Foxtrot

The Slow Foxtrot

Ultra-sophisticated and smooth the slow foxtrot is the epitome of suave; every dancer aspires to excel in this beautiful gliding dance. Notwithstanding the complexity of this dance it is extremely popular in our club, in particular this dance attracts much of the best music and rhythms in dance and for this reason features largely in our programmes.

Paradoxically the foxtrot was originally a trotting dance, invented by Harry Fox in the early 1900's and danced solo to ragtime music. The dance evolved in the next 20 years to a much slower smooth dance that was more fluent in movement.

The foxtrot is danced to music with four beats to the bar and in modern times about 29 bars to the minute, the speed of the dance has slowed significantly in the last few years from an original speed of up to 32 bars to the minute. This allows the dancers to put greater expression and movement into their steps and to emphasize the gliding action of this dance. There are many variations in the steps that can be performed. However, because of the grace and poise of this dance many top level dancers take great pride in executing very basic elements of the foxtrot to demonstrate the beauty of movement in the foxtrot. Whilst this is said to be the hardest dance to learn it also the most rewarding for dancers who wish to progress from the basics.