Notes from "Follower technique" workshop, 19th February 2011

22nd February 2011

Introduction

I did a Follower Intensive Workshop, and here are my notes from the session.

Workshop time and date: Saturday 19th February 2011, 3pm - 6pm.

The venue

The Room is, well, a room in a house. It's far better than that sounds - basically, the owner has converted the entire ground floor into a single dance studio. It has a mirror, a lovely floor, other equipment, air-conditioning, a good sound system and lots - hundreds - of CDs of Tango music to play (if you've ever wanted to try Jewish Tango music, this is your chance).

It's on a residential road, in Tottenham - parking is free in the evenings and at weekends, and the place is not too far from public transport either.

The teacher

The teacher was Rachel Greenberg; she's a highly-experienced dancer and teacher, and she's currently touring Europe.

There were about a dozen of us at the workshop. The workshop cost was £30 per person.

The workshop was split into two sessions, each lasting about 90 minutes, with a 15-minute break in between for teas and snacks.

Session 1: Walking

We spent a lot of time examining walking technique; I won't attempt to duplicate the lesson structure here, but this is simply a collection of the notes I made during the session.

Foot positioning

  • Keep the contact via the inner side of the foot, when the foot is on the floor
  • Squeeze your heels in a V shape
  • When bringing your forward foot back, keep contact with the ball of the foot - it looks nicer.
  • Stepping forward - put the heel down

Hips...

  • Always keep your hips over the leg that supports your weight
  • Whn moving your leg in a direction, don't move your hips too much to compensate - and don't counterbalance your body moving in one direction when your foot moves in the other.
  • The hips should be over the weight-bearing leg; don't leave the hips behind!

Embellishments

  • Mainly move the leg below the knee level. Make sure the upper leg movement is minimal.
  • We did amagues (hook steps), walking forwards and backwards. Relaxing the leg, making the movement happen from the knee downwards

Leg movement

  • Use the adductor muscles to bring your legs together, and for stability.
  • When stepping back, raise the heel of the travelling leg; when bringing it forwards, lower it.
  • Followers - always project your leg in the direction of travel, before you shift your weight. The important point here is that followers walk differently than men; the sequence is different. So a follower walking forwards will do so differently to a leader walking forwards.
  • When walking back, relax your knee on arrival.
  • Walking in lines - move the leg, project it in the relevant direction, whilst you keep the body still. We practiced slowly, then faster
  • The man's chest moves; this translates to the woman's foot moving.

Miscellaneous tips

  • When doing exercises, play music; you're always dancing to music after all.

Session 2: Pivotting

The second session was all about the pivot - we did a parada-style movement, but it was mainly constant work on pivot technique. Most of us worked with the ballet bar available.

We did lots of pivoting on the bar, keeping the head up and shoulders forwards; then we tried it with our knees bent, then we varied going up and down. We extended the turn into a "Profound" pivot (bigger angle), and we got into partners, and worked on leading profound turns then back sacadas after those turns.

Pivot tips

  • Again, use the adductors to squeeze the knees together
  • Tip for getting powerfuk pivots - push the foot around using the heel of the other foot.
  • Don't move the feet further around than the hips; don't "cheat" to try and get more angle
  • Keep your shoulders level at all times.

Parada tips

  • Bend the supporting knee, extend the other leg (Bring your body up) to straighten the supporting leg.
  • To step over the man's leg, angle your hip away a bit more from the man and step away a little.
  • Bring your foot up one side of the supporting leg, and down the other. Turn your knee out to decorate and step over.
  • For leading parada, men have to touch the woman's feet, otherwise she doesn't know there's a foot there that she needs to step around...

Conclusion

One thing I noticed about the atmosphere was... well, it was different, but then I've never done a follower-only workshop before, so this may be normal in these things.

Rachel's a good teacher; the workshop was very tiring, but enlightening; I'm glad I did it, and I'd recommend her sessions to anyone who wants to work on following technique.

~ David Bailey, 22nd February 2011