Dancing on Skates [Hardcover]

Richard Arnold (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (August 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312182090
• ISBN-13: 978-0312182090
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,016,525 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2.0 out of 5 stars Not Enough Detail, November 18, 2011

By 

feather pen (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dancing on Skates (Hardcover)

Starts with very elementary skating, (PP 24-31) then launches into all sorts of dances, (pp 32-109). The inarticulate single line drawings of dance patterns do not reveal the steps, and word descriptions are essentially the same as the USFSA test manual, thus do nothing further to teach or inform. Every so often there is a real bit of 'how to', eg the twizzle in the Argentine Tango, p.100,"The revolution of the turn is made by the lady keeping her weight on the left foot." Writing of the dances I knew, he states that in the American Waltz, the 3 turns occur on beat 3,(p. 94), which is not true, and has never been so; they are on beat 4. In a special aside on Brackets, on p79 he writes "A bracket turn changes from outside to outside, or inside to inside." This is not true: bracket is a one-foot turn on which one changes both edge and changes the forward/backward travel, while keeping the overall line of travel. A bracket thus goes from outside to inside, or from inside to outside. He was not mixing them up with Rockers, as this came under a particular heading.
Books on skating that I have seen, written in 1919 or 1908 or 1953, have almost the same wording as is customary now for ice tests; things haven't changed that much since 1985; was this poorly edited? He is clearly an accomplished, knowledgeable skater. Perhaps the inaccuracies come from trying to cover roller and ice skating.
If you work at understanding what he does write you may discover many dances that are no longer customary.
It was interesting to find that the Keats Foxtrot and other Ice Dances were invented by 1923-25 Roller Dance champions of Great Britain.