New Trends in Standard

[Dance Redeemer]

The trends I'm seeing or hearing locally are:
* For W, VW and FT - Having your weight between your feet on the count - not landing (or starting to land) on the count. I like this trend since the weight in transition makes the dance more "flowy" to me.
* Use of steps from one style (eg W) in another (eg T). I'm not sure this is new, but see this a lot.
* Much more use of syncopated timing. Not as big a fan of this - everything starts to look like Quickstep.

I am curious if this is regional.

 

[j_alexandra]

The trends I'm seeing or hearing locally are:
* For W, VW and FT - Having your weight between your feet on the count - not landing (or starting to land) on the count.

<backing away slowly> I literally cannot imagine this. Can you recommend any video?

 

[Dance Redeemer]

I think Valerio Colantoni and Anna Demidova do this. I'll try to find a good example in one of their waltzes. It's not that the landing foot isn't on the floor - it is. But the weight isn't yet fully shifted. Maybe in I think you can see it a bit around 36 seconds in. (It's a little hard with videos since it's not always the original music.)

Also Dmitriy Zharkov and Olga Kulikova. Its often visible that their weight is in between their legs at the beat (and it's in motion, of course). I think it's visible with Olga especially at around 20 seconds when she's doing her lock. But both partners are doing this, imo. It's like a miniscule lag that gives it more of an "in flight" and "floaty" look because it breaks the timing of the full landing from the beat - just slightly. Slowing the weight transfer helps remove unwanted bounce or sharpness.

 

[Joe]

It's really hard to tell with video and audio sync.

 

[opendoor]

..often visible that their weight is in between their legs at the beat (and it's in motion...

Sorry for cutting in. What I see in these videos is what musicians would call rubato. Here it does not refer to the accentuation of the music, but rather to the fact that the dancers do not mechanically emphasize the strong and weak beats within one single bar. They walk through the beat and orientate themselves rather to the phrase. Besides the bar, the phrase is the other important structure in a rhythm. In ballroom, people usually dance to strict tempo music. Therefore, it is more noticeable when dancers play with the rhythm.

 

[j_alexandra]

I think Valerio Colantoni and Anna Demidova do this. I'll try to find a good example in one of their waltzes. It's not that the landing foot isn't on the floor - it is. But the weight isn't yet fully shifted. Maybe in I think you can see it a bit around 36 seconds in. (It's a little hard with videos since it's not always the original music.)

Ah. That. I retract my "backing away slowly." That's just musical dancing. Not new. I've never micro-analyzed it to the timing of the foot landing vs body flight catching up the way you did, but it's actually old-school.

Also Dmitriy Zharkov and Olga Kulikova. Its often visible that their weight is in between their legs at the beat (and it's in motion, of course). I think it's visible with Olga especially at around 20 seconds when she's doing her lock. But both partners are doing this, imo. It's like a miniscule lag that gives it more of an "in flight" and "floaty" look because it breaks the timing of the full landing from the beat - just slightly. Slowing the weight transfer helps remove unwanted bounce or sharpness.

Agree with Joe that the audio/video sync, or lack of sync, makes it harder to see here. Or maybe it's because of the steppy, "fast and footworky" style of dance that Fiesta spoke of.

 

[Dance Redeemer]

it's actually old-school.

I'd agree that the idea and the use of phrasing has been around. Maybe I've just recently been focusing on the slight footwork/body flight difference, but it seems like it's being used or emphasized more to produce this. It definitely could be it's always been around but it's just got more recent emphasis in my region lately.