Reading Ballroom Dance Scripts - Dance - Plussed.net

parallel to the edge of the floor, but while travelling around the curve at a corner, line of dance
gradually rotates 90° to the left.
4.2 Line of dance in standard style
While line of dance is still around the room in the anticlockwise direction, the Line of Dance is now
a rectangle. That is dancers are not supposed to fudge their way around the corner by gradually
curving their path as they approach it. Rather they are expected to dance to the corner and then
employ one of the moves which can ‘legally’ be made at a corner to cause a sudden right-angle
bend and come out of the corner on the new LOD as shown below.
This scenario describes normal social dancing. However, if you are doing a dance lesson where all
couples are dancing the same routine at the same time, then you’re effectively sequence dancing
and you should revert to the previous diagram with the rounded corners.
Nothing in the above explanations should be read as implying that the dancers may never move off
the line shown in one of the above two diagrams. There are a few sequence dances which do only
involve movement along this line, mostly forwards but sometimes backwards. However, most of
dances also involve movements towards the wall or centre of the room and along diagonal paths.
LOD is a concept which gives us a reference point against which to measure these other directions.
Thus, wherever you are on the floor and no matter what direction you are moving, you always need
to be able to identify where LOD would be for your current position.
The following diagram shows an alleged path danced by a couple, with arrows indicating the
direction of LOD for various points on this path.
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