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Delayed Stepping

This example also explains the necessity of giving subtle resistance to the forward movements of a dancing partner, and the trick to achieve the unhurried, "lazy" and smooth stepping movements to a walk, which is especially required in Foxtrot and preferred in almost all the other dances.

Dancer A and Dancer B when moving in the Direction of Movement as indicated by the red arrow, the turning point of the rolling foot occurs as the Turning Point 'A' and 'B' as indicated with the small blue arrows. For the Dancer A, it's the forward movement with a push and near by there is the toe joints which gives a better control as against the Dancer B who will simply "heel over" and move backward. Thus the dancer B need to give a subtle resistance to the forward moving dancer A to maintain some control when balancing on the heel.

Thus in a dance the Dancer A would move by "bulldozing" forward to the Turning Point A, and give a slight pause. At the same time the Dancer B who is moving back and simultaneously giving resistance reaches the Turning Point B, at which point the body just tends to "heel over" and starts to fall back. Precisely at this movement both the dancers, but more so the partner moving forward gives a strong push. This will result in the two dancers to flow smoothly into the step. Sometimes it's possible to get a slight thigh contact with either or both the feet just before the "heel over", which would avoid a dancer from rushing into a push force.

After the push for the step, the Dancer A would land on the heel first. The resulting forward movement of the body to come to normal position is not much when the vertical body-weight force acting through the centre of gravity of the Dancer A and the reaction force are in line near the heel, as compared to the partner moving backward. For Dancer B the toes would touch first and the distance from the toe to near the heel needs to be covered such that the vertical forces of body-weight through the centre of gravity of Dancer B and the Reaction force cancel each other out. This would necessitate more body movement as compared to that of the Dancer A to come to the relaxed position near the heel.

This necessitates on the part of the dancer moving back to step slightly later than the one moving forward so as to maintain the gap between the toes more or less constant.