Ballroom Blitz #022

Video

youtu.be/w5GviN2vbck

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.

Lindsey: Today ballroom dances we are going to have a look at a jive figure in our Blitz, and it is the Change of Hands Behind The Back. It's a complex sounding name but actually you can do the figure faster than you could say the name of the figure. So first up let's take a look at it.

[Demonstration without music]

Lindsey: This figure follows our classic pattern that often comes up in our Jive of a back-replace and then two chasses. A left-a-left then a right-a-right for the leader and the opposite for the follower. We start with a right-a-right and then do a left-a-left. The fun bit of this is the arm work for the leader they get to do something a little bit fancy. So, the move itself sort of swaps us around but it's what the leader is doing with their hands as they do it, that is the trick of it; so let's have a look at that.

So we're going to start with our back replace because we're in an open position it's just a small step away from your partner backwards. So we've got a Back. And then replace our weight onto that initial foot. Ian's now ready to do his Chasse left-a-left. He's going to turn to face you guys doing this one so he'll sort of have a crossed position as he does this first one. But before he does that what he wants to do is swap the hand that his holding my hand with.

So you can see his right hand is coming down and it sort of takes my wrist. He's going to do this as he does his back replace or start the movement, and then as he's doing his chasse he will have my right hand in his; so we've got Back. Replace, and he's taken my hand, and then passed it back to his original hand over that second chasse.

If we do it from this side just looking at which hand he's got he's starting with the left, we've got our back replace take the hand in the right and he's going to take it behind his back you can see there I've sort of held back a little bit, usually in sort of right behind him at this point, but you can see he has swapped the hand back to his left again that means that we can pass by each other and end up on the other side.

We're just going to quickly have a look at the followers steps for this one as we do this movement so our back replaced goes: Right. Left. My first chasse is right-a-right and I too have a bit of a crossing action there as I do it, and then a left a left coming out the other side.

Now, even though this figure is swapping sides we don't have to do this big circle around each other. In fact the followers steps are a fairly straight shot from one side to the other and the leader is sort of shifting slightly out of their way and then back again to end up in the correct position.

[Demonstration with counts]

[Demonstration to music]

Lindsey: So, that is your change of hand behind the back for the Jive. There are some different versions of it and you can be a bit playful with the arm movements or whether you even take that hand at all but this is your base so start with this get on the floor have some fun.