Echeverria and Echeverria con Vuelta are common and popular calls in Rueda de Casino, done in Open Position from Guapea. This doesn’t work that well in social dancing for two reasons. Firstly, it is a little difficult to lead. Secondly, the Rueda type of “forward-and-back” Guapea should not be used in social dancing. At least, I don’t use it, and
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The Dile Que No basic figure is unique as the only common figure bringing the Follow and the Lead into the start position of Open Position. For the Follow, the last part of Dile Que No is an exception to the rule of first pivoting around at the end of a three step walk on “3-4” or on “7-8”, always
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I might use “Matrix”, the Macho Dip, at training sessions for pure fun and fitness, and I might even use it in my secondary dance mode of crazy dancing. But I almost never use Macho features in my main mode of dancing for a simple reason: It undermines the focus of my dance. I want the look and feel of
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We should use named moves, with a start and an ending, small mini-dances, as little as possible. We should focus on basic figures of one count of eight in order to have as small building blocks as possible. The smaller the building blocks the easier it is to improvise and be music driven. At almost any moment, for each count
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In social dancing we should only use so-called moves as an exception to the rule. A named move, often with a silly name, is a combination of basic figures with an added beginning and ending in order to give us a self-contained mini-dance that normally starts with Guapea in Open Position and ends with Dile Que No and back into
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In shows, workshop videos and social dancing, we sometimes see a Follow being led around the Lead with her arms and hands high for two counts of eight or more, doing a couple of 360 turns along the way. Such figures are mostly nameless and often improvised or choreographed as an unfinished products in need of being generalised and optimised.
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The Adiós basic figure, “tight turning” around one axis like a carousel, is one of the greatest of all basic figures. It is universal, used more or less the same in very many styles of social dancing as well as in Ball Room standard dances. Despite its popularity, it doesn’t go by a common name! The best descriptive name is
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We need a Coca-Cola turn on “5-6-7” in order to continue with Enchufla on “1”. It is a great combination of two basic figures but the transition on “7-1” between Coca-Cola in counter clock-wise circular motion and Enchufla in clock-wise circular motion is difficult. It is made more difficult by the fact that most Follows expect to continue the Coca-Cola
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Using four steps to walk a 360 degree turn is by far the most common way to turn in social dancing. This is surprising considering that Four Step Turns don’t count as a proper way to turn in any dance style, and they are not included in any textbook. There are three common ways to walk a 360 degree turn
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The Setenta y Cinco (75) family of moves is great for social dancing, and I often use one of them as a contrast to my improvised flows of basic figures. “Casinando” is probably my favourite because it has a very long counter clock-wise sequence before it goes clock-wise again. If the Follow passes the “test” of the long sequence of
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