Ballroom Blitz #006

There & Back in Cha Cha - Feb 13, 2023

Transcript

Ian: Hey guys and girls of the interwebs, I'm Ian,

Lindsey: and I'm Lindsey,

Ian & Lindsey: and this is the Ballroom Blitz

Ian: Today dancers we are blitzing the Cha Cha. We're going to do a little-known figure called  There & Back.

This one doesn't make it onto the social floor too often, and so we are on a mission to try and change that and you can be part of it today.

The There & Back again has 10 steps, so it's going to take up two bars; the same as a basic. But, it's a little bit different, we're going to bring our feet together and rock, so there's no real step-rock. We're then going to bomb burst apart with our Chas backwards. We're going to do another step rock, completely visually led at that point, and then Cha back together.

[demonstration of steps]

Ian: So, as you can see this step can get a little expansive so it does come with a warning; if you are leading this one make sure there's no one behind the follower, and make sure there's no one behind yourself as well. This is why we don't see it as much on the social floor but it is a lot of fun or when you can get it out.

So, we can leave this figure at any time we have arrived on a 1 [beat one] and we are standing on the leader's right foot, so we're basically going to use our left foot on 2 [beat two]. We should be in a closed position so don't lead this entirely visually that's a little bit tricky, but you can do it after a spot turn, after a basic, basically anytime you're in this position.

To lead it we're going to make sure that we create a little bit of tension in the frame to still the follower because how we're going to lead it is a close on the spot to change weight, so there's no forward or backward or sideward steps here, then we're going to have a weight change immediately after that, and then a little bit of tension to push the follow away, politely, and we're going to do our Cha backwards four and one. Once we get to this position now we have our more traditional step rock so step rock and we Cha back to our partner four and one.

Make sure that you offer that left hand so there's a point of contact to come back to, you're probably going to need that if you follow this with a basic because you'll have to apply your tension forward. Two.

[demonstration with counts]

Ian: This figure also has a little bit of variety in that whichever type of Cha you do going backwards you can do coming forwards you can mix them up you can do running Chas locking Chas you can do something completely different you can have one person do one and the other do the other you can really let your creative juices flow for performance purposes so it gives you a lot of variety. So, we're going to try it out and see what we can do.

So, we're going to try something out here to show you how you can let your creative juices flow with this move Lindsey is going to do a locking Cha backwards and a running Cha forwards, and I'm going to do a running Cha backwards and a locking Cha forwards to see if we can pull it off and give you some ideas; here we go.

[demonstration with counts]

Ian: Now leads of course you can lead the figure and give your follow a little bit of a push away, but you cannot lead them to do whatever Cha they're going to do. So, if you're going to do a running Cha backwards and they do a locking Cha, so be it. Don't change your steps to suit them, they won't change theirs to suit yours; and that way you're going to come back to where you started rather than get a little bit wibbly along the way and not quite match up or crash into each other.

Of course, if you have a regular dance partner and you want to mix it up then you can see from those chas you can just sort of add and take away the types of cha that you like to give yourself a little bit of variety, and you can move your bursting and reconnection point as you like so I'll leave that up to you.

[demonstration with music]

Ian: So, that is it for the humble There & Back again in Cha. Try it out on the social floor. Don't crash into people. Let your creative juices flow with the different chas, and let us know how you go.