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: Axis- Theme: Gentle lifs & stumbles

This week, our exploration of the axis took us to have a look at lifts and stumbles - nothing like Strictly, don't worry. These are very nice steps that either add a light touch or a heavy feeling to your dancing, allowing you to have more depth and contrast.

Summary video



 

Beginners/Improvers: Lift

Top tips

  • Leaders: To lead the lift, you need to use the pivot on your left foot. The lift is not controlled from the arms, but from your whole body going slightly away from your partner, hence lifting her.
  • Followers: At the lift, keep your back foot pointed and gently go up on to your front leg, keeping your knees together.

 

Intermediated & up: Lift from other side and arrastre

Top tips

  • Leaders: Between the lift and the arrastre, you need to reposition the foot of your supporting leg and your hips so that you can sweep your partner’s foot with your quatriceps.
  • Followers: At the sweep, make sure you keep contact between your foot and your partner’s.

 

Intermediated & up: Stumble

Top tips

  • Leaders: For the stumble, you need to go backwards with your bum first, not your shoulders. When you feel you are about to lose your balance, then extend the foot and step.
  • Followers: Make sure you hold your core muscles engaged so as not to collapse forward in the stumble.

 

Homework

Top tips

  • Leaders: The stumble can be a scary move at first. Practice the feeling of losing your balance backwards on your own until you are comfortable.
  • Followers: The corte is such a staple step that it can be overlooked at times. Because it so common however, it is worth spending some time to make it look perfect. Practice getting the knee of your free leg tucked behind the other knee. The front leg should stay straight and the back leg is bent with your heel up. Then practice getting in and out of the corte by gradually dropping and lifting your heel.