I've heard that people do tend to debate over foxtrot timing, but I'll give you the basic description as I was taught it about a year or so ago in my advanced international group class. First, the basic concept behind playing with the timing is that stepping on a S say doesn't mean you *have* to step right on beat 1 and hold it until the end of 2. That S takes all of beats 1 and 2 so as long as you step somewhere in that interval, you've stepped on the S. Same for the Qs except you have one beat instead of two. You need to treat the slows and quicks as intervals you can step in rather than durations you have to hold for, if that kind of makes sense.
OK, so once you have that concept, here's the basic idea. The standard, basic SQQ rhythm used in foxtrot takes steps on 1, 3, and 4. But you don't have to do that because like we said, you can step anywhere in the interval of a S and still be on the S. So what ends up happening, as we were taught it, is that your SQQ gets stretched and squeezed into stepping on 2, 3, and the & after 4. So instead of 1 _ 3 4 1 _ 3 4 etc. you get _ 2 3 _& _ 2 3 _& etc. I also heard it done as _ 2 3 4 _ 2 3 4 which starts to seem more like QQS (perhaps misplaced) than a modified SQQ. Anyway.
I found this rather difficult to understand until I had a workshop with another teacher who explained the advanced timing in terms of where your have your body weight. He told us to think in half beats instead of whole beats; don't count 1 2 3 4, count 1&2&3&4& instead. Before you go into the first step, a S, you've got some twist in the body from the previous step. Like you use a prep step to get a wind-up kind of thing. OK. Say for a Feather Step, leader's part, it would go something like this: For the S, 1 = lower, flex L knee, extend RF and leg as you start to initiate turn; & = move body away from LF, keep extending R leg and continue to turn; 2 = transfer weight to RF, keep LF and leg extended behind, continue rotation but at this point you should be neutral, that is, hips, shoulders, feet all square facing forward; & = collect LF in under body. The first Q is similar, the step gets made on 3 and the free foot collects under on &. The second Q I've heard done two ways: one, the same as the first Q stepping on 4 and collecting on & and two, more like the S where you extend on 4, step on &, then collect and start the next step through 1. The advantage of the second way is that you don't have quite as much time to fill between the second Q weight change and the S weight change since you're going from the & to 2 instead of 4 to 2.
I have enough trouble with foxtrot just dancing and leading basic steps in basic timing that I'm not really ready to work on the advanced timing. It's a good thing to have in my notes for future reference though and what's above is probably most of my notes on the topic. Hopefully this is of some help.
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James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall
