Hello,

My dance partner says that I land too soon on the 3 count in waltz. Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can correct this? Would pushing off the supporting leg on the count 1 help? She is becoming very frustrated with me about this. I am not a professional dancer. I seem to have more difficulty if the slow waltz has a very slow (1,2,3). I would welcome any comments from the dance community.

Thanks for reading this message.


Jim

Are you being criticized for arriving on the step too early, or for lowering too early?

One of the real challenges in these dances is to learn to be able to make the movement smoothly continuous, instead of having sharp, disjoint steps.

But moving smoothly into a step, and lowering smoothly to begin the next one, are somewhat different problems.

Still, practicing to extremely slow music may help.

I would say that analyzing your movement will help, stick to what the technique book says. I understand that when you say you arrive early on 3 means you lower too early so it would seem that the problem is in the area of rising and lowering. Technique book states that, step 1 commence to rise, 2 continue to rise and the most important thing is step 3, RISE THEN LOWER AT THE END of 3. if one arrived early on 3 or lower on 3 instead of end of 3, your frontal movement will be much faster than the lady therefore she will have a feeling of being pulled into the following step. Hope it helps.

Thank-you.

I am definitely lowering too soon on count 3. We went to a dance last night and I continue to have the same problem. I did not know that on count 3 that you continue to rise and then lower at the end of count 3. I think I was lowering on the whole count 3. Waltz is my big problem at the moment and it's probably going to take a long time get it right. Does anyone know of any good videos on Youtube etc, or purchased CDs where the waltz technique is explained and executed very well so that a person can follow it. Thank-you for everyone who replied to my message on this message board. I welcome any other comments that dancers may have.


Jim