Basic Elements For Ballroom Dancing

Hey, welcome to our online dance lessons. This is my partner, Amanda. My name is Anderson Moore. And in this lesson, I'm going to teach you the three basic elements that you're going to need to know to get started learning to dance. Now, let me disclaim this or qualify this by saying that these lessons that you're looking at online are enough to help you get the ball rolling. They're enough to help you for dancing around a little bit at your daughter's wedding reception or with your wife on a cruise or with your husband on a cruise. But if your goal is to take up dancing as a hobby, you're going to need to get into a studio and get lessons with an instructor like myself or like Amanda. This is the only way that you're going to be able to excel. What I'm going to teach you are very fundamental things. These are based on my years of experience in working with people and seeing the common things that are pitfalls for people as they're learning to dance. But we're all different. We're all unique in our own ways. So by getting into a studio with an instructor, you will have the luxury then of somebody teaching you based on you, which is something I obviously can't do now. Anyway, the three basic elements that you can learn that are going to make the whole world of dancing much, much easier for you are the box step, the triple step, and the rock step. These three elements combined with forward walks and backward walks are what we use to make up all of our dances. So we're going to turn our backs to you so you can follow along with us, and let's get it going. I suggest, gentlemen, take your partner, maybe put her off to your side, and for the moment, we're all going to use the left foot just for simplicity's sake. So the first element I'm going to teach you is a box step, and it's just what it says. It's a box. It's, say, forward with the left, side to the right, and then our feet come together. As you come together, you must shift so that now we're standing on our left foot. So now we step with our right foot in and go backwards, backwards, and then side, and then together. Again, that's forward, side, together, and then backwards, side, and together. If we numbered these steps, it would have a total of six. There would be one, two, three, then four, five, six. Now the common fault here is that when we come together, we don't shift weight. So then we try to step with the same foot twice. That will not work. So just by itself with the box step, I've already taught you two dances. I've taught you the waltz, and I've taught you the rumba. They're both based on a waltz, or excuse me, both based on this box idea. They just use a different tempo. So if I show you what I mean by that, if we take our dance position, which is man's left hand to the lady's right hand like so, the man's right hand comes around onto the lady's back like so, coming up around her shoulder blades, as you can see there. This is not her shoulder blade. It makes it very hard to lead from there. Make sure you bring your hands up here this way. So with just that one element, we have to make adjustment now. While I go left foot forward, she goes right foot backwards, and we do one, two, three, four, five, six. One, two, three, four, five, six. So there's our first element automatically. With that sort of feel, it's more of a waltzy action. You'll find what makes the dance the dance is the how, not so much the what. Typically with this action, we're going to have this lowering and swinging and rising feeling like so. I can do the exact same steps, but only I'll change my feel of how I move, let my legs settle, and let my knees bend and straighten in a way. Now we're doing the rumba. So very different action, very difference in the way it looks, but we're doing basically the exact same foot steps. So there's element number one, that's called the box step. Our second element, if we turn our backs to you again, and again, just for simplicity's sake, we're going to use the left foot, and we'll do a triple step. This means taking one, two, three steps to our left. Our weight should now be on our left. The right foot should be free. So now let's take three little bitty steps to our right. One, two, three. And then repeat. Triple step, triple step. One, two, three, four, five, six. These are triple steps. Now triple steps by themselves, I've already taught you another dance, the polka. It's a country and western dance, but it's still a dance. So the polka, the polka is all triple step, triple step. Triple step, triple step. It'll rotate. Polka's based on a rotary motion. It won't just go straight the whole time, but triple step, triple step, triple step, triple steps. In succession, create the polka. Yes? So, last element that we have to learn is called a rock step. If we get back into our starting position here. And again, just for simplicity's sake, let's use our left foot. Let's take one step backwards. Back. So now my weight should be on my left foot. My right foot should be free. Now let's replace the weight. Replace. So now my weight is on my right foot. My left foot should be free. I'm ready, and I'm going to shift it back. Rock. Step. Rock. Step. Rock. Step. Rock. Step. So they're really simple here. Only two actions in a rock step. Putting your weight onto your backward step, and then putting your weight onto your forward step. Rocks can go sideways. They can go forward. They can go backwards. They can go in any direction. So if we just did the rock step, again, we're going to alternate now. The reason we did that is if we're in this position, if I step with the left foot, the lady must step with the right foot. Excuse me. She doesn't have to. She could step with the left foot too. But I would be standing on her right foot if she steps with the left foot as well. So we're always opposite. This is one of the key differences in partnership dancing versus freestyle dancing. In partnership dancing, we have certain things that have to be critical to our success. In freestyle dancing, she can be doing whatever she wants. I can be doing whatever I want. They don't have any impact on each other. So rock step at this point goes rock, step. And in this case, we're both moving away from each other. Rock, step. Yep. So that's our rock step. If I take now and mix the rock step with the triple steps. For example, if I did triple step, triple step, and rock step. One triple step, two triple steps, and rock step. Now we're dancing the swing or the jitterbug. Rock, step. Triple step, triple step, rock step. Let's rearrange this element again. Let's say go triple step and then rock step. Triple step, rock step. Now we're dancing cha-cha. So you can see everything here is interchangeable. This time in the cha-cha, the lady does the rock step forward in this particular instance first. We went say cha-cha-cha, then she rocks forward while I rock back. And then cha-cha-cha, I rock forward while she rocks back. As opposed to the swing where we both rock away from each other. These things are interchangeable throughout the dance. There's lots of times where I can rock backwards or I can rock forward. Won't have any impact on our steps. So we've learned the box step, the rock step, excuse me, the box step, the triple step, and the rock step. And right away we've gotten the waltz, the rumba, the polka, the cha-cha, and the swing. So we've got five dances out of those three basic elements. Now the next thing I suggest that you practice is just walking with your partner. But taking into a position like so, and remember our basic position is man's left hand to the lady's right hand, the man's right hand on the lady's back. Now this amount of space between you is important. You don't want to keep this much space between you because it's very difficult to dance. It's going to cause us to centralize. Ideally it should be almost like our clothes are dancing together. So we're this close together now, and I'm just going to walk with her. Walk, walk, walk. Hopefully you'll notice if we break this down into super slow motion, that every time when I put my right foot forward right here, there's no way I'm going to step on Amanda. Because my right foot is on a different set of tracks than her right foot, excuse me, her left foot. So same thing if she goes forward, she will never step on me right there. Because her right footed track is coming just past my right foot, it's nowhere near my left foot. The only way if we're lined up correctly that we will step on each other is if we're moving with the wrong foot. So taking your partner and just walking around the room with her, this is going to add a great deal of success to your dancing because you're going to get used to what it feels like moving in close proximity to each other as well as just moving together. If you have a partner, as you get more comfortable, move into a practice hold. Have her put her arms there. Have you put your arms like this. You don't even need your arms as Amanda, to be honest with you. Everything is actually happening through your legs. Everything I do comes. She knows that I'm going to take the next step because of how my legs work, not because I've leaned my weight on her or any of those things. So forward and backward walks combined with these three basic elements, we can make up all of our different dances. Yep, just takes a little practice. The more you practice these things now, when you do get into the studio, you will have a head start and you'll get the most for your money at the studio. So watch this lesson again. Practice as much as you can and we hope to see you on the dance floor.