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| Dance Practice |
The weight is where and how you put or settle your body part; the centre is where the force initiated from.
It looks very similar but actually refers to two very different concepts, and still the two are tightly connected.
When we move our body, we need to initiate the action, and then a force will be created and guide the relevant body parts to do what we want to do. Of course it won't be our brain, the brain gives order to a particular body part, and then that part of the body takes actions. This particular part of the actions is our centre. This centre works very closely with the weight as it controlled how much weight can be distributed in where and how fast/great the hip actions and foot steps go.
My instructor used to yell 'part weight' at me when I was dancing the faster dances, and kept saying 'settle' when I was doing Rumba. What he meant was that when doing a fast dance I needed to suspense myself placing a higher centre so the weight is not dropped, because once I dropped full weight on a step, I would have missed the beat. However, slow dances allow the dancer to settle the hip so that the action can fully fill the whole beat, in order to do this, the dancer needs to lower the centre (but it doesn't mean to bent the knees and crash the hip.)
For Rumba, the centre is right below the belly button, a little above the pelvis, and this is a point inside the body but not on the skin. This centre allows the leg to better react to the floor, and the hip can be fully settled, and the perfect figure eight is drawn on and across all three planes of motions.
For Cha Cha Cha, the centre is slightly higher since the Cha Cha Cha demands swift actions and reactions among the legs, feet, and floor. Once the dance put the centre higher, the foot step will not get full weight, and the hip actions is more on the Sagittal plane.
For Samba, the dancer is always busy with the ankles, knees, pelbic, core to a fast tempo, and it requires all planes of motions to with a greater range of motion, the centre is even higher. It is around the belly button and inside the body. This is why we the bounce, pendulum and the Cuban can be merged into one single step.
Paso Doble's centre is around one inch above Samba's. It is affected by its special form. Since the ribcage is pulled backwards, and the hip is pushed forward at the same time, the centre, which is ideally placed in between the two, plays a more important role in maintaining the balance.
The highest centre would be Jive's. Similar to the samba, the jive also has pendulum action, but jive's has a greater range of motion, so in order to swing to the maximum range in a controlled manner, the centre is shifted to 1-2 inches above the belly button.
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