Ballroom Blitz #054

Video

youtu.be/w7Ny_LLU0ck

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 blitzes we've got a beauty for you today we're being all arrogant and awesome with the Paso Doble, and the move is the Separation. Now the separation is a great move, partly because there are several different variations that sort of lengthen it out make it look even more snazzy, we're just going to be looking at the base move. It's only eight steps long, and it's got a good story to it as well which is perfect for our Paso Doble bull fighting. So let's have a look.

[Demonstration without music]

Lindsey: Now I love this move in Paso Doble because there are some things that keep it nice and simple. We start in a closed position, we end in a closed position, there's no turn, it's not terribly long, but it also has a great deal of flair. So the idea behind the movement is that the bullfighter, who is the leader, tosses their Cape, the follower, away from them, and then drags it back towards them.

Now the steps for the leader and the follower are quite different from each other, so let's have a look at the leaders steps first.

Ian: Alrighty leaders, a lot of the footwork for this movement is actually quite simple, you're going to be doing a lot of Surplus a lot of the penguin march in place. We're going to start however though with an Appel, our call to action, link to Appel in the description. We always Appel on the right foot on one, so we want the Appel. We want it to be strong and we want to allow our compression to continue. Pro tip: don't continue your compression forward because you just headbutt your partner and take it from me it f@#king hurts! So, we want to go down we are throwing our cape back we compress down, and imagine you have something on your head it has to come forward but you don't want to bend your whole body forward. So as long as you do that we have a Appel with a strong compression. Once we have compressed we've now loaded our leg we're going to take a strong step forward on our left, that's step two. We start to rise, here we're going to talk about the arm work in a moment, but we start to rise here close our feet three. Surplus four, and then four Surplus on the spot five six seven eight, ready to do whatever you want to do next.

Now if we run over the arms and what sort of complements that strong posture, the follow steps are different, as Lindsey said and I'll let her cover those in a moment, we want to imagine extending or pushing or throwing our Cape out on about step three, really. When we've started to close our feet the cape keeps going. So we Appel on one with that strong compression, we've contracted our frame we hold our frame nice and steady no noodle arms, we take our strong step forward. As we close our feet and start to rise, we extend our arm, we're flinging the cape, that's on three. Don't extend it so much that you have to bend forward, doesn't really look so good and you your weight's in the wrong spot. But we have gone to near full extension without losing our balance, and then as you do your surpluses, you have your fourth one is in place, as you get to five six seven eight you're going to bring the follow back in as the cape and achieve a closed position ready to go again.

Lindsey: Alright followers every time we Appel we're going to Appel on our left foot to match the leaders Appeling on their right. So we will feel that rise up ready, and then we will come down, making sure that we land our weight primarily on our left foot, because we want to be able to move our right foot next. Now, as the leaders take their strong step forward, we will be pushed backwards in a strong step backwards, so that's on our right foot. But, as the leaders close their feet on three they're still extending their arm and that forces us to take a secondary step backwards on our left. So, while the leaders have only taken one step forward we've taken two steps back, and that's what achieves the separation, that extension away from each other. But, as Ian said only two arms length. So, we don't want to feel like we've taken giant steps backwards and we end up being pulled forward. So, that was steps one is the Appel, two is backwards, three is backwards, and then four is a close of the feet. Now, make sure that's not just a tap that you do change weight, and now we are going to do a basic movement just our small steps forwards on our toes. As the leader draws us back towards them we have, five six seven eight, and achieving that closed hold again as we draw near to them.

So each of these movements has its own weight change for both parties and it's eight even beats so we have.

[Demonstration with counts]

[Demonstration with music]

Lindsey: And that is the separation. So it's a great move in and of itself and it can then be developed into things like Separation with Ladies Caping Walks, Separation with Fallaway Ending, all sorts of fun stuff that sort of gives it a lift. So try it out, have some fun, let us know in the comments if you need any more clarification, or if you want to see one of those other variations, and we'll see you next time.