The Box Stop

By Quentin Hasegawa, Village Park

The box step is danced by using a forward and backward pair of altering figures to step on the four corners of a square. Where did it come from? Actually it had been used for thousands of years in different cultures and different dances.

"Dancing is the art of getting your feet out of the way
faster than your partner can step on them."

In the book "Dancing" by Marguerite Wilson, Philadelphia 1899 she describes what she calls the waltz, and what is today called the natural turn in the Viennese waltz, (using ballet terminology.)

She said "Before trying to turn, these steps ought to be practiced forward and backward in an imaginary square, as indicated in the following diagram ..." The diagram shows the box step, though she does not call it by that name. Thus, she is introducing the box step as a preliminary practice step to build coordination before learning the natural turn. She describes the process of turning later. She is not describing what is now known as the "turning box", she is describing the natural turn in the Viennese waltz. Still later she describes the reverse turn.

"I Do The Rock" by Tim Curry

What they now call change steps she calls the pursuit, and she prefers the man to go backward in the work of change steps. The box step was an exercise, not a dance. The box step is not the waltz step. The waltz step is different. For plenty of people it does not look like or feel like a dance, and some people think it ought to not be promoted as being a dance, But the box step has so long been represented to be the waltz step, (this misconception ought to have been corrected long ago,) it is too late to change now.

"Ain't Too Proud To Beg" by Temptations

How did the box step go from merely an exercise to being thought about by uninformed teachers to be the waltz step? No one knows. Plenty of knowledgeable teachers recognized the movement from other dances. Some teachers may have looked at the diagram and not read the book, thus honestly fooling themselves in to thinking the box step was the waltz step. Whatever, it's now been solidly accepted by most everyone.

Pub's Side Note: "In Hawaii, dance blogs are enabling hundreds of dancers to express their opinions with reduced political risk simply because of the sheer number of like-minded opinions online. Facing these independent voices, the old clique machine starts to grumble then to crumble."