Here are a few tips to help:
(#1) Loss of balance on heel turns is often the result of too much of a deliberate and over-articulated lifting of the toes, causing the body weight to fall behind the heels. Although the toes will probably lift slightly off the floor, there's no need to pull them way up high.
As an exercise to counteract this error, practice stepping back on one foot and then drawing the other foot together, simply landing straight up over your flat feet (knees very slightly flexed). Don't turn at all... just practice landing the weight on the feet. When you're comfortable with this, and when you're consistently hitting your target, try then to do the same exercise, but land slightly towards your heel, although still with feet flat.
Note that "feet flat" refers to the position of the feet when they're together... during your back step you should still use the correct foot action of releasing the front toe, allowing it to lower gradually as it moves towards the back foot.
(#2) Another common reason for falling back behind the heels is poise: You may be landing in more or less the right place, but the shoulder weight is arched or slouched slightly behind the hips. Even a slight amount of back-weightedness on the part of the lady will kill a heel turn instantly. So if this is the case, you must work on pulling your tummy back to the heels, and not so much your shoulders.
Poise and posture, unfortunately, is a very sticky subject, and so I hesitate somewhat to tell you to exactly how to fix it without actually being there with you. The shoulders falling behind the hips is such a common problem on heel turns, that I am fairly certain that it's probably playing some part. But it's also easy to over-compensate, so you really need someone there to help you asses the correct position. Just know that feeling the tummy pull back to the feet, and not as much the shoulders, is the general solution to this problem.
(#3) On the flip-side of that, we have ladies who maintain their poise, but never actually dance a heel turn... they end up doing more of a toe-swivel type of action. It's not quite as awkward as falling backwards, but it does come with problems of its own: When you stop your weight early (before reaching your heels and allowing the back heel to lower), you block the man to a certain degree, and he ends up cutting his movement short and throwing his weight around you instead of swinging through you. The result is either under-rotation, falling off to the side, or both.
This problem often begins when a lady conditions herself to responding incorrectly to the feeling of early rise. Remember that when moving backwards, your weight should roll through the foot and the heel should lower, whether or not you rise in your legs. To correct this problem, you should focus on two things: First, allowing your back heel to lower completely *before* commencing the turn (CBM exempted). Second, and more importantly, actually allowing the weight to move back fully to the heel *before* commencing the turn. Finish the weight, then turn. The same exercise I described in #1 will help this problem, too).
(#4) In additon to problems pertaining to forward & back, there's also the left/right thing. I often see ladies dance their heel turns with space between their feet. This is the result of allowing the body weight (especially the top weight) to shift towards the direction of rotation.
When you dnce a heel turn, the turn itself should be taken entirely with the weight on the foot on which you stepped back; the foot that pulled in should remain free of weight, even when closed. It's not until the end of the turn that you as lady should change weight and begin to rise through the feet.
Knowing this, you can practice having your weight on the correct foot during your heel turn by stepping back, then drawing the front foot in and holding it against the weighted foot maybe an inch or so off the floor. If your foot is actually off the floor, you won't be quite so inclined to put weight on it. Try to practice the actual turn with the free foot off the floor. In so doing, you'll be training yourself how to keep your weight shifted towards the "inside of the rotation", which in this case is away from the direction of turn.
Remember that this is an exercise meant to teach you a particular point; It doesn't mean that you should always hold the free foot off the floor. When you are reasonalby confident that you know how to shift your weight to the correct position, you can put the foot back on the floor where it's supposed to be, and it will (hopefully) not take weight.
And finally, I have one last exercise which works really well on newcomers. It doesn't focus so much on error correction... instead, it's just a good way to get used to doing the correct set of actions in the correct order.
1. Step back
2. Draw (heel of) forward foot back towards back foot until they close
3. Turn (still first foot)
4. Change weight
5. Rise onto toes
6. Step forward with toe of free foot
7. Lower
That seems awfully complicated, so let's simplify it to this: Step, together, turn, change weight, rise, step, lower. That's it! And it works for both the natural and the reverse turns.
This is also a great exercise for those who have troble remembering which foot steps forward at the end of the turn. Instead of thinking in terms of LF/RF (which invariably produces the wrong results), do this exercise focusing on the correct action. The correct action will always produce the correct results, and you never have to memorize left or right.
Wow, that was a long one. Probably way too much to absorb all al once, so print it out and sorta maybe chew on it over the next little while. I hope it hepls!
Sincerely,
Jonathan Atkinson www.ballroomdancers.com
