Hi, I am Deborah Joy Block with the Wedding Dance Specialist. I am here today to help you prepare for your first dance.
First, we are going to work on developing your individual composure as a dancer. The most important thing is great posture because that’s the foundation of your brain and your partnership with your partner. Good posture requires that you roll your shoulders back and down into their socket, stick out your chest, pull your pelvis in so that your lower back is flat and stomach is pulled in, soften your knees, toes pointing straight ahead and keep your chin parallel to the floor.
Also you want to have your weight over the balls of your feet with your heels still on the ground and the weight over the ball. Now we are going to cover tracking. Tracking is the way that your legs move across the floor. It is important to brush your thighs and brush your ankles with the other leg as you move along the floor. This way you can tell what placement your feet are making on the floor. Thighs and ankles and feet are brushing in to parallel lines.
Now we are going to cover foot work. Foot work involves a smooth motion of scraping your heels on the floor when you go forward and caressing your toes on the floor as you go backward. Your feet will make a rocking motion as they leave the floor and your legs should propel you across the floor. So when you are going forward, your back leg propels you forward and when you are going backward, your front leg propels you backward and you want to take nice long step pointing your toes, stretching your knee and ankle as you take long step backward.
Now we are going to cover tempo. When you are listening to music you want to listen for the lowest, deepest, heaviest sound, that is the bass, and when you take your first step, you should take your step on that boom, that bass beat. So it is going to be boom, chic, boom, chic, the chic sound is the offbeat, so it is going to be boom, chic, boom, chic, because the tempo for this dance is slow-slow, quick-quick so you are going to step on the boom, pause on the chic, step on the next boom, pause on the chic and then step on the boom and a chic for the quick-quick.
So for example, if we put it all together with the steps its boom, chic, boo, chic, boom, chic for the man, boom, chic, boom, chic, boom, chic for the woman. And now we are going to move on to partnering skills and working as a team.
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