Ballroom Blitz #089

Video

youtu.be/OXaU_zGB4Gg

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: Welcome dancers, one and all, to a very special Ballroom Blitz. We're not going to show you a particular figure today, you get the joy of me ranting at you, it's a pet peeve and this is about heads.

When we're dancing, doesn't really matter what style, our balance is really important, our posture is really important. But, a lot of people when they're dancing, and they're trying to remember what the steps are, they're concentrating really hard, and they do this. They look down at the ground. We don't really know why we do this. When we concentrate we do tend to sort of look down, instead of up. Not many of us sort of go "hm I wonder what step I'm going to do next".

Some of of us have work where we're sort of hunched over a computer all day, and we tend to sort of be looking down rather than looking up and out. So we do get into a tendency to not do this, which is what we're supposed to be doing; but doing this. Now the reason it's really important to try and keep our heads up when we're dancing is because it really mucks us around if we don't, essentially. So, if I stand side on from you all, if I'm looking up, you can see that I'm balanced, the weight of my head is nicely distributed over my shoulders, my shoulders are nicely distributed over my hips, and I can move and do all sorts of fancy things in safety and with balance and control.

As soon as I look down I ruin quite a few things. So, the weight of my head, for instance, is more forward than it is central, that's going to muck around my balance. My shoulders tend to roll, roll forwards if I am looking down and that's going to muck around with my frame and my connection with my partner. And if we're talking Modern Ballroom, we're supposed to be having contact hip-to-hip. If my head comes forward my hips tend to come back and that gap widens the more we do it. So we really want to just check ourselves. I'm having to constantly do it to make, sure that we're not sort of in concentrating mode, or just tired mode, or the position that we're usually in that when we are dancing we have our head up. It's going to help with your balance, it's going to help with your lead and follow, it's going to help with the look of it.

You'd be surprised how, like, just what a difference it makes if I'm dancing around like this, I don't look certain, I don't look like I'm performing or enjoying myself. As soon as I get my head up, everything changes. So try it out, keep on checking yourself. You'll find that you have to do it quite constantly for a while until it becomes a good habit. But it is definitely a habit that you want to be in the habit of doing. It will transform your dancing. So, best of luck, you're doing this for yourself, you're doing this for your partner, and you're doing it for the beauty of dance. So, give it a red hot go.