Week One

Hello Dancers,

Each week I will post the highlights of what we covered in class. This is not meant to be a dance manual or a substitute for attending class. Instead, it is here to help you remember what we worked on between classes.

We started with our risk statements, policies, and paperwork. I briefly discussed my experience dancing and competing as well as my approach to teaching dance.

The warmup is the most important part of any dance class - it is the time when dancers learn to use their bodies in new ways. In addition to promoting greater leg and back strength, general flexibility, and avoidance of injuries, we will develop numerous isolations and greater coordination.

Dance classes in other genres of dance - Modern, Jazz, Ballet, Hip Hop, African - all begin with a comprehensive warmup. Partner dancing (ballroom dancing) is another dance discipline equally as involved as those I just mentioned, yet a warmup is frequently missing from many ballroom dance classes. In the ballroom classes and workshops I have taken over the years, participants get through more material more quickly and with greater satisfaction in those classes that began with a comprehensive warmup.

I believe in teaching people how to dance, not just teaching how to reproduce steps, patterns, and figures. It takes a little bit of time to lay this foundation, but it is time well spent. People can learn to be good leads and good follows. Both are skills that people can develop.

The lead’s role is to define space. The follow’s role is to decide how and when to occupy space. Partner dancing is a dialog between two people - each person voluntarily participating in the activity, dancing together. The lead does not tell the follow what to do!

We worked on what I called the “friction connection” - not too hard, not too soft, just right - and that each person is responsible for building and maintaining the connection.

We used the friction connection to begin moving around the room - simply at first and then adding turns. Leads turn their own bodies by creating space under the contact point and moving their bodies through the space. Follows turn when the leads create space that goes in a circle.

We used two of the three socially acceptable regions of contact - I referred to them as “arm level” and “shoulder level”. By the end of the class - when we compressed the group together in one small area - we were using these “levels” to begin to dance merengue.

The leads were actually leading. The follows were actually following. You were developing your own creativity. It certainly looked like everyone was having a good time.

I end each class session with a review, in the form of a question. “What is something useful or interesting you learned today?” Everyone gets a chance to answer, because sometimes the best observations and really good insights can come from your fellow classmates.

Week Two

Officially, our class has 30 people enrolled! That makes for a large and exciting group. The first day of class we were missing four people. This week, we were missing eight (though many of the missing people told me last week that they had a conflict this week).

Eight weeks is a short amount of time for dance class. Especially a beginner-level class. Each week will represent a great advance in new concepts. Regular attendance is very important!

I love to teach large groups. The energy and excitement that happens in a dance class when a lot of people are really getting involved is very powerful.

We reviewed the material from last week, including the friction connection, standing with turnout, leading turns and being lead to turn using arm-level and shoulder-level connections. We also began to develop the characteristic Latin hip action (the rotational action of the hips).

I introduced a system of turns based on one hand going up (to approximately forehead-height of the person who will be turning) and one hand going down (so that the wrist is below the elbow on both partners).

By leading hand-across-the-face and hand-away-from-the-face turns with the up-hand while maintaining connection with the down-hand, the lead provides the space for the follows to turn, creating “cuddles” - hand-across-the-face (the cute move) - and “hammerlocks” - hand-away-from-the-face (the one people thought was bizarre initially).

The leads can put themselves into cuddles and hammerlocks by moving their bodies under the up-hand, though without moving either of the hands while in the process of turning.

When we clumped into a group near the window, we were working on at least two concepts, (1) the ability to quickly put into action the concepts we are developing in class, and (2) “floor craft”.

Floor Craft is the act of paying attention to yourself, your partner, and all of the people around you while everyone is moving and dancing. It is the art of collision avoidance.

Cuddles and hammerlocks are very versatile and are the raw ingredients for countless other moves. By envisioning “negative space,” we can find new and interesting ways to get out of familiar moves. Letting go with both hands is always an option, and we will need it starting next week.

Week Three

Hello Dancers,

This week we reviewed several key concepts from last week, including the use of space and negative space. We worked on another kind of deflection so that leads can indicate a bending or ducking action.

Everyone is becoming more comfortable with the idea of “just going with it” if the move did not happen exactly the way you planned. There are usually a number of ways out of any given entanglement of arms and hands, and finding new ones makes dance interesting.

I presented the basic pattern for the Salsa, and discussed a number of counting systems and ways to think about the pattern, emphasizing that the rhythm is more important than the pattern.

By the end of class we had just begun to apply some of the negative space playful moves we had developed in the Merengue to the Salsa.

We worked more on finding how to produce the rotational isolation of your hips, doing a “ticking” action with your ab muscles in order to produce rotation of you pelvis. This is particularly prevalent in “American Style Rhythm” dance technique.

In competitive ballroom dance, there are two broad categories (American Style and International Style) that each encompass two sub-categories.

American Style has “Smooth” (Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, Viennese Waltz) and “Rhythm” (Cha Cha, Rumba, Swing, Bolero, and Mambo).

Internation Style has “Standard” (Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, Viennese Waltz, and Quickstep) and “Latin” (Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive).

Each has unique aspects regarding its proper execution, but all still use the elements of leading and following that we are already developing in our class.

My dance partner and I are competitors in what is called “American Style Rhythm”.

Read more about this on Wikipedia.

Week Four

Hello Dancers,

We are already half-way through our short eight-week session.

Today, we reviewed cuddles and hammerlocks in Salsa, when to turn (turning person’s left foot), and how to lead cuddle-to-cuddle, hammerlock-to-hammerlock, and cuddle-to-hammerlock-to-cuddle combinations.

There were three points to all of that, 1) combining simple moves to create more interesting moves, and 2) getting the leads to lead with more authority so that 3) the follows can develop quick responses to even subtle leads.

Then, we spent the last part of class doing the Rumba. I introduced the “big zig zag” from the historic Cuban dance, and described how that pattern gets modified to produce both Salsa and Rumba (and other) basic patterns.

We did side-basics (most similar to the “big zig zag”) and box-basics (the characteristic pattern in American Style Rumba).

Week Five

This week we spent more time on Rumba, a slow Latin dance. We did some “school figures” (aka syllabus moves), like the box, the opening break, the under arm turn, and walk around turns for the lead and the follow.

Those moves appear in some form or another in a lot of dances, both Latin dances and Smooth dances, alike.

We talked about how to create the separation during an opening break. We worked on committing full weight to every weight change. We worked on how to do a crisp walk around turn.

The point in devoting so much attention to theses topics is to create good habits from the very beginning. Rotating movements happen separately from weight-changing movements. (ie. step, then turn - not step while turning or turn while stepping)

Good habits will serve you well as you continue to learn to dance. This short-session summer class means that we get only about half of the time to work on the concepts that the full-session fall/spring UW classes provide.

Still, I want to present you with as much information as we can in the time that we have, and that the things we devote extra time toward understanding are particularly important.

Week Six

I am very excited by everyone’s enthusiasm with learning more dances than just the Salsa. Don’t get me wrong. I like Salsa quite a lot. But there is more to partner dancing than just club dancing.

Social ballroom dances, amateur ballroom dance clubs, small local competitions / showcases, and large regional / national competitions all are possible with partner dancing.

Once you have some understanding of ballroom (partner) dancing, you can go anywhere in the country (and many places in Europe and Asia) and find a place to dance and meet new people.

Today, we learned another versatile concept - the Cross Body Lead (or CBL, for short). It appears in some form in many dances. It is a particular way to change places while rotating counter-clockwise (left).

We worked on in in Salsa and developed the Secret Agent and Double Secret Agent moves.

We worked a bit more on hip rotation - that isolated twisting action of the hips that is independent of the shoulders (no washing machines, and no down-hill skiers). The feet stay turned out all the time.

We spent the rest of the class working on the Cha Cha. It, too, is a dance based on the same Zig Zag basic (that I have also referred to as the Big Basic, the Historic Basic, and the movement from the old Cuban dance called the Son).

Cha Cha, at one point in its existence, was called the triple Mambo, since it took the basic of the Mambo, slowed it down (for the slower music) and added three little steps. Cha Cha always breaks on the two count of the music.

We started to work the opening break and underarm turns (UAT’s) into the cha cha basic. We also did a move at the end of class (that I neglected to name at the time) called the Crossover Break. We finished the class working on how to make the crossover break happen crisply and with good control and form.