Every week, you’ll find on our blog class notes and a summary video from our Wednesday and Sunday tango group classes.

These video and notes are meant to help our students remember what they’ve done in class.

Theme: Change of front

In this class, we worked on how to change front whilst carrying on walking in the line of dance.

Summary video

 

Beginners & Improvers: Rebounds & little turn

Leaders

  • For the rebound, make sure you push away as soon as your foot touches the floor. To keep the rebound light, you might want to use only the ball of your foot, and not the whole foot. The energy for a rebound is never outwards, you should never feel you’re stomping. The energy should instead be towards yourself. Make sure you only transfer your axis 50% in the rebound or your partner might think it’s a complete step and not a rebound.
  • After the rebound, open your shoulder to the right to make your partner take a side step. Make sure you dissociate using your left shoulder as the “hinge”, or else you might actually make your partner pivot, which is not what you want.
  • Close the step with a back step and a side step.

Followers

  • For the rebound, make sure you resist the movement with your heel and don’t collapse. Your heel should stay off the floor during the rebound.
  • At the little side step, make sure you collect your feet before carrying on with the next step.

 

Intermediates: Change of front and Americana

Leaders

  • You need to first lead the pivot and then the change of weight. Both leads happen almost simultaneously, but it it easier to first lead the pivot and then the change of weight, rather than the other way round. To lead the change of weight, as your partner is not facing you, you cannot use the usual technique, you need to have a downward and outward energy, almost pushing your partner outwards. You want her to change her weight from the leg close to you to the leg far from you.
  • After the americana, you both need to walk forward with the inside leg, mirroring one another (this is called Espejo in Spanish).
  • You then need to lead the pivot, collect your feet, pivot and exit with a side step.

Followers

  • At the americana, when the leader exerts a slight downward energy towards the outside, this is the lead for you to change your weight on the spot. This is quite a “strange” lead, so you might need to get used to it. When changing weight, make sure your feet are together.

Both

  • At the end of the step, try and refrain from going directly from the forward step to the side step – always go through the pivot in between the two. In this move, both partners are doing the same thing at the same time, again mirroring one another.

See you soon on the dancefloor,

Nati y Bruno