This is partly in answere to aother thread. I wish teachers would not say dancing is just walking, except in the Tango which often refereded to quite rightly as a walking dance.
The only similarity between walking and dancing is one leg more often than not goes in front of the other. There the simularity ends. Alex Moore went to great lengths to say we keep our foot in close contact with the floor by pointing out that the foot starts as a ball and then becomes a heel on a walk forward going right to the tip of the rear foot which then will become a ball.
Work this out for yourselves. Lift the right foot to knee high and step forward. You have no control untill the foot touches the floor. Bring the foot down to ankle height and step. Again untill the foot touches the floor we are standing on one leg.Come down to one inch above the floor and repeat. Again there is no control untill the foot touches down. Which is dead opposite to the technique book. Back to the opening statement which was. Walking is not dancing.

"This is partly in answere to aother thread. I wish teachers would not say dancing is just walking"

If you had a greater experience of proper dance technique and efficient walking in non-dance settings, you would recognize the large similarities.

You cricisms though show your lack of understanding of either:

"Alex Moore went to great lengths to say we keep our foot in close contact with the floor"

This is an efficiency adapation, but you greatly over-estimate its impact as a difference. We pick up our feet higher when walking around mainly as a safety issue, because we often walk of surfaces that are not nearly as nice as a dance floor. I kept tripping at work after they refinished the floors, because I don't pick my feet up any higher than needed, and the new finish would grab my street shoes. Picking up the feet higher is wasteful, but safer.

"by pointing out that the foot starts as a ball and then becomes a heel on a walk forward going right to the tip of the rear foot which then will become a ball."

This happens in any efficient walk. You just notice it because your attention has been called to it, and because you have a mistaken idea as to why it's done:

"Work this out for yourselves. Lift the right foot to knee high and step forward. You have no control untill the foot touches the floor. Bring the foot down to ankle height and step. Again untill the foot touches the floor we are standing on one leg."

Yes, that's exactly how millions of years of evolution have prepared us to move. We indeed do not have much control when standing on one foot, but we've had millions of years to develop brains that can send our body along a carefully aimed path. The result is that we have as much control while standing on one foot as we ordinarily need - for walking or for dancing.

"Come down to one inch above the floor and repeat. Again there is no control untill the foot touches down. Which is dead opposite to the technique book."

That's where you are wrong. The moving foot stays very close to the floot in dancing, it might even touch incidentally - but is is not bearing any weight, not even the weight of the foot itself. And it does not provide any stability assistance. If you are using your moving foot for balance, you are dancing VERY VERY BADLY.

At most, having the mass of hte moving foot near the floor lessens its ability to unbalance your body. But if you are relying on pressure from the moving foot to balance, something is SERIOUSLY WRONG with the aim of your movement.

Learn to aim... don't aim poorly and then fix it by using your moving foot as a CRUTCH.

I think you have agreed that walking is not dancing. To me you appear to hop from one side of the fence to the other.
The moving foot stays very close to the floor but it is not bearing any weight
Of course it isn't bearing any weight, the weight hasn't arrived yet. Our rear foot is still in control.
I was once told that if my front foot is moving and is off the floor the only time I am able to stop is only when the foot touches down.
If I have contact with the floor I can slow down or stop or accelerarate any time i wish. Try that with the foot clear of the floor. Plus it was added. Stand with one leg on the floor, your partner as well. I could cause you to lose your balance with the slightest pressure of my little finger. You only have momentum to keep you up

"I think you have agreed that walking is not dancing."

TOTAL MISCHARACTERIZATION!!!

The distinction I drew was between the exercise of nominal DANCE walks and actual dancing. These are not the same, as actual dancing adds many modifiers to the textbook exercise of a nominal "DANCE" walk.

However, there is still a lot of similarity between DANCE WALKS (the exercise) and everyday walks - and of course dancing itself. The differences are driving by the specific needs of each situation. Between dance walks and normal walks, the differences are largely driven by the footwear and type of ground (uneven ground or sticky soles and you have to pick up your feet higher). The difference between dances walks and actual dancing are driven by the needs of dance actions to evolve from one body situation to another, wheras the basic walk simply goes from one position to its exact mirror image on the other foot, and then back to the original position, with no evolution.

"The moving foot stays very close to the floor but it is not bearing any weight
Of course it isn't bearing any weight"

If it's not bearing any weight, then you have only one standing foot for balance...

"I was once told that if my front foot is moving and is off the floor the only time I am able to stop is only when the foot touches down."

Not true. If your weight (plus need to decelerate your forward momentum) has not commited your past the point in your foot where your toes can no longer carry your body weight, you can stop on that same standing foot. If you have commited past the strong part of your foot, then yes, you are going to have to arrive on the moving foot.

"If I have contact with the floor I can slow down or stop or accelerarate any time i wish."

Only by partially arriving on the moving foot. At which point you no longer have one standing foot, but two. I don't know about you, but I can put my moving foot down pretty darn quickly when I need to, even if it's "stepping over rocks and branches" height off a forest trail.

"Stand with one leg on the floor, your partner as well. I could cause you to lose your balance with the slightest pressure of my little finger. You only have momentum to keep you up"

That's ignorant physics... momentum can't keep you up.

As for the little push, sure. But dancing usually provides us the oportunity to take a graceful rebalancing step when an "accident" makes it necessary. If someone bumps you while you are in a raised line like a hover corte (most lines after all are lowered), you can just take a step into a new position and develop that.

I'm still not sure whether you are preaching that the foot stays in contact with the floor or doesn't.
I will take you back a few weeks when I was on about divided weight and I omitted to say that on a walk forward first the ball of the foot moves from under the body and becomes a heel. You quite rightly corrected me. Which I acknowledged as being correct. The foot being clear of the floor wasn't even mentioned. Is the ball in contact with the floor in your personal opinion or are you now lifting the foot from the floor.

With trepidation i'm putting my nose into this discussion!
i do have some control while my moving foot is off the floor. Not as much as when it's on the floor of course, but nevertheless my body flight is under 'control' as is my body shaping if i want to change it. On slow waltz and foxtrot i skim my moving foot over the floor (very lightly) but not to maintain balance, just to improve the 'feel' of my dancing (i hope) and improve my leg lines( i hope). I guess it's easier to control the movement of a foot which is lightly skimming the floor because there is a small amount of feedback from it.
On comparisons with walking - this is dangerous because there is no agreed 'syllabus' or technique book for walking. When i look at people walking i see all sorts of actions from lazy plonking to graceful flowing.

"I'm still not sure whether you are preaching that the foot stays in contact with the floor or doesn't.
I will take you back a few weeks when I was on about divided weight and I omitted to say that on a walk forward first the ball of the foot moves from under the body and becomes a heel. You quite rightly corrected me. Which I acknowledged as being correct. The foot being clear of the floor wasn't even mentioned. Is the ball in contact with the floor in your personal opinion or are you now lifting the foot from the floor."

I see really only two issues:

1) lifting the foot any substantial distance off the floor wastes energy, causes some instability (because it's mass is higher), and doesn't look great.

2) Having your foot on the floor (instead of merely quite near the floor) is of no benefit unless you put weight pressure on it

Thus it does not matter to me if your foot is literally touching the floor, or only very near the floor.

I can find in three books which I have, and there are more. All say foot in contact with the floor, skimming the floor. ( skimming, a thin layer of substance on the surface of liquid )
I doubt you will find any instructions in any book by any person that says the feet leave the floor.
If we go right to the very beginning of this on another thread. I said the person who lifts the feet you will always find they lift the rear toe off the floor not knowing it has to keep in contact with the floor. Once it is lifted it is airborne and will remain so for the rest of the step. Next time your out just take a look. This is how we walk and not how we should dance.

"f we go right to the very beginning of this on another thread. I said the person who lifts the feet you will always find they lift the rear toe off the floor not knowing it has to keep in contact with the floor. "

If you can see them lift their foot, then they are not keeping it near enough to the floor that there is no difference between "on" and "near".

I would think waltz and foxtrot would be closer to walking than tango. They both have body glide, where Tango is a dance without body glide.

I think teachers bring up the similarity to walking to get people over the mental block many have in waltz and foxtrot. To help them realize the steps are not something that is completely new to them. So many people stride into a room with nice big steps, than take baby steps when doing a waltz or foxtrot.