Ballroom Blitz #063

Video

youtu.be/k5_pdFq-bp8

Transcript

Ian: Why hello there random dancer on the internet. My name's Ian,

Lindsey: and my name's Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and this is a Ballroom Blitz!

Ian: Welcome back Ballroom Blitzers. Today we are in the world of Modern Waltz, and we are doing the Hesitation Change. Let's have a look.

[Demonstration without music]

Ian: Steps One-to-Three of the Hesitation Change we have already Blitzed because they are exactly the same as the first three steps of the Natural Turn. We'll leave a link in the description if you want a more detailed refresher, just hit that one up and you will get all the information you need to know. We're going to give you a quick demonstration, but then we're going to get to the action steps Four Five and Six.

[Demonstration of Steps 1 to 3 with counts]

Ian: So, steps One Two and Three of the Natural Turn, exactly the same. The leader driving forward on the right foot, ending backing line of dance ready for the follower to drive forward on their right foot. If we were doing a Natural Turn we would basically repeat with halves swapped, if you will, and that would be the Natural Turn. We're now going to change it up and turn it into the Hesitation Change. The first thing to think about though is the follower still needs to drive forward, we can't skip that step, we've set it up, we've invited them to drive forward, because lead is your backing line of dance, and so that is step four of the figure or step one of the hesitation portion. Followers you're going to drive forward on your right foot.

Leaders you are about to perform what's called a Heel Pull. It starts as I've just explained with the follower driving forward. They'll be on their right foot, so you are going backwards down the line of dance on your left. This will be quite straight, we can't turn or do too much with the power step, we want to absorb the power and use it later. What we're going to do now over the next two steps is we're going to drag this heel beside, or pull this heel beside the other foot. So, we're sliding this back, keeping it in contact with the floor, we're going to keep our whole foot in contact with the floor as we go back; so we're not releasing the heel as we would if we were taking another backward step. We're going to keep it nice and flat on the floor, commencing to turn over this step, so as we get to the point where we can no longer keep our heel on the floor, maybe a little bit before that, we're going to start to turn over both heels, so you can see my feet are not moving here and I'm going to settle into my right leg. Now the reason we call it a "Hesitation Change" is even though we have three beats to fill we have Four, Five, and Six, we only have two steps or two weight changes or footfalls. So, we're being driven back on would be Four we perform the Heel Pull, turn over both heels on Five and we "hesitate" for want of a better word on six.

Lindsey: So followers, picking it up from that fourth step, the leaders have already turned us around we should have a nice clear path looking down line of dance. Our leader is here and we are, as Ian said, going to drive at them. It's going to be straight through their feet, don't try and avoid them, on our right foot; drive. Now, the issue is that we don't know at this point, unless it's been pre-arranged, what kind of a natural turn this is; we actually don't know that this is a Hesitation Change at this point. It could be a Natural Turn, it could be a [Natural] Spin Turn, it could be an Impetus, we're not sure. So, all we know is that we have to drive forward on that right, and then sort of wait to see what happens. So we drive forward on the right, we're ready to go on our left, and the move that Ian just did that Heel Pull will, sort of, keep us low there's no rise in this one and it'll sort of swing us around. But it'll be quite a sort of low step, so we'll end up going sort of sideways and around our partner on the left, and then there's that hesitation on that very last beat. Your foot might sort of slide in a little bit underneath for balance. We want to be nice and balanced with our weight still on our left foot, we'll be ready to go backwards on our right after that. So after step three we then have

[Demonstration of Followers Steps 4 to 6 with counts]

[Demonstration of Steps 4 to 6 with counts]

[Demonstration with counts]

Ian: So, the really really big difference, the main obvious difference, between a Natural Turn and a Hesitation Change, is that right at the end you are on the opposite foot to what you would be if you were to do the other move. If you do a Natural Turn, you have six steps you have six weight changes, leader commences going into it on the right foot and he would have to move out of it in the next figure using the right foot first. If we put in the Hesitation Change we drop one of those weight changes in the last three steps so as you exit the figure the first step of the figure coming afterwards following on would have to start on the leaders left. Now, this is where the not rising, and the not inspiring you to close your feet must come in. You can't do a Hesitation Change without staying low or getting yourself to a position where it feels somewhat unnatural to close your feet and change weight. That's why we don't worry about bringing the feet up and under us, it's why we stay low, it's sort of all the things that the Heel Pull will give you if you do the Heel Pull properly without trying. So, we don't have to try and stay low if we do our Heel Pull properly. We don't have to try and not close our feet if we're doing the Heel Pull. This brings us to a very important point that I know a lot of social dancers have trouble with, and it comes from looking at people performing these sorts of moves in competition and medals and other things like that in a very inspiring way. Your Hesitation Change is NOT a line shape. You are not trying to get big sway and body shape in this figure. Why? Because it will pull you up onto your feet, it will make you want to close and change weight, it will pull your follower around and onto one foot, and if you've ever been a follower and you've hopped around at the end of a hesitation this is why. We're trying to get too much sway and lift at the end. Just cut it out, it's bollocks. Stay low, don't close your feet, and enjoy the figure coming out of it.

[Demonstration with music]

Ian: And there we have it, the Hesitation Change in Modern Waltz. Really, really useful and if we keep low and do that Heel Pull really, really easy. Great for corners if you need to hesitate out of it and come out with a slightly different direction, or you don't have maybe enough room for your spin turn. But, also really, really great down the side of a room and if you need to on a busy social floor a little bit of time to catch your breath and then re-envisage the floor so that you don't have to stop entirely. Very, very useful very, very easy going. Stay nice and flat and have fun with it. We're going to come back and keep going with all our natural type figures between Quickstep and Modern Waltz, there are a few more to go and we're getting to the point where we can now interconnect them and get them all working a lot more easily as we know much more about all of them together. So, stay tuned for many more Blitzes, let us know what you would like us to Blitz in the future, and we will catch you in the next one.