Ballroom Blitz #048

Closed Changes in Modern Waltz - Jul 10, 2023

Transcript

Ian: Hey random dancer from the inter-webs, my name's Ian,

Lindsey: and I'm Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and this is a Ballroom Blitz.

Lindsey: Hello dancers and welcome to today's Blitz, we are in the wonderful world of Waltzing and we're going to look at Closed Changes. Closed Changes are about the most basic way that we can do our Modern Waltz. So, it has the leaders going forward, the followers going backward. There's no turn to these ones, but what they do is prepare you to turn in the opposite direction to what you had been just before. So, very useful nice and easy let's have a look.

[Demonstration without music]

Lindsey: So you can see it's following our classic Waltz pattern of a drive step followed by a side step and then a close. There is a weight change for each of those, so they're all nice slow steps matching in with the three slow beats of the music. We change weight on the last one and that prepares us to go on the opposite foot. So, if the leader has just gone: drive on the left, side on the right, and close, they'll be ready then to do the next figure on their right foot.

So, say Ian wants to do a natural figure, which means that he wants to drive forward on his right foot, but say he's ready to go instead on his left foot. All he needs to do is to do a change step, forward-side-close, that changes his feet, he's now ready on the right foot and he can drive on his right into a natural figure. And it will be the opposite if he wants to do a reverse figure but he's ready on his right foot he then comes forward on his right foot side and close that means that he is now ready to go on his left foot and he can go into some kind of reverse turn.

[Demonstration with counts]

Lindsey: So, unlike the Outside Change or the Hesitation Change the Closed Changes don't turn making them a very versatile useful figure to be able to get between your other more complex figures.

[Demonstration with music]

And that's all there is to it. Nice and simple. A classic very useful Modern Waltz figure. So, give it a go I'm sure you will make good use of it, be graceful and beautiful out there.