My understanding of the syllabus's starting alignment is, for men, direct center against LOD. What are the popular syllabus or steps that lead into basic weave? What is the main usage of this syllabus?

Thanks!
Dave

The standard entrance is 1-3 Reverse, check step 3, and then start the Weave. You can either begin facing LOD and take 3/8 of a turn on the Reverse to end backing DW, or you can begin facing DC and take 1/4 turn to end backing DW. Either way, you're checking back towards DW, so your Weave will begin towards DC against LOD.

Those are about your only options in Associate (other than a variation on the amounts of turn at a corner), so you can almost think of the Reverse Turn to Check as being an integral part of the pattern itself, rather than a precede. This will take at least some of the mystery out of it.

Enjoy!
Sincerely,
Jonathan

Not sure I understand - my understanding & practice is to start facing DC down LOD. You can execute a BW from Reverse Turn 1-4, checking on step 4 & beginning the weave.

But if you're new to slowfox, I'm not sure whether you want to go there yet, if trying to master the movements. I know many moves of this dance, but am spending most of my time doing a "magic 30" - a combination of lower Bronze moves that result in 30 weight changes along 2 sides of the floor. This training pattern is:

Prep, Fthr, RevT w/F-finish, 3-step, Nat-T, Closed Imp w/F-finish, RevT, & COD. You may find this a good way to build skill before complicating the dance, and you can usually avoid others on a social floor with it without much trouble.

The challenge for most of us with slowfox, is getting our step arrival, collection, reach & swing right - and they don't come overnight. This is before we can start shaping the dance to the beautiful, accomplished thing it is - and then adding moves, though your mileage or training philosophy may vary.

One way to practice correctly-timed motion alone, is to step it out to Int'l Rumba (i.e., slow enough), in fthrs & 3-steps, using one of the rumba's "quicks" for a thigh collection, and remembering to arrive on both feet before collecting. I've been learning slowfox for several months, and still find this excercise humbling & very helpful. A lady can do it too, though of course in real following she often won't be rising like we do.

If you must play with weave anyway, one thing you can do is a pattern of 3-step & Nat weave (not basic) down one side of the floor - sometimes useful socially. But I think that if you begin doing extra patterns before you really have the "base of the pyramid" trained in terms of movement, they will sort of "fall off the sides" in execution.

I feel this dance really needs a competent trainer/coach, rather than trying to learn from a book or video. In many ways, what we are doing is taking the swing, reach & arrival of waltz motion (side direction), and turning it sideways (forward direction), then recovering & collecting without closing feet as in Bronze waltz.

Hope helpful, just my 2c.