Ballroom Blitz #135

Video

youtu.be/GdwUaPZbjmY

Transcript

Ian: Hey, boys and girls from the interwebs. My name is Ian

Lindsey: and my name is Lindsey.

Ian: Welcome back to

Ian & Lindsey: Ballroom Blitz.

Lindsey: Hello, Ballroom Blitzers, and welcome back. You've joined us on a Latin Day today. We're going to be having a look at a Samba move. It is an action that we have looked at before, the Voltas, so we'll put a description, below. No we won't! We'll put a link in the description below, to when we covered the Volta action. But essentially the Volta action can be used in many, many different ways in the Samba and today we'll be looking at the Criss-Cross Voltas.

[Demonstration without music]

Lindsey: As you can see from the demo there, we're using the Volta action of the footwork to Criss-Cross, to swap sides, with our partner. Now, because we're essentially doing the same moves as each other, we're just sort of switching legs as we go, we're not going to have a look at first the leaders steps and the followers steps, we're going to have a look at it all together.

To make this move work, we're going to use four (4) Volta actions to switch from one side to the other. Now, if I am on this side and I want to travel to that side, I want to make sure that my weight starts on the foot closest to the way I want to travel. That means that Volta action of bringing that foot in front wants to happen on the foot furthest away from where I want to go. So, if I want to Volta in that direction, I'm going to use this foot that comes across, side, comes across, and you can see I am traveling to the side. For our Criss-Crosses, we're actually going to curve this line, but it's the same idea. So, even though my direction of travel is curving, I'm still using that same rule of my weight is on the foot closest to the way I want to go, and I bring this foot across four (4) times. So we have a count of One, a-Two, a-Three, a-Four, and I have switched over to this side. The idea now if I want to switch back again is that luckily I've got my weight on the foot closest to where I want to go, so I need to unhook this foot from behind and bring that one across.

You can see I've done a very slight, change of, position with my hips there. So I've changed my alignment slightly. One, and that sets up my line going back the other way a-Two, a-Three, a-Four. Now when we do it with a partner, you'll see that we are on opposite feet, so Ian has his weight on his right foot ready to Volta with his left, and on the opposite we're going to retain a loose handhold, and that's going to go up over my head as we cross paths to get to the other side. So if we do that first lot, we have One, and the hands coming up, a-Two, by the time we get to here, a-Three, a-Four, we can start to pivot round so that we are starting to face each other. But then the hand comes up again. That's the signal that we're going to go back the other way. We have change of feet One, a-Two, a-Three, a-Four.

[Demonstration with music]

Lindsey: So, there you go, the Criss-Cross Voltas. There's a lot that you can get into with the technique of the Voltas, and playing around with, timing and, amounts of curve and all sorts of different things. We will leave that up to you. We've just shown you the basics. It's up to you to get on the floor and try it out and experiment. So always have fun with your Samba. Always have fun with your dancing. We'll see 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.