Ballroom Blitz #051

Video

youtu.be/pVQ7ZqiEkwE

Transcript

Ian: Hey random dancer from the inter-webs, my name's Ian,

Lindsey: and I'm Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and this is a Ballroom Blitz.

Lindsey: Welcome back dancers. Today we are going all dramatic and doing some Tango. There's this fantastic move that we'd like to show you called The Rock turn; let's have a look.

[Demonstration without music]

Lindsey: So, there's a few steps to this particular figure, and we turn first one way, and then the other. We're actually going to end up pretty much on the same angle as we started, but a little bit further down the floor. It stays in a closed position, so we don't have to worry about any turns to promenade, and then recovering it back to closed again. We get to keep our heads nicely to the left, but get a really nice strong sort of flavorful action in there.

Ian: Leaders, we're going to commence this figure on our right foot, and we're going to step in line with our partner turning roughly a quarter to the right. So we have a nice strong slow step.

We're going to get onto that, and then it's not quite pivot, but certainly move around after our weight is over the step, and this sets up our position to rock. If you don't quite get there you can get there with the rock steps, but if possible you want the rocks to be as straight as you can make them. That was a slow step, we're now going to rock.

[Demonstration of Leaders Steps 2-4]

Ian: And now we're going to do a standard closed finish, stepping back on the right foot.

[Demonstration of Leaders Steps 5-7]

Lindsey: I'm going to go in the same direction as Ian, so followers apologies for my back. But you might be able to tell better which foot I am on. So, if Ian started on the right foot I'm going to start on my left. He's coming forward, so I'm going to be sent backwards, and I'll feel that turn on that first step; that's my first indication that this is in fact my rock step or my rock turn. Now, followers we have the first forward movement into the rocks themselves so it's a Quick-Quick-Slow, we're already on our right foot and we come forward through our partner's feet.

[Demonstration of Followers Steps 2-4]

Lindsey: Feel free to give a smidge of a push on that last one, because we're going to follow that up with a

[Demonstration of Followers Steps 5-7]

Lindsey: Another Quick-Quick-Slow, and we are back to our starting angle again.

[Demonstration with counts]

Lindsey: Now, we're making good use of our lowered position. So our knees are bent, our stabilizing muscles are engaged. So even though we're sort of nice and cozy in that frame and moving in harmony with each other, we get to move quite dynamically, so some sort of faster movements some nice angles that give it a nice Tango-y dramaticism.

[Demonstration with music]

Lindsey: And there it is the Rock Turn in the Tango. A really useful one, it gets you round corners, stick a left foot walk in there in between and you can piggyback them if you can't think what else to do, and a really good fun one that looks great on the floor. So, try it out see how you go hit us up with any questions and have fun out there.