Hey Dancers! Sorry for such the long span of time without summaries (and the delay in posting this one). I hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving and that you didn’t forget too much over the short break!

Beginner Lesson

The beginner lesson was American Tango. Most of this lesson was a review of steps and some notes on tango technique. For steps we first reviewed the basic and corte as well as promenade. Then we introduced a new step, the fan from promenade.

Some Notes on Promenade:

• When closing the lady to you make sure that you don’t pull her in front of you, just rotate and close feet to make her close to you.
• Also, make sure that when you turn into promenade only your head and hips turn slightly, you should not be turning with your arms.

Intermediate Lesson

During the intermediate lesson we focused on waltz in general and went over some important things to focus on when improving your dancing and for competitions.

Timing

Working on timing should be your number one priority. If you need any help hearing music or counting just ask us for some help, we’re happy to assist! Being on time is one of the main things judges pick up on during a competition so its very important to master this skill!

Frame

Your frame should be your number two priority when preparing for a competition. Some pointers from lessons:

• Stay active in your frame you don’t want to end up looking lazy or bored!
• Ladies, when looking to the left make sure that your head is not limply to the left, keep upright.
  • Also, keep tone in your right arm — make sure that it never gets pushed behind you!
• We also talked about frame in promenade:
  • Make sure that your head and hips both move a little bit to make the promenade but not your arms and not too much movement.

Advanced Lesson

In the advanced lesson we worked on American Viennese Waltz. We reviewed natural and reverse turns as well as the inside and outside spin. Also, we worked on a routine.

Routine:

• Reverse turn
• Cross body lead
• Underarm turn to opening out (overturned to line of dance)
• Traveling hand to hand
• Spin out
• Underarm turn into develope
• Choice of Steps:
  • Turn into shadow/airplane for open right turns
    • (airplane starts in 9 counts of run around)
    • if in shadow do three forward runs into lady’s three step free spin