If your only method of moving outside partner is to literally shift off of your partner, that would be the case. But most dancers learn early on that the amount of horizontal offset need not change. Instead, the feet and legs point -- and therefore swing and travel -- on a line that is diagonal to the body. This enables them to move freely past the partner without a need to shift the area of contact, which is higher up.

The easiest way to illustrate this concept to students is to have them orient themselves to LOD (say, man facing LOD and lady backing). Then turn both feet 1/8 to left, so that man has both feet pointing to diagonal center, lady pointing to DW against LOD. Then have them walk towards diagonal center (or DW against LOD). What they realize immediately is that by simply turning the feet, and traveling in the direction the feet point, they can move freely past each other in either direction without ever shifting the position of body contact.

Here's another champion couple (in this case, Blackpool rising star champions) illustrating O.P. position with CBM with man moving forward on RF:



As for all of your other examples of "potentially obstructed" positions, it won't be any more difficult for me to find photos and video to debunk your theory. In fact, most of them can be found on the same video clip from which I extracted the first example. It was a video of English finalists demonstrating very basic Foxtrot -- Feather, Reverse Wave, 3-Step, Natural, etc. Every single step was taken with the moving foot ahead of the body... as is nearly every Foxtrot step taken by the entire set of dancers on the Superstars DVD.

Unfortunately, it's too time-consuming to keep making these image sequences. So you'll have to take my word for it on the remainder of examples. These are not rare, isolated incidents, they're commonplace. In fact, it's far more rare to find a step where the moving foot literally stays under the body, except in instances where the steps are extremely small (eg Tipsy in Quickstep).

Beginners or experts, in dance position or apart, if we analyze a video of people dancing, you will clearly see the moving foot momentarily in advance of the body. Even a video of your own dancing would show the same thing. The exact amount is negotiable, but make no mistake... your foot is ahead of your body to some degree. If it wasn't, then on the next step the moving foot would be behind your body.

Think about it: The body is in continuous motion. The foot left behind must retract before it can advance towards the next step. If the body arrives directly over the standing foot, then the new moving foot doesn't actually begin to move until the body is beginning to move past the standing foot. So for the period of time it takes the new moving foot to retract and then catch up to the body, you're actually dancing in front of both feet. You're basically tripping. Talk about wreaking havoc on your dance position!

It's not physically possible to always be directly over your standing foot because when you move through space, your body moves away from the standing foot. When that foot becomes the moving foot, it's not under the body anymore. When you understand this principle, you realize that dacing directly over the foot during the extension means dancing in front of the standing foot for the retraction. And it also means dancing in front of the moving foot during the beginning of the next extension.

By the same principle, if your moving foot is directly under the body on anything other than the very first step you take, it means that you had to have been behind your foot on the previous step. Because in order for your foot to move directly underneath the body from the moment you begin to pass your standing foot, the moving foot would already have to have retracted from the previous step. That retraction would have taken place while you were still moving towards the standing foot (iow, body still behind the foot), which in turn means that the foot would have been placed ahead of the body.

So my question is, when you say that your moving foot is "directly under the body", do you mean that it is directly under the body during the latter part of the extension, and actually behind the body at the beginning (as in the first example), or are you beginning your extension with the moving foot directly under the body, and therefore finishing the extension with the moving foot in advance (as in the second example)? It has to be one or the other... unless your body is literally stopping to wait for the moving foot to contract.

Regards,
Jonathan

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.

Anonymous. Argue as you will. I have enought dancers on tape collected over the years. If I wish to see how the leg extends I have the information right at hand. I have one from Blackpool . Modern Waltz. Tony Dorkman the Dutch guy in slow motion. Natural Spin Turn. The right leg is straight and in front on one. His knee bends as his weight comes onto it .From there you have two of the straightest legs you will ever see on Two and Three. The swing and sway and the amount of rise getting, right up on the tips of his toes. And wasn't he seventh or eighth this year. I do beieve this is beyond most of us Only after years of training and having the strength in the legs and incredible balance and conrol, could any of us mere mortals gain those heights. Or should I say straight legs where necessary.

Anyonymous,

Your counter-arguments are becoming a little pathetic in the face of such strong evidence to the contrary.

Loosely, I also hold the opinion that the moving leg does extend ahead of the 'body'. Of course that does not mean that it must be fully extended and Jonathan made that point quite clear. By how much varies based on a number of factors. I experience this while dancing and I also see other top dancers doing the same.

You are clearly being argumentative, which leads me to question whether you are interested in the truth or just winning an argument. You get into a lot of detail that obscures that real issue. This is just a tactic to 'muddy the waters' in my opinion. Then you see a 'straight' alignment of body, hips and foot in the images, something that I don't see. I'm going to be kind and say that you don't see too well do you.

There is always room for differences of opinion and argument but I can't help but feel a little irritated by your argumentative, unconvincing half-truths.

Jonathan, well put and thanks for the time and effort to help us dancers.

Rha

Ignore the arguments - just look at all the videos you see with a harsh eye and decide for yourself what works and doesn't. A lot of what is being taught clearly doesn't - nor does a lot of what is being danced at Blackpool. But without that many people who do it better, someone has to fill up the final. And there are people who do and teach it right - too bad they are lost amongst the contrary advice from those who claim to be almost as good. Sometimes the difference between first place and third is night and day.

"Then you see a 'straight' alignment of body, hips and foot in the images, something that I don't see. I'm going to be kind and say that you don't see too well do you.
"

1) print out the pictures

2) find a ruler

3) tell me in which picture the ankle of the right foot is not in a line with the (right) shoulder and hip, or behind that line?

Turn-in and turn-out do not necessarily result in damage to the joints. Ask any ballet dancer. (Actually, a ballet dancer will tell you that turning the feet to a different angle than the knees is necessarily damaging, but any Latin dancer will dispute that. But I digress). In ballroom, when the feet point to an angle different from the body such as they do in PP and OP positions, what's actually happening is one leg turning out while the other turns in. It uses roughly the same muscles as turning in and out, but instead of turning oppositionally, they turn parallel. Thus it is no more damaging than your garden variety ballet turnout, and is much less extreme to boot.

At any rate, you're right that the line of travel is generally taken at an angle slightly greater than the direction the feet point in OP position (and even moreso in PP). But to travel on a line towards DC while the feet point LOD is extreme for OP position -- that would be referred to as "forward *and across* in CBMP". And such an extreme version of CBMP is reserved for very specific restrictive circumstances (of which OP position is not one), because it makes for particularly poor tracking.

You can get away with some angle differential between feet and line of travel in OP position, but I wouldn't recommend putting all your stock in it. The purpose of turning your feet (really, your legs, actually) is to minimize the amount the legs must cross. You don't eliminate it entirely, but you do decrease it considerably, resulting in better tracking and leg swing. The exercise I discussed earlier would teach a student how to turn the legs to the same angle as the line of travel in theory, but in reality they would turn slightly less. So the net result would be a *slight* difference between foot angle and line of travel.


That's entirely dependent on circumstances. The straightness of the legs at the full extent of the stride depends on how high you want (or need) to carry your center, and how long you want your stride. For a fully lowered stride, a tall guy like Victor has no need to fully straighten his leg. To do so on that step would have either caused him to dance 3 inches higher or 8 inches farther (or somewhere in between), which might very well have been out of the range of his partner... it was already a huge step.

But that's not to say that there isn't a time and place for a fully straightened leg stride. Think of any time you might want to carry your center higher, such as the third step coming off of a rise. Even on a lowered driving action, there's an appropriate circumstance for a straighter (if not completely straight, but that's debatable) leg: With a greater difference in height between partners, each needs to control his or her overall height by the degree of straightening. The shorter person dances slightly straighter legs while the taller person dances slightly deeper into the legs. In extreme cases of height difference, the man may have a mid-stride resembling that of Victor's in the photo example, whereas the lady might have completely straightened legs. I have a student who is nearly 12 inches shorter than I am, and that is exactly what undefeated U.S. champion Victor Veyrasset (different Victor) has her do to compensate for the height difference.

Anyway, none of this is relevant to the discussion at hand. No matter how much Victor has straightened his leg at mid-stride, his leg is clearly well in front of his body, having moved (as I keep saying) roughly twice the speed of his body. And you can see perfectly well that his leg is "in her space", as you say, without having compromised his (or her) posture.


And if we ever did that, I'd be the first to point out the mistake. Luckily, we don't. Nor have I ever espuosed such a technique. That's a horrendous misinterpretation on your part. Go ahead and look over all of the discussions so far and see if you can find anywhere I've stated that the body is to "stay" over the supporting foot. All along I've said that the body moves *between* the feet, that the body and moving foot always move at the same time (ie foot can't move without body), but never the same speed (ie foot moves twice as fast). And that's exactly how we dance it.

As I said, I don't deny that you might personally find us to be too slow in some places, or too fast in others, or whatever. You prefer a faster body-to-foot speed, no doubt. But that's an entirely different discussion, one that's based on personal preference. This discussion -- whether or not the moving foot stays directly under the body -- is a simple matter right and wrong. And if you think the foot stays directly under the body, you are, simply put, wrong.

I don't know about you, but I define my partner's space as that which her physical body is occupying. At mid-stride, she has one leg extended behind and one extended in front. The line directly below her body is not "her space" because she is not occupying it. So if I have one leg extended back and one forward in the same way, there is no conflict. Take a look at the photos and see for yourself.

Incidentally, in the last Waltz variation, the only movement where I see a major technical error is a step 3 coming off of a rise in shadow position on the right foot. Because we had to squeeze around a corner somewhat awkwardly (It was a very wide set, but had no depth), we arrived over the foot too quickly. This forced us to lower with very little progression, causing a sort of "dropped" look to the lowering. This is yet another problem with small, non-extended strides: You either have to limit your lowering to almost nil, or you drop suddenly and vertically. Neither one is desirable for what is supposed to be a progressive movement. But I find it amusing that in the video clip that inspired this discussion, the worst mistake we made was moving the body too quickly. Guess I'll have to take more lessons with world champions to learn how to get my foot out ahead.

Regards,
Jonathan

Not talking about the variations, but about the learning center waltz clips.

That said, if you don't have room to take much of a step, you shouldn't lower much past simply putting the heel down - knees drop to a stable position, but not really "down". Exception would be beginners who may need to work on remembering to lower at all, and willing to dance with an extra 6 inches of space in the hold to permit practicing this.

I had a look at the natural turn in the learning centre. I think it is a very, very good natural turn. Good balance, flight, shape, effortless power, technique, etc. Lovely execution.

Can it be improved? I think, yes. But that would go for mine and everyone else's natural turn in the world if one analysed it. The issue being debated here is: "Does the moving leg extend ahead of the body?". Without raising questions of when and how and at which point in the movement this happens, it's clear that this it does. Agreed, there many ways to do this incorrectly like keeping one's weight over the standing leg for far too long as one compresses and reaching out with the moving leg. This is the famous 'sitting' problem. The other is problem is 'over reaching' with the moving leg. These are problem cases. So it's incorrect to say that the moving leg must always be held under the body and never extends ahead of the body.

If I were to make a comment on the natural turn in the learning centre and I stress that this is just my personal point of view, and I'm being very, very picky. As the compression develops on 1, both the man's and lady's hips move a little 'back' or apart from each other. That in in itself is not wrong but it indicates certain preferences that one can reconsider in other ways.
I don't believe that this is a deliberate action but a reaction to the weight of man not being allowed to move even more forward to the ball of foot for the man and heel for lady as the compression progresses. The couple maintain a very proper verticality to the floor as the compression continues to develop, which is very good, but I think the man can allow himself to be inclined more 'over' the lady as the compression and movement develops forward. (Don't take this to mean a compromise in posture, a break at the hip line, on leaning on the lady). The lady can leave the hips more up to the man and allow the movement of her 1st step back develop more naturally from the compression over the standing leg. Both these are natural tendencies in the movement that should be allowed to happen. These ideas together will create a more dominant male profile, a stronger down-swing and a more flighted movement. These are miniscule adjustments that I'm talking about, from the point of view of a competitive dancer looking to make a very, very good natural turn perfect.

Rha

Didn't know we were talking about the Waltz syllabus clips. These are about 6 or 7 years old now and I shudder to think what they must look like, since our dancing has improved ten fold since then. As luck would have it, we just re-filmed the entire Bronze syllabus last month, so you're about to get an updated look at our dancing. (Well, ok, "about to" is a bit of an overstatement... it may take me the rest of this year to polish and upload all of the video we shot).

If I were to look at the old clips I'd probably agree with everything Rha said, and perhaps even add some thoughts of my own. But frankly I'd rather wait until the new clips are up. After all, it's much more useful to hear advice about what could be improved in my dancing now. I'm already well aware of what was wrong with it way back then!

Of course, that's all basically irrelevant to this discussion. Unless the answer to "What's wrong with the dancing in the old clips" is "They're not keeping the moving foot directly under the body at all times" (which it's not), the discussion of whatever faults may exist in the video, interesting though it may be, does not serve to move this topic forward.

Neither will it advance the topic to use our dancing as a model for correct technique, since our anonymous friend has stated clearly that he is not satisfied with the technique demonstrated in those clips. In fact, apparently even a world finalist won't serve as proof, because the frame-by-frame work-up of a top-tier world finalist English couple wasn't convincing enough -- His response was essentially (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Well, the couple above them wouldn't do that, and that's exactly what makes them so much better". I'd like to think that finding shots of the world champions would work, since there's nobody else "above" them, but if he's really that hell bent on believeing what he wants to believe, I'm sure he'll give some other justification. So it's not worth thr trouble.

If I've learned one thing in my many years of participating in internet discussions, it's that when two people disagree on something, it is an extremely rare case that either party will be "convinced" of the other party's opinion. I think we should expect that no matter what kind of proof is provided in the form of photos and video, and no matter who demonstrates such technique, nothing will change his opinion. What we're really doing here now is making our case for all others who might read it. And I think based on the photos, I've done that. (But if anybody besides Anonymous is not convinced, by all means speak up).

The only thing that would help move this discussion in a new direction now is if Anonymous would post photos or video of himself demonstrating the correct technique as he sees it. Then it would be very simple to compare the results, and people could decide for themselves which result they prefer. But seeing as how he won't even disclose his name, the odds of his posting a photo or video of his dancing are slim to none (Actually, forget slim). That being the case, I don't see where else this can go. So I suggest closing the topic and moving on.

There is one possible spin-off which might be interesting. Since we got sidetracked with the critiquing of the dancing in other ways, I'd certainly be game for continuing. But I would recommend starting a new thread for that, since it could involve any aspect of the dancing, not just stride and leg division. As I mentioned before, it won't really be interesting for me personally to be critiqued on my dancing from 3/4 of a decade ago, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be useful for someone else. So have at it.

Regards,
Jonathan Atkinson
www.ballroomdancers.com