At the moment I am learning the foxtrot at school for my formal(prom). I dance with a female partner. Whenever we come to a turn she pushes me back (I'm meant to be leading). Isn't the lead meant to do the dominating step which is to go forward?

There is a difference between lead and drive.

The leader is responsible for steering the couple around the floor, avoiding other couples, choosing which figures to dance, keeping on time to the music and communicating all that to his partner, without shouting in her ear or covering her with bruises.

The power to drive the couple around comes from the partner who is moving forward at any point. There are two main reasons for this;
1) Due to the way our legs bend it is much easier to push ourselves forward than backward, especially if we want to look balanced and in control.
2) If the partner moving backwards does try to pull his/her partner they are most likely to just pull away and leave a large gap between them, probably with bottoms stuck out. Not a pretty sight

As you learn and practice more this push and pull will become less obvious and you will move together as a couple.

Howard

the person that move forward is the active part and produce the energy (sway) for the turn, the person that moves backward is passive (somtimes more or sometimes lessser) and leads the amount of turn (angle). not allways, but more and more often

but remember, the amount of energy produced may differ... dont run over your partner.
but ,too, your partner must be able to allow you to produce the energy, means that the first step backward have to be done more aktive and not passive, so you dont get the feeling of running into a wall. but beware of being aktive in backward part of the steps that do the turn... i.e. in walt step 1 of backward part is aktive to allow the partner to produce energy, but step 2 is passive !!!

a common beginner mistake is at backward parts turning at first step so the partner with forward part is not able to produce energy efektive.

in heelturns its very important that the person with backward part is very very passiv during turn, stretching helps a lot... but in axis , the boy is active at forward and backward part (backward lesser) and lady is active only in forward part.

[This message was edited by curl on 09-07-01 at 01:45 AM.]

In an ideal world, I agree with the replies here; whoever is moving forward powers the step, and the leader steers. In reality, I've found that a lot of followers in a social dance setting have never been taught that, and the leader often has to supply a lot of the power even while moving backward. Anyone else find the same thing, or is it just me leading badly?