Ballroom Blitz #104

Tipple Chasse to Right in Corner in Quickstep - Feb 29, 2024


Transcript

Ian: Hey guys and girls from the inter-webs. My name's Ian,

Lindsey: and my name's Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and welcome to Ballroom Blitz.

Lindsey: Hello there lovely ballroom dancers, welcome back to another Ballroom Blitz. We'll be showing you a Quickstep figure today it's a Tipple Chasse to Right, and we'll be showing you how to use this figure in a corner.

(Demonstration without music)

Now, you can do Tipple Chasse to Right along a side, but doing it in a corner means that it's a touch easier sometimes, because we don't have to turn it as far. It will be turning to the right and it's the follower who has the first drive step so let's have a look.

So let's have a look at the leader steps first.

Ian: Leaders, the Tipple Chasse to Right commences halfway through a Natural Turn. So we have already driven outside of the follower, we have moved to the side, blocked them, closed our feet, and prepared for the follow to drive forward. So the first driving step will come from the follow on their right foot, you're ready to go back on your left, so that is a somewhat straight drive step, and you don't want to turn too early, so that's fairly typical for this sort of naturally turning figure. Now, what I want you to be conscious of is keeping the follow on your hips, so not to turn away from them too early, or too soon, in the next part of the figure. But, we're going to then do a chasse, we're going to take a side step and we're going to continue to turn to the right, almost riding the corner.

We're going to take our side step up on a toe, close our feet for the middle step of the Chasse, and now I'm going to think I want to cut the corner, really, I don't want to do this 90°, I'm going to come in this way cut the corner and end up traveling diagonal wall of a new line of dance. So, I'm going to set that up with my next step I'm going to take a slow step on my right foot in that direction to end the Chasse part slow, but this is a very curious slow for quickstep. It isn't a heel, you don't lower the heel, but you do have to flex the knee to make it a slow. So if you can nail the middle step the rest of it [is] kind of easy. But the first few steps are Slow Side-Close Slow, you can see I've bent the knee, I've flexed, I haven't lowered my heel.

It's not too easy to just stand there for too long um, but we want to stay up off of the ground here and not allow ourselves to come completely down. That will confuse the follow, they will now, now expect us to follow with a driving heel of our own, which we're not going to do. What we're going to do is produce a somewhat of a body side lead into a good lock position. If you need a little bit of help with that go back and find the blitz on our Forward Locks, and we talk about our diagonal position to move in those, I'll leve the link in the description. But, if we imagine that we've accepted the drive, we've chassed, we've held the follow in position, we've not lowered our heel, I'm going to now bring this next step through in that sort of fashion, realigning my body, setting up a nice diagonal type of arrangement, ready for a step lock step.

So really we have two chasses melded together, if you like, with one sharing slow step in between them. The first one is your classic side-close chasse, the next one is your locking chasse. So all in all we have, slow chasse one, and then chasse two, which is your lock, and you will then progress outside of partner, just like a lot of other quickstep figures, ready to go on your right foot to follow with a natural sort of figure.

Lindsey: Now, followers at the start of this figure the leader should have set up a lovely drive step for us. After that they may do with it as they please. So, we're just concentrating on staying in their frame and trying to judge whether they're still up on their toes, the speed of their steps, where they're going, so that step that the leaders have, that Ian was pointing out, is quite critical to let us know that we shouldn't lower the heels partway through this expecting a drive from the leader too soon. So we give our own drive on our right foot, slow. Se should then feel the leaders frame start to turn us, and then rising up so we rise as well, and we have a left close left for our chasse. We should then feel that they don't lower but they do turn bring that left side of theirs through, which will send us backwards, right lock right, that's the point at which we lower and they will drive past us.

(Demonstration with counts)

(Demonstration with music)

Lindsey: There you are lovely dancers, it is the Tipple Chasse to Right as performed in a corner. So, make sure you get that 1 to 3 of a Natural Turn to set it up leaders, and then take it nice and cruisy onto your new line of dance. So, give it a try let us know how you go and we'll see you next time.