Learning to dance with another person requires that you pay more attention to the other person than to you. Beginners easily get caught up in studying just their own part, focusing only on themselves, but you're not dancing alone; start out paying more attention to your partner, and you won't develop the unpleasant habit of self absorption that some dancers get caught in. From the very beginning, leads need to follow; follows need to lead. As you lead, follow what your partner does and adjust your lead to your partner's response. As you follow, take full responsibility for your own movement, never waiting to be moved, but moving on your own in response to the lead's suggestion (leads: it's always a suggestion, never a command). And don't follow anything that's painful or seems risky; stand up for yourself. We teach receptive leading, active following: 2 partners working together to make it work.
Beyond that, lead & follow are simply roles, like a role in a play; anyone can play either role, and it's especially fun to switch mid-dance. We encourage students open up their thinking about the roles, and to shake off the old-fashioned idea that your role is determined by your gender; no way! In all of our classes, we encourage dancers to try the other role, and to experiment with trading roles as they dance. It makes dancing so much richer, so much more fun!
Learning at least a little of the other role is probably the best way to improve your dancing in general; it gives your dancing a huge boost. Sometimes we get a request to teach a role reversal workshop, where everyone does the other part, but we don't believe that's the best approach. It's too artificial, and too limited. You learn dance in regular dance classes, and it takes more that just an isolated workshop to begin learning the other part; it's a whole new learning process in itself. If you're a beginner at something - e.g. the other role - the solution is simple: go to a beginning class. Viennese Waltz and Turning Foxtrot are particularly great for learning the other part because the 2 roles are so parallel and similar.
Cross-step waltz is a playful, creative, easygoing, swooping dance that's very easy to get started with. cross-step makes a great starting place for beginning dancers because you can learn enough basics in one class to be up & dancing the night away. It's the easiest and most intuitive dance we know of: easier than swing because the footwork is dead simple, easier to get started with than other kinds of waltz because the frame is so forgiving, and because you can cruise along right away without worrying about getting dizzy (you don't have to turn & spin unless you want to).
Beyond the basics, there are literally hundreds of playful variations and figures in cross-step waltz, and we keep coming up with or learning new ones, so there's always something to learn in this class. Check out some videos of us cross-step waltzing to get an idea of the variety & playfulness of this dance.
Cross-step waltz is in a period of rapid development, with many dancers creating new moves on a regular basis. In our own development of this dance, we've been focusing on a closer connection between partners. Because the basic embrace for cross-step is v-shaped rather than parallel, it's easy for the dancing to become disconnected, with partners veering or turning away from each other. Our answer to this has been to develop moves that emphasize connection, sometimes moving into a parallel embrace then back out into a more typical cross-step embrace, incorporating elements from turning waltz and from Open-box slow waltz. We emphasize connection and musicality in teaching cross-step waltz.
Viennese waltz is the original waltz; it's the dance they do at those grand balls in Vienna. The turning or rotary waltz taught in Seattle is not Viennese waltz; in Viennese waltz the left and right turns are perfect mirror images of each other, and therefore start on different feet, which makes Viennese waltz very intuitive. The ballroom version of Viennese is true to the essence of the dance, but ballroom Viennese is all about elegant form and showy styling; our version focuses instead on connection and the deliciousness of dancing with your partner in a deeply connected, mutually respectful way. We believe that how the dancing feels with your partner is what counts; how it looks is for judges & the audience, and we don't have those, we just have dancers.
You never step around your partner in Viennese waltz; instead you take turns stepping right toward and under your partner, displacing each other down the line of dance; in tango terms, Viennese waltz is an ongoing series of sacadas. You dance upright and relatively close to your partner, with no leaning back or counterbalancing, which makes the turning much easier on the arms & shoulders by minimizing the centrifugal strain that a more open embrace causes. The touch between partners in Viennese waltz is very light. You stay together not by hanging on, but by dancing toward each other, using the strong muscles in your legs and back to stay together rather than your arms muscles & shoulder joints. Hanging on and counterbalancing can be very hard on shoulder joints.
A gloriously simple dance, Viennese waltz is not about fancy steps & figures. An occasional pause can be sweet, and there are some fancy steps you can do if you want, but the true glory of the dance is the elegance of just turning as a couple, one way and then the other, spinning gracefully around the the room. Our classes focus on turning smoothly to the left and right, plus transitions (switches or change figures) from one direction to the other. Waltzing better means waltzing more smoothly, with less effort and more relaxation. Our approach makes it very easy to get started; you'll be up and turning the very first night of class. Here are some Viennese waltz demos. The simplicity and symmetry of Viennese waltz makes it an ideal dance for experimenting with trading roles as you dance, a glorious way to play with your partner.
Blues waltz is a mellow, easygoing way to dance to songs with a fast triple beat: fast waltzes and slow blues (etc.) in 12/8 or 6/8time signature. It's very adaptable; it works just as well for fast Viennese waltzes & musettes as it does for slow-grind blues, R&B, soul, and old-fashioned sock-hop slow dances. Songs in 12/8 have a fast underlying 1-2-3; doing regular waltzing to that just doesn't feel right because it makes you move way faster than the music feels. Slow dance is fine, but maybe not for all partners. Blues waltz gives you a new option: really waltzing, but in a way that fits the feeling of these great bluesy slow songs. Blues waltz is based on a traditional waltz variation called hesitation waltz. The term was introduced by Vernon & Irene Castle back in the 1910s, but the idea goes back further, into the early roots of waltz. Hesitation waltz is also the cornerstone of tango vals. Here are a some demos of blues waltz.
The open box is a flexible framework found in a number of dances; most notably, it serves as the basic or backbone for Argentine tango and slow waltz. Tango's 6- and 8-count basics are both open boxes; slow waltz of course uses the 6-count version. For faster dancing, the open box is a dramatic move where quicks or cha-chas are momentarily replaced with slows in a way that's very musical, respectful ofthe rhythm & phrasing. We use the open box as a basic in slow waltz and one-step, and also as a variation in cross-step waltz, nightclub 2-step, cha-cha, blues waltz/hesitation waltz, rumba, foxtrot, etc. There are many lovely moves & figures for open-box dancing, but just the box itself - just dancing the basic - is rich & satisfying. It has a hypnotic, deeply connected feeling to it. Here are some links to demos that show the open box as a basic (the first 2 links) or variation (the others):
We just love the basic idea of waltz: traveling with your partner, turning left & right together. Turning foxtrot lets you dance like that to non-waltz music. It's intuitive and easy to learn because it's based on a familiar rhythm found in many dances: quick-quick-slow (QQS). QQS is the basis for swing (rock-step step), nightclub 2-step, salsa, rumba, zydeco 2-step, Cajun 2-step, polka - a truly universal step. So most dancers already have the feel of it in muscle memory from some dance. Or if you're just starting out, you learn a rhythm you'll come across in many other dances, making them easier to learn. You can easily incorporate moves from all of those dances into your foxtrot, and the basic makes a great framework for playing with roles, trading lead & follow back & forth, because it's simple & symmetrical.
We find it especially valuable for faster music. When the music speeds up, the QQ becomes a small, in-place rock-step; you use the rock-step to move into a left or right turn, waltz style. Danced to faster music, turning foxtrot has a wonderful feel that combines snappy & springy with circular & cruising. It's the perfect dance for medium-to-fast swing, jump blues, fast country tunes, salsa, zydeco etcetera: just about any kind of non-waltz music that's medium or faster. Even polka! My Austrian friend Doro vouches: "Yes! This is how we dance polka in Austria!" Follow this link to see some demos of this dance done to uptempo music.
We have an eclectic approach to cha-cha, happily dancing it to contemporary music from all over the world (see the video), old rock 'n' roll classics, guilty-pleasure ballads, sweet & mellow swing tunes, even blues - all in addition to the sizzling Latin & catchy pop it's traditionally danced to. We have our own styling, sweet & relaxed rather than intense & macho, and we've developed a lot of our own moves, so even Cha-cha veterans will find plenty of new stuff our classes. Here are some videos of Lynn & Zachariah dancing our style cha-cha.
One-step is dance at its most essential and universal: walking with your partner. It's deeply intuitive, which makes it a great starting point beginners, but the possibilities are truly endless. All of tango, to take one example, is built on the foundation of walking with your partner. Open-box slow waltz is a waltz version of one-step. In one-step the footwork is simple & intuitive, which frees you to focus on the real essence of partner dance: creative play with your partner, connection with your partner, really dancing together. One-step is omnivorous: it can include moves from almost any dance. We like to include moves from blues, tango, other Latin dances, even waltz; here's a demo to give you an idea. One-step is a delightful, easygoing dance that suits a lot of different kinds of slower music, including slinky blues, slow swing, slow Latin, cool atmospheric international music, slow waltzes - pretty much anything that lets you move at a mellow, easygoing walking pace. If you know one-step and 2-step foxtrot, you'll always have a dance to do to any kind of non-waltz music.
Argentine tango has a lot to offer to other partner dances, profound insights into the most fundamental elements of dance: how to walk, how to connect with your partner, how to lead and follow, how to grasp the music and play with your partner within it. These deep principles inform all our teaching, so in that sense all of our classes incorporate tango fusion. But we also teach classes and workshops that more openly focus on the application of not just principles but tango-specific ways of moving to another dance, like waltz, foxtrot, one-step, blues.
You know how dancing with some partners just feels magical? That's musicality. It feels magical, but it's not mysterious; we teach the nuts & bolts of musicality as part of every class. We don't teach separate musicality classes because musicality isn't a separate thing. Musicality is what makes dancing dancing, rather than just doing moves. In our classes we teach musicality step by step; we break it down. Musicality is more important that executing a move just right because musicality makes dancing delicious; technical proficiency does not. Our classes focus on what you can do, as a lead or a follow, to make dancing with you delicious.
When it comes to musicality, we're all follows. To be musical, both leads and follows have to follow the music, but especially leads. Following the music means surrendering to it and letting it carry you, letting it lead you from each step to the next: dancing within the music, following its rhythm, mood & phrasing, and not anticipating. Follows learn not to anticipate the lead; to be musical, leads have to learn not to anticipate the music. Anticipating the music works like this: if you bring your weight down right where you expect the beat to be, then you're dancing to your own expectation, not the music. Dancing musically means actually hearing or feeling the beat and letting it carry you, letting it lead you. Dancing to the music itself, not your prediction of where you think it will be. A good follow dances deep in the sweet spot of the music, and a good lead facilitates that, inviting his partner to dance right there. And then adapts gracefully to wherever his partner actually does dance. Good leading is inviting and then adapting; not controlling, forcing, or directing; musical leads are gentle and adaptable. Gentle, musical dancing opens the door to creative collaboration, the best kind of partner dancing there is.
A coupla footnotes to that: