Ballroom Blitz #115

Side Steps to Left and Right in Rumba - May 23, 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 lovely dancers, welcome back to the channel. We are going to be looking at a Rumba move today, it is Side Steps.

Side Steps are a nice, easy move in the Rumba. They can go either way, and you can kind of start wherever you need to, depending on what foot you are on. So, let's have a look.

[Demonstration without Music]

Lindsey: The sideways movement is actually the same for both leader and follower, so I'm going to demonstrate it by myself. Say I am ready to go on my right foot, or I want to travel to my right, so I'm going to start on my right foot in this case. Essentially, if I want to travel in that direction, the foot closest to that direction is going to have a sideways step when it moves, when it's that foot's turn, and if I want to keep on going in that direction, but I'm ready to use this foot, I am going to close my feet so I can then take another sideways step. So my motion as I go to this side is going to be side, close, side, close, side, close, and I simply repeat that however many times I want.

It’s same thing if I'm going in this direction, so if I'm going to the left, I'm going to go side on the left, close my right foot, side on the left, close my right foot, side on the left, and so on and so forth. So, the only thing that we need to make sure that we are doing as we are doing this move is make sure that we are keeping up with our Rumba rhythm.

So, we know from other Rumba moves that we always move on beats Two (2) and Three (3) and then a slower move on Four-One (4-1). So it doesn't matter whether I'm up to a sideways step or a close step, I'm going to follow that rhythm. So if I'm heading to my side here and I'm going to start with a sideways step in this case, but you needn't; we have got: Two. Three. Four-One. Two. Three. Four-One. So one bar would have me go: Side. Close. Side. and the next one, if I kept on going would be: Close. Side. Close.

Lindsey: This movement is actually a good one to test your footwork and how your hips are moving. One of the mistakes that we can make is to do it a little bit, to sort of square a little bit too still, and then particularly for the close steps, it can feel like, “oh, my feet are, both of them under me, I actually can't remember which one I'm supposed to go on”. Whereas if we're really sort of pushing into the floor, doing our close, particularly if we have a close on one of those slower steps, we’re sort of drawing our foot in, making quite a big deal of shifting our weight from one foot to the other, getting the hips involved and giving it that lovely Latin feel.

So this movement of idea upside and then close and then side, essentially two moves that we repeat, comes up in moves like the top. Our close is then not quite a close, it's either a Cuban Cross or a sort of step in front, but it's the same kind of idea. So, this one is quite a nice, easy version where we don't have to worry about rotation, we can just take it simply to one side or the other, and it will work in both directions, but it gets us practicing that, change between the two bars, but with a continual pattern.

[Demonstration with Music]

Lindsey: There you go, the side steps in the Rumba, so pretty much what it said on the tin. So, a nice one just to get into that Latin rhythm, get those Latin hits moving. So try it out. Let us know how you go. Let us know what else you'd like to see on the channel, and we'll catch you next time.

Ian: Well, that's it for this blitz boys and girls. Don't forget to like,

Lindsey: comment,

Ian: share,

Lindsey: and subscribe.

Ian: See you next time.