Ballroom Blitz #012

Video

youtu.be/CD1B6gjLn7w

Transcript

Ian: Hey guys and girls on the interwebs I'm Ian,

Lindsey: and I'm Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and this is the Ballroom Blitz.

Ian: Hey blitzers we are returning to Quickstep today with a fantastic figure called the Cross Chasse. [It's] quite useful and a lot of fun, let's have a look.

[Demonstration without music]

Ian: So, as you can see the Cross Chasse follows a fairly standard pattern of drive and then a  chasse; so a slow quick-quick slow. Slightly unique in that it starts on the leaders left foot and not the right, this allows us to cross the line of dance with the actual chasse portion. [It's] really good for getting yourself out of trouble; really good for upgrading later on when you want to turn it into a running chasse or a cross swivel; but for now let's just focus on the basic version.

So, leads as I've said before you're going to commence this on the left foot, it's quite versatile you can be in an open footed position, you can be anywhere between facing wall and facing diagonal wall, and in the rare case you can be facing line of dance as well. The amounts of turn are a little bit up for grabs, I'll leave that up to you. You're going to progress in line or outside of your partner on the left foot with a slow drive;

Slow.

Now we're going to perform a chasse but we're not on the foot that takes this down line of dance, so we have to actually cross the line of dance. If I take a side step here and diagonalize across the line here, that's going to be a little bit awkward because now I've gone backwards around line of dance. So, we don't do that, we keep going forwards. That means I have to turn my body, step across the line of dance almost so that I am facing down line of dance now, close my feet they're our two quicks, and now I'm ready again on my right foot. I'll usually be proceeding outside of partner here, worst case scenario down the line of dance but again as I said earlier angles are a little bit up for grabs depending on exactly where you are on the floor and what you need out of the figure.

So, we would have;

[Demonstration with counts]

Lindsey: Followers, I'm going to demonstrate this on a couple of different angles so that you can see. We're starting on our right foot so we'll feel a drive step from our partner on their left. That will take us backwards on the right ready for our chasse left-together-left. So, we've got a Quick-Quick and then back slow. So, our Chasse portion is side-together-back really we're just following the direction of our leads.

As Ian said the angles can change slightly depending on what the leaders want to do with this particular figure, so we're really along for the ride. But, all up, we've got; back on the right then

Quick-Quick.

Slow.

Ian: So, we're going to demonstrate this together in two different ways; well the same way but in two different lines of dance. So, the first line of dance is going to be across the camera, the second line of dance is going to be towards the camera; so you can see what that last step and that final position often looks like.

[Demonstration with counts]

Ian: So, as you can see a lot of fun nice short sharp easy to execute and really really useful for getting you out of trouble if you need [it] to, changing directions suddenly without making you come to a sudden stop, and of course can be easily upgraded into other figures. You can add a little bit of that sway that you saw, I'll leave that up to you, you can turn it into different things as you upgrade your Quickstep skills.

To do that make sure you get yourself to a studio, get yourself some physical lessons, get yourself on the floor. We hope these videos are helping but nothing can replace that private tuition or classroom tuition "in the flesh". So, make sure you do that and use this just as a subsidy, but for now try it out see you next time.