Quickstep: I would love to see a clip of you dancing. This would help me asses your comments. Just dance a few measures of a Smooth or Standard and let us see. Do not talk, dance. Thanks, Larry

Forget the feet!! The balance and movement comes from keeping your center over the supporting leg and driving from the supporting leg. The free foot actually moves from the thigh. If you have to think about the feet, then you're toast and you will never achieve the flight of the dance. (Remember!! Flight comes from moving horizonally across the floor. Watch the really good dancers and you will see they don't go up and down, but move across the floor! It takes leverage to move your weight so think about it, to move your weight across the floor (flight) you have to derive your leverage from your supporting leg.) If you learn to move from the supporting leg and use the free thigh/knee to move your free "foot" then it will feel very much as if you are truly stepping/walking thru the dance. It won't look like that though! However, that technique will give your dance the chance to be the best it can be. People who dance with their feet have little or no flight to their dance. It seems pretty complicated but, and it certainly takes practice, its very simple actually. Because most dance instructors in the U.S. don't know how to teach the true mechanics of movement, or maybe aren't interested, so they try to impress everyone with steps and then the normal amateur never learns to enjoy true dancing. They learn steps and moves, but don't learn to dance in the manner they desired in the first place. They are generally able to dance with their pro (due to backleading or choreographed routines) but cannot dance really well with another amateur (husband,wife, girlfriend, boyfriend). Too bad. Do some research and if you are truly interested in dancing very well, find an instructor who knows how to teach. You have to find instructors who have learned from the best though. For example, those that have had training from great teachers like Peter Eagleton, Ray Rivers, among others. My wife and I have experienced the whole gamut of instructors and finally have the instructors who have taken our dancing to levels I only dreamed of and we continue to get better! Also, consider participating in competitions. As our two coaches say, competing is expensive, but if you want to attain the high level of dance you wish for, you can't afford not to compete.

"Forget the feet!!"

Very good advice

"The balance and movement comes from keeping your center over the supporting leg and driving from the supporting leg. "

Very mistaken physics.

You can't really drive from the standing leg without letting your body weight get slightly ahead of it - slighty unbalanced ahead of it in fact.

If you try to keep your center over the supporting leg, you won't be sending your body weight, instead you will be reaching your moving foot. Which is tantamount to thinking about the feet - something you had wisely recommended against.

"(Remember!! Flight comes from moving horizonally across the floor. Watch the really good dancers and you will see they don't go up and down, but move across the floor! It takes leverage to move your weight so think about it, to move your weight across the floor (flight) you have to derive your leverage from your supporting leg.)"

Which can be summed up as saying you have to send your body center away from your standing leg, not keep it over it.

"If you learn to move from the supporting leg and use the free thigh/knee to move your free "foot" then it will feel very much as if you are truly stepping/walking thru the dance. It won't look like that though! However, that technique will give your dance the chance to be the best it can be. People who dance with their feet have little or no flight to their dance. It seems pretty complicated but, and it certainly takes practice, its very simple actually. Because most dance instructors in the U.S. don't know how to teach the true mechanics of movement, or maybe aren't interested, so they try to impress everyone with steps and then the normal amateur never learns to enjoy true dancing. They learn steps and moves, but don't learn to dance in the manner they desired in the first place. They are generally able to dance with their pro (due to backleading or choreographed routines) but cannot dance really well with another amateur (husband,wife, girlfriend, boyfriend). Too bad. Do some research and if you are truly interested in dancing very well, find an instructor who knows how to teach. You have to find instructors who have learned from the best though. For example, those that have had training from great teachers like Peter Eagleton, Ray Rivers, among others. My wife and I have experienced the whole gamut of instructors and finally have the instructors who have taken our dancing to levels I only dreamed of and we continue to get better! Also, consider participating in competitions. As our two coaches say, competing is expensive, but if you want to attain the high level of dance you wish for, you can't afford not to compete."

Very well said. Just fix that little mistake earlier about keeping the center over the standing leg

Here we go again. Mike must have the same tape I have. On it they go to great lengths to explain that the centre of the body goes over the centre of the foot and that we move our weight from foot to foot. They then give a demonstration of what it looks like if the weight is between the feet and not stepping from foot to foot. Very uninteresting and not correct.

Good points Anon. To expand on the weight over the standing/supporting leg. What is really happening is that the momentum of moving forward originates from the downward movement of your center to the supporting leg. I will again refer to the leverage concept of that you are leveraging your weight to the supporting leg to drive forward. You drop the weight into the supporting leg far enough and you will drive forward whether you want to or not! Then, the leg you just landed on is now the supporting leg and you repeat. It is this action that makes the top pros look slow and long and able to stop on a dime. It is also why they are balanced and have swing to their movement. With swing comes sway and it all builds from the action I have described. All the other crap of reaching, placing the foot, etc, etc, is just that, crap! Movement comes from dropping your weight to the balance point and driving forward. As Peter Eagleton likes to say (paraphrased), You have to drop down and spring forward. Your weight always has to be over the center point, otherwise you are not in balance. I recommend two teachers out of Phoenix, my wife and I use, and we are in Virginia. Jim and Janell Maranto. Jim is a master of communicating the movement mechanics to his students. Just check out his results with all of his students and the various competitions around the countyr. You do this, then you won't worry about executing "steps" anymore because when you move properly, the a step is just a step and easily executed. I cannot emphasize enough how important this one concept is!!!

Anon, if you think about always keeping your weight over the supporting leg, even when going from leg to leg, you will be able to lift the foot, kick a football, soccer ball, whatever, because you will be balanced! Keeping the foot in contact with floor then is really only used to assist in controlling timing and musicality. It has minimal effect on your balance. Dancing with the feet in mind will only result in a short road to frustration. By the way, this is my first time on this board and you ask a lot of good questions. Its important to be analytical in dance because it is a veyr analytical process.

"Anon, if you think about always keeping your weight over the supporting leg, even when going from leg to leg, you will be able to lift the foot, kick a football, soccer ball, whatever, because you will be balanced!"

What you miss is that all of those activities are customarily done off balance, because they don't work very well when balanced.

You need the body unbalanced forward of the foot in order to create much in the way of forward motive force - for yourself or for whatever you are kicking. You've just been doing it that way all your life and so don't think about what it is that you are actually doing. And of course your restore your balance when you don't need to be applying a forward force.

"Keeping the foot in contact with floor then is really only used to assist in controlling timing and musicality. It has minimal effect on your balance. Dancing with the feet in mind will only result in a short road to frustration."

Yes, that's pretty much true. As I said yestrday, you have the right idea, you are just missing that the body has to be sent away from the standing leg - it can't stay stationary in balance over it. Realize too, that sending the body away from the standing leg doesn't mean any weight is yet on the moving leg. There is a large fraction of each step where the body is off balance in the direction of movement, because it is ahead of the only foot that is supporting it. Obviously the support is not complete - you have to finish the step by landing on the other foot before you crash bodily into the floor.

Good points, however I will say I played college tennis, and just like in say kicking a ball, when striking the ball you are never out of balance. Never,Ever!! The smoothness of the stroke looks that way because you are constantly in balance. Just like in dance, you are never in a position, at any time, of being out of balance. In striking a tennis ball, kicking a ball, the drive thru the ball comes from powering and balancing thru your center I can appreciate its very difficult to communicate what I have tried to explain, but continue to ask around about it. I can tell you are very interested in dancing and want to excel. Good luck!

"Good points, however I will say I played college tennis, and just like in say kicking a ball, when striking the ball you are never out of balance. Never,Ever!!"

Sorry, but you are just plain wrong.

It's the whole equal and opposite force. You put yourself off balance so that you are falling forward at the time you collide with the ball. It goes flying, and you end up back on balance, because it pushed you back there.

Or if you don't, after it hits you you are off balance backwards, and have to restore your balance.

If you hit the ball while split weight between your feet this may be a bit less obvious because you have your feet spread out like outriggers, but if you look at the actual amount of support in the feet and did the math to translate that to an single point of support at the moment that counts, you'd see you are off balance then.

"Just like in dance, you are never in a position, at any time, of being out of balance."

Get a picture of one of the top dancers just before his foot stops moving for the last step of a feather. Where is his body? Way, way ahead of his only standing foot, which has been left far behind despite being the only foot providing support. So please explain to me how he is balanced?

Answer: he's not.

"In striking a tennis ball, kicking a ball, the drive thru the ball comes from powering and balancing thru your center"

You are trying to balance the wrong set of forces. The ball provides a force on the body too - you have to consider that alongside the force of gravity when calculating the balance. Otherwise, you are not analyzing the situation at hand!

Mike. you are flogging a dead horse if you argue with you know who. He is the only one who can stand on one leg without the centre of the body being over the centre of your foot. John Wood explained this one when he said we move from foot to foot, and said, the centre of the body to the centre of the foot . If you want to give somebody an example ask them if they have ever played Hop Scotch or hopped on one leg. End of story