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.

Dimension: The embrace - Theme: Activating the right size of the embrace

It is very common to focus mainly on the open side of the embrace and completely forget the closed side. Both sides are equally important however and serve a different purpose, carrying different messages In this class, we focused on the closed side of the embrace and a really nice giro to the leader's right side.

Summary video



 

Beginners & improvers: The right side of the embrace

Top tips

  • Leaders: When you wish to lead your partner to your right side, for a giro for example, the best way is to dissociate, e.g. to pull your right shoulder away from your partner. This will create space in front of her, and give her a strong signal that she needs to take that space by going forward.
  • Followers: As a follower, it is important to place equal emphasis on both sides of the embrace. It is common to focus solely on the extended arm and forget about the closed side of the embrace. When the leader wants to open and close the embrace for example or lead a step to his right, he will however use signals from this side of the embrace, so it’s well worth developing an awareness of possible messages from this side too.

 

Intermediates: Giro with sacada ending in sandwich

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the sandwich, you need to slightly ground your partner to make her understand she shouldn’t collect her feet.
  • Followers: In your giros, even more than other steps, make sure you pass by the middle and don’t jump on to the supporting leg. It will make you more stable, more elegant and also enable steps like the sandwich.

 

Intermediates: Giro with 3 sacadas

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the last sacada, you need to bend your knees and bring your axis a bit backwards, as if you were “braking”.
  • Followers: In the last move, the pivot is very fast, so you need to activate the heel of your supporting leg and really kick it forward to be able to pivot faster.

 

Homework

Top tips

  • Leaders: The footwork for giros with sacada is a bit complicated so you need to practise it on your own.
  • Followers: To get the acceleration at the last of the giro with 3 sacadas, I suggest you practice your forward ochos and backward ochos on the beat; this means that the step AND the pivot happen both in one beat. This will help you get the proper technique to learn to activate your pivots faster, which is what you need for this step.

 

See you soon on the dancefloor,

Nati y Bruno