I'm not sure what point you are trying to make David. I didn't see anyone making excuses.

When you say your teacher gave alternate follows in your first IS group class, was it the groups first ever dance class? I doubt if many people over here could handle such options with less than an hours dance experience. They have enough trouble deciding which left foot to use.

in int'l style the room is splitted into 4 sides

1 long, 1 short, 1 long, 1 short sides. (if you have a round ballfloor this really sucks )
for every side you get a routine. for a beginners choreography you use 1 long & 1 short side then start over. she calls this wall 1 and wall 2.
a more advanced competition choreography includes 4 or 6 sides which are replacable. so the boy can make decisions which side to dance to avoid traffic jam. mostly in QF you use diagionals ,too.
there are long diagonals from one corner of the floor to the other and small diagonals from middle of a long side to a corner.

very very good couples ( in england this is used more often) the coreography desnt use sides any more. the couples get a choreography like a long track and they dance this along the line of dance around the floor. very difficult to over and underturn the variations (difficult variations !!)in the traffic and the different room sizes.

on a crowed floor this system isnt bad, because all couples moving around and you can avoid collisions. problems are allways couples that park on the floor with 4 times right, 4 times hesitation .... on the other hand there are enough rowdys around that run over you.

Hi Dave,

It's nice to read your report, much useful information and very clear. Thank you and hope to see more. This time I will share some thoughts with you and members.

- Class: as my understanding, your class is for beginners. Is this good for student to learn only one dance for such a long time (more than 8 classes I guess). In my city, those ussualy teach at least 2 dances / 2 hour class. And I think it's suitable since beginners ussualy feel bored with practising one dance day by day.

- The preliminary step: I think beginners shouldn't be taught to do this step early. They have to much to focus on, so the unusual step on beat 3 seems to be very hard for them. (This can be discussed later if anyone feel interested in). My own method: in the last class of the basic course, introduce the simple preliminary step with Man's RF side on 1, drag LF slowly toward RF over 2-3, into LF Closed Change, and then the Natural Turn.

- Natural or Reverse figure first?: it depends on the Man. The 2 directions most used in Waltz is facing DW and facing DC. True that one can take first a Reverse figure, bur is much easier and more "natural" to make a Natural figure first. It seems that there's nothing different between the Reverse Turn and the Natural Turn, but there's at least one reason. Since in the Natural Turn, the center of the turn is Man's R side, where he holds the Lady firmly and therefore control the turn better than in the Reverse Turn. Later in advanced level, dancers could start with whaterver they like. But, did you see that most of the competition couples start their routines with a Natural figure?

- Methodology: I will have no comments since I didn't attend the class . But I agree with you that, although Int'l style is for competition first, but dancers must firstly know how to lead and follow a figure, how to link between figures in a routine. The teachers didn't teach, they may have their own reasons

- Self teaching: it's great that you have documents and study your self. But it's better to have a good teacher to tell you how to do what, which should which shouldn't etc. Try as many manners as you can. Good luck!

- By the way, I still don't understand what "Wall 1" and "Wall 2" means

Best regards,
MSN

I am always amazed at the comments. I live in the USA and I have always been given alternate follows by my teachers. This includes my first group lesson in International. The only exception is coaching sessions with my partner where we have a set routine for competition. If you want to be sheep, there is always someone around who will lead you astray. Just don't use where you live as the excuse for not taking charge of your dance training.

A few thoughts and comments from England where Intl is the only significant style taught for social or for comps.

Prep step: Agreed it helps with initial swing. In the UK it also marks the couple as competition trained, useful to catch the judges eye but looks out of place on the social floor. Unlikely to be taught to beginners, but when the inevitable question "how does the lady know which foot to start with?" arises, social dancers would be told the leader should make a definite weight change, maybe with a small step to side or back, just before starting to dance.

Natural or reverse start: Mixed opinions and teachers preferences vary. Personally I prefer a reverse figure so that the leader has a good view of the floor before starting, rather than stand in the way with his back to oncoming traffic.

Routines: These are used for teacher's convenience. It is much easier to spot couples having problems when the class moves as a group. Alignment, directions and amount of turn are important in Intl style and affect precedes and follows. Simple beginners routines take this into account. Typically a routine would develop thus: natural and reverse turns with closed changes, using natural turns around corners; whisk and chasse, adds concepts of PP and transition into and out of PP, syncopation, and stepping OP into following figure; spin turn at a corner, easier to learn as less turn required but often means couple never manage a full spin turn and always underturn it along the side of the room; hesitation change, adds use of same foot twice. Many social dancers never do more than those figures.

I sometimes liken routines to learning a foreign language. Initially the whole class learns "the cat sat on the mat", then "the dog sat on the red mat", and pretty soon they are making up "the black cat sat perched on the white dog."

Floorcraft: Not taught to beginners, except for under or over turning, curving chasses or using hesitation if blocked. Beginner are told that more advanced dancers will handle collision avoidance. This is easier if the beginners stick to their basic figures with correct alignment so that other dancers can anticipate their actions.

I think the previous replies probably covered everything pretty well. I'll add in a few more comments based on your original post. Using a routine or sets of combinations isn't unusual. It's a way for the teacher to get everyone dancing the same thing at the same time and make sure all the figures he/she wants included get danced and practiced. It also makes it easier to see which people are having more problems than others because the comparison is easy to make when everyone's dancing the same thing. The prep step as others said is mainly used to help get swing going. If you try to start a Natural Turn on the RF from a dead stop you won't get as good of a swing as if you take a step on your LF first to get things moving first. It's by no means an absolute requirement, but it helps. Basically you can start on either foot and turning in either direction as long as your partner knows what you want to do. A clear weight change or two to get your partner on the proper foot should be sufficient. I agree that trying to remember routines is a bit of a pain, especially in class. But our teachers would usually call out the figures just before we hit them so we wouldn't have to think *too* much about them. OTOH, it gives a precede and a follow for almost every figure and I think there are at least a few figures for which I only know one entry and exit from routines taught in classes. One primary difference between a Natural Turn and a Natural Spin Turn is that step 4 is a pivot in the NST (for the man, the book says it's a pivoting action for the lady). Stepping back while only commencing to turn R leads into a regular Natural Turn, but stepping back and pivoting leads the NST. Getting instruction from classes by a good teacher is definitely better than teaching yourself from books and videos. You may not be able to see subtle points that make a big difference or maybe just misunderstand something and end up doing it wrong because of that. Once you get into bad habits, they're hard to break. Being taught in person helps avoid getting into them in the first place. Books and videos can be good aids, but it will be hard to learn well from them alone. Some figures in the book are hard to understand without some other form instruction (the Outside Spin in waltz had me really confused from the description alone, but made sense once I was taught it). I hope this helps.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall