Ballroom Blitz #081

Video

youtu.be/D3vZMP81BFs

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!

Lindsey: Hello there beautiful Ballroom dancers, thank you for joining us today. We are in the world of Samba so chances are we're going to be shaking our hips and having some fun. We have a Whisk into a lady's underarm turn.

Now, what we're doing here is essentially taking two different moves and smooshing them together to get the best out of both of them. We have already done the Whisks and we've already done a Solo Spot Volta, which is the movement that the follower will be doing as they go under the arm. So, we'll put the links below so you can have a closer look at those two individual figures.

(demonstration without music)

Lindsey: And that's how you put a Whisk in with an underarm turn. Now, you can do them both ways, in this particular one we had the leader whisking to the left, and then leading the follower into their underarm turn as they whisk to the right. So let's have a look at, not just the leader's footwork, but also their arm work first.

Ian: Okay, leaders, so for you the footwork is just whisks. So if you were doing Whisks and you were leading your partner to do Whisks as well, or if you were just soloing it up on the floor and you were choosing to do Whisks, that is the footwork. So we will leave the link in the description for that video. But, as a recap, we're going to take our step to the side, add the appropriate amount of bounce and linger on the other foot for your level, switch, bounce behind and return to our original foot, and on the other side as well. So, this is our footwork for this particular action; there there are no tricks to the feet in this case; it's all happening with the arms. Now, we're going to lead our follow to do one Whisk with us, and then on the return journey we're going to lead them to do this underarm turn. Which being a Samba is composed of the Spot Volta. Theoretically here you can do them in either direction and with either arm. So, they follow the same sort of Latin-esque rules, but if we do the, I guess the bog standard for beginning this figure and giving it a go, as Lindsay mentioned I'm going to Whisk to my left and on my rightward Whisk I'm going to lead the underarm turn on the return journey. I want the follow to initially step that way while I am stepping to the side, so I'm going to the side and leading them to take a forward step. This arm comes up, [it] can't be an underarm turn if it doesn't go up, so we have to make sure that it doesn't stay in its normal position. I'm going to bring it up and across opening that little hand to give it a little bit of maneuverability and almost using a kind of spiral/Queen wave flick. I'm going to step off to the side doing my whisk help the follow along and then twist them round to hold them upright for their Volta. You can do the mirror with the other hand or if you are doing it backwards then you will find the way to do that, it's a very similar idea. You have to not pull the follow over as they're doing their Volta, but that's it. Whisks with the feet, know what you're doing with the arms in terms of what you are asking your follow to do, and that's it.

Lindsey: Now followers we've got a half and half. So we are going to do our Whisk to the right as normal. We might get an indication at this point that it's not going to be just an ordinary Whisk back the other way. One of the telltale signs might be that the leader lets go with their right hand so we no longer have that hold there and the left hand may start to shift upwards and across. So by the time we take this step to the side which could have been a Whisk we should know that actually it's not. We're still going to land that foot there though, but it's going to be more of a forward walk as we are starting to turn to our left. Now here comes the Spot Volta bit, we're going to bring our right foot through and around, and then land back onto our left leg. So we end up in the sort of perfect Volta position at the end, nice and stable. Our timing is about the same for both sides so we're going to have a One-a Two for our whisk, and then a One-a Two for our Volta.

(demonstration with counts)

(demonstration with music)

Lindsey: And there you have it, the Whisks with the followers underarm turn. It's a great way of just spicing up those Whisks. Whisks are a great sort of transition move but we can get a little bit stuck in them, so this is a nice easy Samba-y way of spicing it up. So, give it a go, let us know how you go, and we'll see you next time.