Hi Anon,
This can go on for ever. I was trying to help in the query of how is body flight achieved. I know Charles mentioned body flight in his lecture. That's why I did the post.

/* You can learn a lot from this guy; but you aren't going to dance very well.*/

Really Anon. The list of champions, just to mention a few, who had training with Charles: Irvine; Eggleton; Houseman; Hurley. The list is almost endless.

PS. I've never heard the term, Foot-Push' dancing before.

"/* You can learn a lot from this guy; but you aren't going to dance very well.*/ "

Either you still DONT GET IT or you are intentionally setting out the MALICIOUSLY MISQUOTE.

Re-read the quoted passage in its ENTIRITY and the meaning changes drastically from what you tried to imply:

"You can learn a lot from this guy; but you aren't going to dance very well (against modern expectations at least) unless you also do some very important and related things that he overlooked, at least in that lecture."

Thus your criticism is BASELESS - yes, many people probably learned a lot from him, but they would not be the champions that they are if there were not also doing the THINGS HE LEFT out.

Some of those things might even be in his teaching. Given how attrociously you ommited a key part of what you quoted from me, I really have to wonder if you didn't leave out a key part of the lecture that you quoted.

Because what you quoted, in isolation, leads to some DANGEROUSLY MISTKAEN CONCLUSIONS as to how dancing works. It's not just about pushing with your foot - it also (really more) about COASTING your pre-existing movement.

Dear Anon,
When the rest of the world wakes up they will certainly have some reading to do. I sometimes find your answers just a little sarcastic. I seem to get the feeling that you think you are very superior in dance knowledge to any one who posts. When writing to an Anon - or any other title - you just don't know who you are talking to. So here is my challenge:

I will deposit with Jonathon the sum of $100 USD that my achievements in ballroom dance are far greater than yours. If you win you can have the bet. Just prove to the Administrator your successes.

knowledge != success

"knowledge != success"

And let me give you an example: one of my most valuable teachers is someone we defeated the first and only time we competed against him.

You: A succesful dancer with a poor grasp of physics... Another prominent mistake was the idea of body speed increasing during the rise - actually, it decreases then, because rise is mostly about converting body speed to body altitude.



Me: It's awful hard to take you seriously when you complain about someone else's physics, and you get something as simple as speed wrong. You're talking about a change in velocity. Speed doesn't have a direction, it only has a quantity. So, speed *can* increase, while changing direction.

Additionally, velocity, which is the direction of travel combined with the speed of travel, will change with a change of direction. Your velocity in one direction will lessen, while your velocity in another direction will increase.

"Me: It's awful hard to take you seriously when you complain about someone else's physics, and you get something as simple as speed wrong. You're talking about a change in velocity. Speed doesn't have a direction, it only has a quantity. So, speed *can* increase, while changing direction."

Why don't you try doing the vector sum of the horizontal and vertical velocities to calculate the body speed? I already know the answer, but you apparently don't.

In fact, I was not talking about the velocity across the floor; I was instead talking about the velocity in the instantaneous direciton of movement, because that is the velocity that counts for kinetic energy and momentum purposes. You perhaps haven't realized it yet, but there is a very elegant interchange between kinetic energy during the moving phase and gravitational potential energy during the slower risen phases.

"Additionally, velocity, which is the direction of travel combined with the speed of travel, will change with a change of direction. Your velocity in one direction will lessen, while your velocity in another direction will increase."

Yes. But the way you change direction EFFICIENTLY is to first convert much of your kinetic energy in the original direction into the potential energy of rise altitude - which has no direction across the floor, since gravity is "down". Then you convert this back into kinetic energy in the new direction.

If you go and examine all of the characeristic figures of the "swing" or "body flight" dances in the context of this insight, you'll see how elegantly it all works out.

In my experience, all of the truly masterful dancers exhibit this knowledge intuitively in their dancing, though probably only a few of them could state it as a physics student would. But many of the merely succesful dancers do not exhibit this, and regularly break from this elegance of movement. When you get to see the two versions side by side - the energy conversvation version vs. the merely musuclar one, you realize how much role this plays in keeping the merely ordinary couples merely ordinary, instead of remarkable.

if you can run all of that through your mind as you dance you will undoubtobly some day blow a casket.
You wont find any of this in any dancing manual. That I am sure.
If it's not there it doesn t exist. But it does in the minds of some. From this do they draw their comfort.
I stole that from Somerset Maugham.
For those who are into the Internation Style of Rumba will be aware that in a Rumba Walk after the step the feet freezes and the body weight is allowed to go to the point of imbalance after which it is caught by the now moving foot. Don' t do that in Modern. See Slavik's DVD for expert Latin instructions. And also pay a visit to the instructions on this site.

"if you can run all of that through your mind as you dance you will undoubtobly some day blow a casket."

You don't run it through your mind AS you dance, you run it through your mind IN BETWEEN trials in practice, or afterwards, or while watching your competition tape - in order to figure out why something didn't quite work right, and how to change it.

"You wont find any of this in any dancing manual."

It is a more detailed description of the dancing that IS in the manual. You won't find Newton's laws of motion spelled out in star constellations, yet they were dervied to describe the motion of heavenly bodies and do it quite well (at least to the accuracy with which such could be observed in Newton's era)

"For those who are into the Internation Style of Rumba will be aware that in a Rumba Walk after the step the feet freezes and the body weight is allowed to go to the point of imbalance after which it is caught by the now moving foot. Don' t do that in Modern."

Too bad you weren't in my lesson where a many times world champ, and frequent coach of more recent champs TOLD ME TO DO SPEFICIALLY THAT IN MODERN. Face it - you just don't know your subject matter!

(from the same anonymous who complained about your physics)

Anonymous, thanks for the explicit description of what you were referring to. This is the first time, in this whole thread, where I can begin to see what you're trying to say.


you: Why don't you try doing the vector sum of the horizontal and vertical velocities to calculate the body speed? I already know the answer, but you apparently don't.

Me: Well, without space to practice, and without any videos in front of me, and without any measuring devices, I'd expect the speed to increase before it decreases. Then, I'd expect it to decrease to a nominal value, before it increases, again.

But, no, I don't already know the answer, because I've never examined the question that way *shrug*.



You: Yes. But the way you change direction EFFICIENTLY is to first convert much of your kinetic energy in the original direction into the potential energy of rise altitude - which has no direction across the floor, since gravity is "down". Then you convert this back into kinetic energy in the new direction.


Me: I didn't realize that I said anything about efficiency, or anything that implied or required inefficiency.


You: If you go and examine all of the characeristic figures of the "swing" or "body flight" dances in the context of this insight, you'll see how elegantly it all works out.

Me: Not every dancer is a physicist/mathematician/etc. And dancers don't need to be. You whole point (unless I've gotten confused between who posted what) is that "body flight" is an inexact term, described in an inexact way, by dance teachers.

But I contend that it doesn't matter if something is described, exactly, because that doesn't necessarily teach. People learn to walk without knowing the laws of thermodynamics, Newton's laws, or principles used to model and understand the universe. It's more important that the concept be understood by the student than that the description be perfect.

In fact, I believe that the vast majority of people will be hindered by getting too much detail, when trying to understand something.


P.S. I don't frequent this site often, so I apologize in advance if I don't reply to this thread, for a while (if at all).