Introduction to Rise and Fall

Rise and Fall is one of the most iconic and misunderstood aspects of ballroom dancing.

It’s not just “going up and down” — it’s a carefully coordinated change in vertical height that serves musical expression, body mechanics, and partner connection.

Done well, Rise and Fall creates:

• Smooth, flowing movement
• Natural swing and suspension
• A sense of grace, effortlessness, and three-dimensional texture

Done poorly, it creates:

• Bouncing
• Sudden push-pull's
• Risk of falling over
• A really bad experience for the follower (who will mention that).

But beneath the beauty lies biomechanics. Rise and Fall is the result of forces, levers, and timing — not just style.

In this section, we break down:

• The mechanical types of rise and fall
• When and how they are used
• And how the physics explains what the books meant to say

Let’s begin where the books usually don’t: what “rise” actually is".

1. Leg Rise

   • Achieved by straightening the knee, raising the vertical distance from the hips to the floor
   • Lowering occurs via knee bend Note that Leg Rise and Fall always changes the vertical elevation of the hips and therefore body.

2. Foot Rise / Foot Lower

   • Foot Rise: Lifting the heel off the floor
   • Foot Lower: Lowering the heel back toward the floor

   Note that Foot Rise only change the elevation of the hips if the knees bend does not change.

“You can’t rise if you haven’t lowered.” — The First Rule of Rise and Fall

But, How Much Rise?

That is a good question since different figures and styles will require different amounts of Foot and Leg rise. Since Leader instigates the amount of Rise and Fall for the Follower, the Leader can still have more Foot Rise than the follower.

For Example, the Feather Step

Where the Leader has HT, T, TH footwork and the Follower has TH, TH, TH. While that is seemingly impossible to accomplish if Leader does not instigate any leg rise there will be no hip elevation for the Leader and Follower. Follower will then dance the TH, TH and then a final TH since that's the only possible step. Leader can instigate as much Foot Rise as they want, hence they can dance HT, T, TH which gives a better aesthetic and more power. If it were 3 forward H, H, H steps it would look like Tango. Read more about Rise and Fall in the Feather Step.

The Function of Lowering in Rise and Fall

In Standard and Smooth dances, the action of lowering before rising is not just aesthetic — it is biomechanically and communicatively essential.

There are three critical roles that the Leader’s lowering action plays, particularly during Beat 1 of, for example a, Waltz measure.

1. Initiate: Signaling the Follower to Prepare

“We are about to move — begin extending your free leg.”

• Through frame and body contact, the Follower senses a controlled descent from the Leader.
• This lowering:
  • Begins the extension of the appropriate leg.
  • Serves as a non-verbal preparation signal before travel commences.

2. Optimize: Reduce Muscular Effort Through Lowering

When you lower in dance, your legs don't just go along for the ride — they work to control the descent. This uses a special kind of muscle action called eccentric contraction — where the muscles lengthen while under tension.

This doesn't store energy like a spring, but it does:

• Absorb and control your momentum, keeping you stable
• Prepare your structure for a smoother, more coordinated rise
• Engage the right muscles early, setting up better timing and alignment

Think of it like using the brakes while rolling downhill — not to stop, but to stay in control before the next push.

Lowering doesn’t store energy — it reduces how much energy you'll need to spend.

3. Creating Room to Rise: Why We Lower First

If your legs are already straight and your heels are down, you’ve got one tool left: foot rise. That’s it.

But when you lower — by bending the knees — you unlock a greater vertical range. Now you can use:

• Leg rise (straightening the knees)
• Foot rise (lifting the heels)
• Or both, in whatever combination the dance requires

This extra range:

• Makes rise feel smooth and unforced
• Gives you more control over where and how height changes happen
• Is essential in dances like Waltz and Quickstep where rise develops gradually across multiple beats.

📌 Note: In Tango, we stay level — no rise, no fall. Just compression, precision, and very flat feet.

🧠 Summary Table

“You can’t rise if you haven’t lowered.” — The First Rule of Rise and Fall

⏱️ Anticipating Beat 1: Timing the Lowering Action

❗ Why This Matters

In Waltz, Foxtrot and Quickstep, Beat 1 is both a musical anchor and a movement initiation point. However:

If a dancer waits until they hear beat 1 to begin lowering, they are already too late.

🧠 Human Reaction Time

The total latency between hearing a beat and initiating muscular action is approximately:

• 150–250 milliseconds
  (Auditory processing + motor planning + neuromuscular response)

In a Waltz at 90 bpm:

• Each beat lasts ~666 ms
• So reacting on beat 1 means movement doesn’t start until 25–40% of the beat has already passed.

Result? ❌ Late lowering. ❌ Late rise. ❌ Late everything.

✅ The Solution: Predictive Entrainment

Wait, Entrainment what? Predictive Entrainment is when your body or brain begins to subconsciously synchronize with a rhythm before the event happens — because it expects it to.

It’s how you start preparing for the music's next beat before it arrives — without even thinking about it.

In ballroom, this shows up when:

• A Follower starts to extend their free leg slightly before the actual lead (because they’re entrained to the timing and pattern)

• A Leader begins rotating their frame just before a turning figure begins

• Both partners rise smoothly into 2 and 3 in Waltz, because the brain predicts the phrasing, not because it's reacting

Skilled dancers do not wait for the beat — they predict it based on the final measure of the previous phrase.

“B-3… B-2… B-1… NOW.”

This enables them to:

• Begin lowering slightly before beat 1.
• Complete the fall by the end of beat 1.
• Be ready to continue to rise on beat 2 and subsequent beats.

This practice is called entrainment — synchronizing internal motor timing with external rhythmic structure.

🎓 Teaching Cue

“Don’t dance to the beat — dance ahead of it.”

“Lowering starts before beat 1 — not because you’re early, but because you’re human.”

🧪 Visualizing the Timeline

🧭 Final Rule:

"To be on time, you must begin early."
The beat is not a signal to start — it’s the target you must already be in motion toward.

The Lowest Shared Point

The vertical minimum (-dy) at the end of Beat 1 is the lowest point in the couple's shared descent.

This point is not determined by the most skilled dancer — but by the one who can lower the least without collapse.

In a partnership:

• Rise & Fall must remain in harmony.
• The lowering depth must be shared and matched.
• Going deeper than your partner can maintain will break connection and may cause an actual injury. Dancing is always better when nobody gets hurt.

"You cannot rise together until you have agreed on how far to fall together."

What are we 'Rising'?

Good Question! We are raising the vertical height of the hips with relation to the floor.

🧮 Vertical Hip Displacement (Y_hips) in Waltz — Steps 1, 2, and 3

This section models the actual vertical motion of the hips over the three-beat Waltz figure, based on real measurement and biomechanical principles.

📏 Real-World Reference

📏 Baseline Rise and Fall — Commencement of Dance

This assumes:

❌ No foot rise yet

✅ Only leg action

✔️ Used at the first beat of a dance or anywhere where there is no preceeding foot rise

📏 Full Rise and Fall — With Foot Rise

Note: Foot and Leg rise can be used in any combination, it's up to the music and the dancers

This image shows Rise and Fall for Waltz and Quickstep Note that this is not a sine or a cosine wave. Not only are the half waves different but the curve at top and bottom is not that of a sine or cosine wave.

🧭 Dance Principle

Full rise must be achieved at the end of Step 3 (Syncopated Steps being an exception), not earlier or later, so that lowering can begin precisely at the start of the next beat.

The amount of rise is not arbitrary — it is defined by:

• The dancer’s own biomechanics
• The shared limitations of the partnership
• And the phrase structure of the music

In Viennese Waltz

Physics of Effective Mass in Rise and Fall

During the vertical movement of rise and fall in dances like Waltz or Viennese Waltz, the dancer’s hips follow a smooth path. Although the dancer's mass remains constant, the effective weight at the lowest and highest points changes due to deceleration forces acting on the body.

Understanding the Difference: Potential Energy (PE) vs. Apparent Mass

Yes, you should read this

While it's tempting to think that the extreme values of effective weight come from how far the dancer moves (i.e., the length of the rise or fall), that isn't quite accurate.

🎯 What Generates Potential Energy (PE)?

Potential energy comes from height:

• PE = m × g × h
• The higher your center of mass, the more Potential Energy (PE) your system has — but this energy is not stored in your body.
• You can only “use” it if you descend in a way that lets gravity assist your motion an example being relaxing the leg muscles risking injury as you crash to the floor. Even if it were possible to control Leader is responsible for the Followers safety..... so please don't do that.
• Think of it as being "available to the universe," not your legs.

So yes, energy increases with rise — but it’s not fuel your body can reclaim.

⚡ What Generates Apparent Weight?

Apparent weight comes from acceleration, especially during rapid changes of direction:

• When the dancer decelerates at the bottom of a fall, they feel heavier.
• When they decelerate at the top of a rise, they again feel heavier.
• The faster the transition, the more the effective mass spikes (and that can mean even heavier)

🧠 Key Insight:

• Potential Energy depends on height (h).
• Apparent Weight depends on acceleration (a), which is based on both distance and time.
• Therefore: You can have modest PE but huge spikes in effective weight if the timing is too abrupt.

🩰 Relevance to Dance

In Viennese Waltz and other fast dances, the limited time available to complete a rise or fall results in very high accelerations, even if the vertical distance is small.

That’s why dancers can feel enormously heavier at the peaks and troughs — not because of how high they went, but because of how fast they had to get there.

rise-and-fall-equations-beats-123.md

Implications

• Viennese Waltz: Requires a tight, controlled rise/fall for safety and comfort.
• Foxtrot: Allows for a deeper but smoother shaping.
• Quickstep: Demands minimal rise/fall amplitude due to extreme timing.
• Waltz (standard): Typically uses \~7 inches of range but with slower timing (0.666s/beat), yielding a safer acceleration profile.

Conclusion

Dancers and instructors should tune R\&F amplitudes to tempo. Overdoing it in fast dances like QS or VW can result in biomechanical overload and instability, while Foxtrot allows more artistic depth without penalty.