Ballroom Blitz #029

Video

youtu.be/CVPacGlSaLY

Transcript

Ian: Hey random dancer on the internet. My name's Ian,

Lindsey: and my name's Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and this is a Ballroom Blitz.

Ian: Today on blitz ballroom dances we are going back to Rumba. We're going to do a nice simple figure called Cuban Rocks. A little bit of hip action without going too far at all let's get into it.

[demonstration without music]

Ian: So, as you can see from that demonstration stupendously easy figure the Cuban Rocks are, and incredibly versatile because you can put them in a number of different places. Essentially with this figure you want to keep your Rumba timing of Two. Three Four-One. or some people like to prefer Quick-Quick-Slow. But, all we're doing is changing our weight. We want to have complete weight change on two another one on three and then a very slow one over four and one so we haven't really taken our feet anywhere we are just rocking in Cuban timing.

These figures can be danced in the closed position [or] they can be danced when your feet are in any open orientation. Some people will dance them with a  movement on the first step so from a closed footed position, I don't go in for that but you kind of can. So, you can then put them basically after a New York after a hand to hand basically anytime you find yourself with open feet, you can hold position, you can do one bar which will basically exchange the weight that your foot is distributed across so that you might go into a particular figure or if you do it in pairs you basically get back to exactly the same position so you've just taken a break and not gone anywhere.

So, if we've arrived at a position where we have open feet and we are open to the side a set of Cuban rocks would be:

[demonstration with counts]

Ian: Having that nice slow Rumba settle on that last beat and if we did the same but back the other way it would be:

[demonstration with counts]

Ian: Of course if we have arrived at an open footed position where we are forward and backward, you can even sneak these in diagonally if you like, it's exactly the same principle we have:

[demonstration with counts]

Ian: Exactly the same just forwards and backwards instead of side to side.

To get a nice easy-does-it Cuban Rock, leads you need to be just that little bit more stronger in your lead to make sure you hold the follow in position so they don't take a step that they're probably expecting to take in that first two beat of your Cuban rocks. Once you're there we want to maintain position and tension and just ease through the rest of the figure. And then same-same when you're coming out the other end and you want to move again. Make sure we apply appropriate tension, and then move into whatever figure kicks you off once you're done.

[demonstration with music]

And that is about it for Cuban Rock super short super easy super versatile when you need just that little bit of a break on the Rumba floor and with a little bit of practice in that tension you can plop them in almost anywhere. I challenge you to find as many ways that you can put them into your Rumba smash 'em out try them on the social floor and let us know how you go that's it from us for now we will see you next time.