Ballroom Blitz #013

Change of Place R-L in Jive - Mar 09, 2023

Transcript

Ian: Hey random dancer on the interwebs my name's Ian

Lindsey: and my name's Lindsey

Ian & Lindsey: and this is the Ballroom Blitz

Ian: Welcome back dancing blitzers today we are hitting up Jive. We are going to be doing one of the many versions of change of place; this one is the all right to left (R-L) colloquially known as the under the arm [it] gets you from closed to open let's take a look.

[Demonstration without music]

Ian: So, for both parties there is the classic back-replace in the closed position, which we'll go over just in case we haven't learned that yet, and then you have two chasses. And with a lot of our basic figures it is just a matter of where these chasses go and a matter of following the tension in the frame to get a good execution.

Leads we're going to cover your steps first although I do encourage you to watch the follow steps because a lot of what you're doing makes much more sense when you understand what you're asking your follower to do. Imagine you are in a closed frame with your follow in front you're going to do your standard back replace turning an eighth while your follow turns a quarter hitting up that Fallaway Rock position. Quick. and Quick. Now, here's where the differences come in you want to make sure that you don't return to square over that replace step you want to hold your one-eighth position and you want to wind the follow up you you want to give them a little bit of tension and then release them on their second chasse actually going under the arm.

So, our first Chasse is returning the follow to a closed position but not yourself. It's going slightly down the floor almost a compact chasse but making sure we do actually move winding up with our frame and then on the second one we are going to release them under the arm and follow them out to finish the figure.

So, if I do that two speed it would look something like

[Demonstration of leaders steps with counts]

Lindsey: Follows we also have a back-replace and then two chasses. Like Ian said, we're still in a closed position here so our back replaced turns us a quarter, but we'll feel the frame turn us back the way that we came before and our first Chasse is going to be more side-a-side.

Because the followers haven't matched with turning back to us they will feel that tension through the frame and all the fun stuff happens here between our two chasses. So, I've landed the right foot for my first chasse right-a-right we'll then get that release of tension through the frame and that will make me turn to the right and I'll have left-a-left ending up facing my partner who sort of followed along with me as I've turned under the arm. Let's have a look at that from a different angle so you can follow along; we have...

[Demonstration of followers steps with counts]

Lindsey: It's important to note that I wasn't quite in position right after the that first chasse that I used the second chasse to complete my turn so don't feel you have to absolutely whiz around in between your two chassis you should have time to get there nice and safely.

Ian: So, if we have a look at how that fits together now with both halves. If we aim at you at the camera you can see when we hit our Fall Away position leads have turned an eighth follows a quarter that's pretty standard for most of our Fallaway type positions we get through the Fallaway Rock in that position I'm going to keep looking this way but wind Lindsey in; wind her in there's a lot of tension now in this arm there's a little bit of tension underneath and I release that tension by taking the arm up a slight push through for the second Chasse and follow the follower out.

As Lindsey said follows you shouldn't feel the need to whiz around on that first step or in between the steps it's just a quick-a-quick quick-a-quick to get through both those chasses so there's no extra steps to turn with which means for you leaders you don't want to absolutely bolt out on that traveling chasse and bowl over your follower. So, you've got to be prepared to sort of dial it up or down depending on how they're going.

[Demonstration with counts]

And that is a blitz through the change of places right to left in the Jive. You can do a lot more you can overturn them you can upskill them you can find a lot of variety in different ways to smash it into your Jive but that's the basic version give it a go keep it nice and calm nice and small nice and forgiving with your partner and have some fun.