Class Notes: May 2011

These are the class notes for May 2011 Tango classes in Berkhamsted.

Previous notes:

1st May: Close embrace movements

The close embrace is like an airport hug where you are meeting someone special after a long break. Posture is basically: fully upright, weight over balls of the feet, centre / chest forward, and contact with your partner along the torso. Note that it's important to have space between your legs and your partner's legs.

Establishing and transferring weight

Both leaders and followers should only ever stand with weight on a single foot - the other foot ("free leg") should simply be resting on the floor.

The only time your weight should be distributed across both feet is when you're transferring weight from one foot to the other.

We spent some time transferring weight - both leading a transfer of weight, and following it.

Key points

  • Leaders, it's essential that you always know what foot the follower is on. The best way to ensure this is to put her on that foot to start with.
  • Followers, it's essential that you don't change your weight without it being led. Don't "mark the beat" by shifting from one foot to the other, for example. If your weight is on one foot, keep it there.

Sidesteps ("balanceo")

Lead a sidestep, in both directions.

Lead a combination of sidesteps and weight transfers.

Key points:

  • Soften your knees to yourself slightly before leading a sidestep - that's one of the differences between leading a change of weight and a side step.
  • Keep the feet together when at rest - for both leaders and followers.

We did some variations on a basic sidestep: a "pulse" and a "lunge" movement.

Firstly, to lead "pulse"-type motions: leaders, keeping the feet stable, led the followers to take sideways motions with their free legs; to either side. This is a nice way to "stand in place" during social dancing, marking time to the music.

Key points:

  • Leaders: don't step before the follower - leading with the foot. Don't do this. Lead from the chest - project first with your chest, and wait for the follower to move her feet back before you start to step forward.
  • Followers: don't follow the leader's feet, follow his leader's chest. As soon as you feel the lead, move your free leg. Don't fight it, let the leg move freely.

Secondly, to lead a "lunge" sideways, take a large side step (to the leader's left), then stop the sidestep before the collection point, raising the left arm high.

Rocksteps ("Cadencia")

You can use the rock-step to navigate around corners, to pause in the dance, and to decorate / vary the steps.

Key points:

  • Small small small...!
  • You don't need to transfer your whole weight with rocksteps
  • Rotate at the end points, not whilst walking

8th May: "Tango Foundations" Workshop

See Workshop notes here

15th May: Ochos and Giros

Beginners Class: Introducing Ochos

We focussed on the pivot movement, leading to "ocho" steps.

Pivots are the final step (so to speak) in the foundations toolkit, and introduce a whole range of movements beyond the "box steps" covered so far. Pivots allow steps like ochos and giros.

Key points

  • Leaders: don't "row" - don't use your arms to pivot your partner, use your chest.
  • Leaders: always lead the pivot first, then the step. Don't try to do both at the same time.
  • Leaders: the step is in the same direction as the pivot.
  • Followers: step, then collect, then pivot. They are separate motions - don't rush into one before the other.
  • Followers: keep your chest facing towards your leader (that's the "dissociation" thing).

There are two simple ways to change from a forward ocho to a back ocho and vice versa.

  • Don't lead the pivot: lead a step, without the pivot, then lead a step in the reverse direction.
  • Reverse the pivot: lead a pivot in the reverse direction, then lead a step in that direction.

Easy :)

Exercise: hands on shoulders

We all partnered-up, with one partner in front, and the other behind. The person in front starts doing forward ochos, and the person behind hold the other's shoulders, keeping them facing forwards. The aim of this exercise was to ensure that the person doing the ochos kept their chests facing forwards whilst doing the ocho movements. We then swapped positions.

We did this with both forwards and backwards ochos.

More information

Some more information about ochos.

Improver class: Introducing Giros

A "Giro" (pronounced "Hero") is a turn. Typically, the leader stands in place, and the follower is led to walk in a circular path around the leader (either clockwise or anticlockwise).

Exercise: grapevine

We did a grapevine exercise - walking in a straight line, for both leaders and followers:
Forward -> pivot -> Side -> pivot -> Back -> pivot -> Forward -> etc.

Key points:

  • Step then pivot - as with ochos, these are two distinct movements. Don't try to do both at the same time.
  • Dissociation - keep shoulders facing the same direction. Facing the mirror helps :)
  • Collect at each step - always collect at the end of every step.
  • Don't change weight during collection.

Exercise: Be The Ball...

Leaders, holding a gym ball in front of you, slowly rotate your upper body around a 360-degree turn, letting your feet "catch up" with your chest. Ensure that the upper body is always ahead of the feet in turning.

Followers, attach yourselves to the other side of the ball :) - and walk around the leader in that pattern (Forward -> pivot -> Side -> pivot -> Back -> pivot -> Forward -> etc)

Key points

  • The rotation is a smooth and continuous motion, not a step-stop-step-stop movement.
  • Leaders, there's no mandatory footwork - feel free to simply shuffle around - but don't move your feet too much, as you want to try to keep a single rotation point for your follower to walk around.
  • To lead the rotation, open up the shoulders whilst rotating - keep the chest moving ahead of the feet.
  • Keep upright - balls of the feet.

Using Giros in dancing

We then worked on the giro in couples.

The lead is to start rotating around. This can be done from any point, in either direction.

Key points:

  • Giros can be done in either direction - simply by rotating in that direction. Typically, clockwise might feel more difficult than anti-clockwise because of the nature of the embrace.
  • You can reverse a giro from a pivot step - turning that pivot into an ocho movement, then reversing the rotation direction.
  • Followers, please don't anticipate that the next step will be part of the giro pattern - it may not be.

More

22nd May: Giros and decorations

Beginners Class: Giros again

We did a few exercises, for both followers and leaders, in relation to working on our technique for giros.

Leader exercise: "Be the ball"

Leaders, holding a gym ball in front of you, slowly rotate your upper body around a 360-degree turn, letting your feet "catch up" with your chest. Ensure that the upper body is always ahead of the feet in turning.

Key points

  • The rotation is a smooth and continuous motion, not a step-stop-step-stop movement.
  • There's no mandatory footwork - feel free to simply shuffle around - but don't move your feet too much, as you want to try to keep a single rotation point for your follower to walk around.
  • To lead the rotation, open up the shoulders whilst rotating - keep the chest moving ahead of the feet.
  • Keep upright - balls of the feet.

Follower exercise: "walk around chair" (weight)

We grabbed some weights, and used the "walk around a chair" exercise, to practice doing the grapevine movements in a circular pattern.
Forward -> pivot (180 degrees) -> Side -> pivot (180 degrees) -> Back -> Side -> Forward -> etc.

Key points:

  • Dissociation - keep facing the centre of the point you're walking around.
  • Again, collect your legs in between every step.

Key points

  • Giros don't have to be full 360-degree, 4-step patterns - it's perfectly OK to just lead a few steps.
  • Followers, don't overtake leaders - take your time on the walks
  • Leaders, wait for the pivot to be done, before leading the step. Don't try to lead both at the same time.
  • Followers, as always, follow each step as it is led. Don't try to anticipate the next step.

For both - inverted patterns

We did the same exercise, but partnered-up (with both partners doing the same pattern, both walking around a central point)

Benefits:

  • Balance and stability for both partners
  • Walking around a central point (using a shared axis of rotation)

Improver class: tempo, enrosques and The Special Move

Tempo changes on the giro

We worked on varying tempo on the giro movement, looking at the different tempo possibilities for a giro step - taking the non-pivoting parts of the full giro sequence at double-time.

So, for example, it could be something like this:

  1. Forward & pivot: slow
  2. Side & pivot: slow
  3. Back: quick
  4. Side: quick

Leaders: Simply rotate at a constant speed.

Followers: If you're walking at double-time, you should make each step half the size, to avoid "overtaking" your leader.

Enrosques

"Enrosques" are nice ways for the leader to adorn a giro.

We worked on enrosques for anti-clockwise giros (right leg) and clockwise giros (left leg).

The "enrosque" is simply a spiral. You turn on one foot and leave the other foot in place, allowing you to twist one leg around, then untwist it to allow effect.

A good trick is to have feet placement "twisted" in advance of a giro. So, for example, we did anti-clockwise giros with the right leg starting placed over the left.

Here is Osvaldo Zotto and Mora Godoy's enrosque:

"David's move" :)

Finally, we worked on a specific movement as an example routine:

  1. Lead the "forward-side-back" part of a giro (anti-clockwise)
  2. Leaders, hold your partner at the "back" part, then take a couple of steps around her anti-clockwise
  3. Reverse the direction, lead her to take another forward step
  4. Rotate around to lead her into another foward-side-back half-giro.
  5. Repeat as required.

29th May: No class

I'm attending the Tango BootCamp and Festival, in Hayward's Heath - see you in June!