Whips and chains (Boleos and crossed system grapevine combos)

We worked on circular boleos (whips) for Week II of Tango III, and then combined them with sacadas.

Con boleos are led by the leader rotating in the same direction as the follower's hips are turning. This is true for both front and back boleos. For me, these boleos have a kind of SSSwoosh feeling, very smooth.

Contra boleos are led by the leader moving around the follower in the opposite direction that the follower's hips are rotating, to create a more ssWOOSH! feeling, with a harder snap to the boleo at the end, but with a tiny bit longer buildup before the snap.

Boleo tips for followers:

• Be on your axis: with few exceptions, boleos work best on axis.
• 80% of the work is for your support leg and body: find a way to stabilize without tensing.
• The free leg MUST be relaxed in order to get a real boleo. You can fake them following a boleo lead, but the feeling for the leader--and for you--is not the same.  The leg is release in the hip socket, not in the lower back.
• Don't clench knees, hips, toes, in order to maintain your balance: use the floor/grounding.
• Stand tall and think of your rib cage lifting ALL AROUND so that your legs can fit under you easily.
• There is no one shape of boleo that is correct. The leader can shape your move, after you have learned to release your leg and stay connected/solid in your center.  The path of the leader's rotation determines the path of your leg.
• Your embrace needs to be strong at the moment of the boleo to help stabilize your body (except the loose leg), but don't clutch your partner! Think of two waves hitting and subsiding, rather than a death grip.

Boleo tips for leaders:

• This is a subtle lead. I know, it doesn't look like a subtle move, but the lead energy gets magnified as it travels down the follower's body to the free leg.  If you haul your partner into boleos, they can't release their leg without falling over.
• Find the rotation in your center, and keep it parallel to the ground unless you want to make strange, weird boleo shapes.
• Don't use your arms to twist the follower: use them to stabilize, not to pull!
• Plant your feet strongly. Many times, I find that both of my feet need to be solidly on the ground BEFORE I initiate the boleo lead. Yes, there are some boleos where you can't do that, but work on them after more simple ones work.
• For contra boleos, remember that you can travel with a side step (usually the easiest), a front cross, or a back cross.  Experiment!
• Lead the boleo as one move, not a twist and then an untwist: allow the follower's momentum to contribute to the unwinding.

Using boleo combinations on the dance floor

What's the point of knowing all these cool moves if you can't use them? We focused on leading con and contra boleos with a preparation set up along the LOD direction, and exiting LOD. The leader can face out of the circle or into the circle to do these.

Building on what we did last week, we played with adding steps to the boleos as they unwound, resolved into steps LOD.  You can use circular or linear sacadas after the boleos, but some moves remain in one place and cannot be done in a crowded space.

One last note: Don't lead high boleos (or backlead high boleos) in a crowded space! Although many boleo shapes curve around the follower's axis, thus making them compact enough for most dance spaces, if you are dancing with someone whose style you cannot predict, don't boleo.

I think that's it, unless you remember something I forgot to write down!  Good work, everyone!

Lead from your center, follow with energy! (Week I Ballroom I notes)

What is the most important element of ballroom dance for a beginner? To me, it is building communication between the leader and the follower. If you focus on leading from your center and communicating your movement to the follower--even if it is "wrong"--both people get to move together, to dance!

The leader's role is to make the follower feel secure, communicate moves to the follower, navigate without collisions, dance with the music, and decide what steps to do. That's a lot to do at the same time. However, if you concentrate on moving from your center, the follower can stay with you. Because you are making your movement requests clear, the follower feels more sure/secure, and allows you more control over the steps. Moving from your center allows you to stay more balanced, helping to avoid collisions and allowing you to move with the music more easily.

The follower's role is to give the leader energy, while following the lead (pretty obvious). The follower's role has fewer elements to juggle, but it is still not easy to follow. First, many people find it difficult to give up control, let the other person determine the course, and trust that all will be well.  Second, in a beginning class, all the people leading are new at leading and so require more attention on the part of the follower to understand what steps need to happen.

I make my students try both roles in order to better understand the structure of the dance.  Also, understanding the role of the other dancer makes most dancers more sympathetic when difficulties arise: each person knows that both roles present challenges, and can help each other with technique, steps, and keeping the dance together.

I try to balance my games/exercises to improve couple dancing in general, with steps :-)  We are starting with a traveling dance (foxtrot) to get used to moving around the space; and rumba, a mostly stationery dance, to practice holding a space on the floor.

Foxtrot has two rhythms in the dance: slow, slow, quick, quick (SSQQ)--6 counts--and slow-quick-quick (SQQ)--8 counts.  We started with the 6-count steps, practicing traveling around the room.

• Basic (SSQQ rhythm): Leader (Ld) starts forward (fd) on the left (L), fd on R, and steps side together (sd tog) on LR; Follower (Fl) starts back (bk) on R, bk on L, and sd tog (RL).
• Hesitation (SSQQ rhythm): Ld steps fd on L, bk on R, sd tog (LR); Fl: bk on R, fd on L, sd tog (RL). Turn counter-clockwise (CW) to rotate the step.

Rumba has an 8-count rhythm (QQS, QQS--or SQQ SQQ; as I explained in class, I am of the QQS school), and the steps are built off box steps. 

• Basic turning box (QQSQQS): Ld steps sd with L, tog with R, and fd with L; again side step to R, step tog with L, and step bk with R; Fl steps sd with R, tog with L, bk with R; and side with L, tog with R, and fd with L to complete the box.
• Long underarm turn (QQSQQS): The turn is completed using the time of an entire box, 8 counts. On the Ld's bk step, the Ld raises the left arm, starting to signal a turn. As a new box starts, the Fl moves under the raised arm to start a 6-step, 8-count circle.  The Fl's circle and the Ld's box resolve at the same time. (Note: we didn't get to finish the finer points of this yet. This week, we'll make the turn look great).

Tango 3: Weird, original moves

At the beginning of all of my classes (except my beginner class), I ask my students what they would like to get out of the class.  I then use that information to plan the class. C. asked for "weird, original moves" and "new ideas from normal places" to keep his followers from anticipating upcoming moves.  R. asked to work on gaining precision "on everything." M. wanted "body placement and loose legs."  G. wanted to do follower and leader sacadas--ah!  something easy!!!  As the rest of the class had not yet chosen goals, we started with the idea of sacadas, and quickly ended up at weird and original.

Basic Patterns
1. Leading the follower to do a front sacada through the leader's front cross.
2. Leading the follower to do a side step sacada through the leader's front cross.
3. Leading the follower to do a front sacada through the leader's back cross.

Focus: using these steps on the dance floor
Using Chicho's great cross-system grapevine exercises for moving around the room, we adapted it to the sacadas. This way, each sacada that happens moves the leader from the inside or outside track, to the other track around the room (think concentric circles). All three sacadas can be led with the leader starting with his/her back facing the center of the room, or facing out of the room, but ALWAYS continuing line of dance (LOD).

Weird and original: the variations
Once the basic patterns were working to some degree, we started messing around with my favorite question: what movements flow from this movement? what makes organic sense from this point?

1. (G's idea): adding a linear boleo immediately after the sacada is strange but fun. We worked on the quick timing needed for the leader to ground before the follower's leg goes past vertical, in order for a really nice, snappy linear boleo to happen. 
Note: If you do this variation, the rebound wants to go reverse line of dance (RLOD), which can be dangerous. In order to stay with the feeling of progressing around the room, the rebound needs to be shaped into an overturned back cross and sent LOD.
1a. C. and G. liked the possibility of recurring front sacadas for the lead after this.

2. (C's idea): adding a volcada.  This is much harder than 1., a bit weirder, but fun.  The important factors are: you must use the sacada to get closer together, lift the follower slightly to make them stay on the same foot & not travel, and then guide them in the volcada & reground them.  The only tricky part is convincing the follower to remain on the same foot!

Following tips:
It seems to me that many tango classes ignore the followers and focus on what the leader needs to do, and we didn't talk a lot about following in this session, BUT these crazy moves are a great place to work on your axis and using breath to balance/ground.  Because you don't know what is going to happen next, you must be ready for anything, and that requires pinpoint accuracy in technique.  M. found that, if she breathed and focused on staying on balance, all the moves became easier than when she tried to figure out what was happening ;-) More on following next week.

For those of you who didn't make it to class this week, don't worry: we're on to other, weird stuff!

What is important in a dance?

I thought choosing a title for my blog would be easy, but after an extended period of time poised at the "blog title" part of the registration process, I have realized how difficult I find it to condense all my beliefs about dance and teaching dance into one word or one phrase.  Why I dance and why I teach dance are subjects that I could fill pages discussing.  You would think that twenty years of teaching (and two theses of 100+ pages) would have forced me to distill this into a succinct phrase, but NO!

I learned to dance at nineteen, way past the age at which most professional dancers begin to dance.  I was told I was "too fat" and "too old" to learn to dance.  I was laughed at by a close relative who had danced since childhood: "You, dance?  That's the funniest thing I've ever heard!"   Later, when I told my family I wanted to pursue a master's degree in dance, widespread panic resulted: "That is an avocation, not a vocation!" my father insisted.  Still, the pull to dance won, over all the voiced displeasure at my choice of occupation.

My first winter in college, I signed up for social dance as a way to fulfill P.E. requirements.  My class was fun, but what really held my attention were the dance teachers and their friends, who stayed to dance after class until dinnertime.  They put on folk dance records, and whirled and twirled and squealed with delight until the last possible moment to get in the dinner line.  I stayed longer and longer, watching them dance, and after a few weeks, they invited me to dance; I was hooked.  I joined the folk dance troupe, kept doing ballroom dancing, and gradually took all the classes available in ballet, jazz and modern dance.  By my senior year, I was dancing twenty hours a week and teaching at school and in the community.

Why did I start dancing?  The intense joy I felt while dancing exceeded any other physical connection I had ever felt.  Moving to music, with other people, filled me with happiness and energy.  The people I met dancing understood my need to express myself physically, and honored that part of me.  When we joined hands to dance, we connected on levels of heart and soul as well.  Dance has provided me with balance in my life, adding flavor and texture to the other parts of my life.

Why did I start teaching?  I wanted other people to experience what I had experienced.  I also wanted more people with whom to dance!  I enjoy teaching adults to dance because I know how intimidating it can be to try something new as an adult.  Many of my students are professionals who excel at what they do in life.  When you are good at everything you do, it is doubly intimidating to try a new thing, something that you might not find easy--and couple dancing means you have to do that in public!  There is no way to avoid making mistakes in front of other people when learning social dance.  My job is to make that learning process rewarding, to create space where it is OK to make mistakes and to guide a new dancer into this adventure that is dance.

So, how do you say that in one word, or in one sentence?  I still don't know.