dances. Look at the Foxtrot and then the Tango. If you cannot see that the feet in the Tango are lifted from the floor something is wrong. Tango is a Walking Dance. Foxtrot . You will see the feet are in contact with the floor. When we walk we lift the feet from the floor. The foot is lifted from the floor whilst it is behind."

Quickstep, the problem is that you are confusing yourself by concentrating on the trivial detail of the moving foot, and entirely ignoring what is important in human locomotion - the ACTION OF THE BODY AND THE STANDING LEG.

When you focus your attention there, you will discover that foxtrot really is a fairly normal means of moving a human body around, wheras tango is... wierd.


"In the Foxtrot Waltz we keep the foot, which is behind, in contact with the floor and keep it in contact with the floor through to under the body. The toe becomes a ball and then a heel as we continue . If the next step were a toe the ball of the foot will become a toe still on the floor. Go and have a look."

You do that when you walk too, you just don't notice it because a) you don't think about it and b) the steps are smaller and so the development of their details is less important and c) you get so distracted by this red herring of picking up the feet that you fail to notice how everything else is the same