Modern Ballroom Dancing

This text is a very good reference for International style dancing. It is very complete and conforms fairly well to the syllabus. As stated by other reviewers, if you're a beginner its probably too much, but if you have a good teacher nearby to help explain some of the ambiguities you can learn a lot on your own from it. Definitely not a book that you can just pick up and start dancing, it requires some intellectual effort to digest, but once you've done that you'll have a clear and systematic conceptualization and schema for dancing that few teachers can impart. My only major complaint: an excess of glossy pictures from dancing competitions. This book is really most helpful for the standard dances (which is OK with me since that's my style, not latin.)

I purchased this book to compliment my dance instruction. Being that I take lessons in Japan, I needed a book, in English, which would reinforce and further explain what was being taught to me in class. I have found it a very useful book. However, this is not a book for a beginning dancer! The explanations and footwork patterns are detailed, but if you have no experience with ballroom dancing, the figures and explanations will mean very little to you. Some of the more complicated steps do not have foot diagrams, which would have been helpful. All and all, an excellent book!

I looked high and low for a ballroom dance book that I could recommend to my fellow ballroom dancers at Harvard. Most of the literature tended to be either too simplistic (for novices) or too boring (ISTD manuals). I especially loved the format of the book and the beautiful photographs of competition dancers. The foot patterns and detailed descriptions are helpful for the non-novice dancer. One big plus of this publication is that the author describes Silver & Gold patterns.

One of the better books on dancing and descriptions of figures.Assumes you know something about dancing and has many hint and reminders for the experenced dancer.Now if they would just re-publish Henry Jacques masterpiece,instructors and dancers would really benefit with a dance book.

This is a pretty good book for anyone who's currently taking lessons in International-style dancing. It goes through all 10 dances used in International Rhythm and Smooth competition. The author presents about 12 or more variations in each dance. There are foot diagrams for about half the variations. He details the footwork (written), contrary body movement, timing, sway and amount of turn. All of the photos are of competitors at a dance event so they're not helpful if you're trying to learn how any figure looks. I don't think it's a book to buy if you're starting to learn how to dance but if you're already taking lessons, it's a good book to reinforce what you're learning. American-style is not covered at all.