Let The Ladies Be Hipsters For Gents Chest Is Best

It seems that YouTubers are finding one of my videos rather helpful. The chest isolation exercise I’ve posted on my Dance Diversion YouTube Channel, I’m very pleased to see, has attracted thousands of views. The video is aimed at people who dance Salsa, Mambo, Merengue or Bachata and need the movements of the torso explained and broken down. Some people find the chest and hip movements very natural, but others don’t, and need to be taught them.

The movement of the chest is important for several reasons. It’s surprising therefore, that many teachers completely overlook it. When ladies learn a Latin dance style they know they have to learn the hip actions. They’re integral, and stand out obviously as a main characteristic. Once they have all this movement in their hips, ladies also then have to coordinate the movement of their chest. The hips move up and down and in figures of eight whereas the chest shifts horizontally. These body parts are attached to each other so their contrasting movements can be difficult to perform at the same time.

Men can almost get away with dancing some of these styles without much movement in their torso but their dancing will be missing certain elements. They’ll be missing an opportunity to add  styling, but more importantly their lead will be deficient. 

Most men will probably be aiming to dance with a masculine style. To achieve this the chest can be emphasised more than the pelvis. I teach men the hip movements and then coach them to dance very subtle versions of them. As men have broad shoulders and narrow hips, the side-to-side isolation of the chest can visually be more dominant. We then easily interpret this as a masculine way of moving. If a man over exaggerates his hip movements and other feminine stylistic details, he may look camp.

The movement in the chest is also vital for another reason. I realised this for the first time several years ago when a gentleman attempted to dance Merengue with me. He was stepping with his legs but holding his torso very still. I couldn’t tell the difference between him dancing and him standing still! He had failed to master a key element of the lead necessary for basic steps. The chest movement is vital to communicate your shift of weight, as the leader, to your follower and a good teacher will show you how this is done.

In many cultures this chest movement isn’t required for daily functional activities so it can feel rather unnatural and might take a lot of practice to master. Get started by doing a small shift of the chest, nice and slowly. Keep your shoulders horizontal and focus on moving the lower ribs. Only gradually increase the size and speed of the movement making sure you’re still doing it correctly and not allowing the shoulders to tip. Your shoulders should be relaxed while your abdominals and the muscles in your lower back control the movement. Drill the chest isolation into your body standing steady with your pelvis stable before you try to combine it with dance steps and hip movements. Then once you’ve managed all that, you just need to apply it when you’re dancing with a partner.

May I also suggest that you reward yourself for all your efforts with a nice minty mojito. The arm isolation you require for that is arriba, abajo, al centro, pa’ dentro.

Thank you very much for watching my videos and subscribing to my channel. I’ll be posting more videos up soon.

The ‘Strictly’ Effect

Okay, so it’s going to be impossible to write a blog about dancing without once in a while mentioning the immensely popular, long running, prime time television programme ‘Strictly Come Dancing’. People always ask me whether I like it. Here are some thoughts.

‘Strictly’ has done huge amounts to boost interest and participation in partner dancing and is undoubtedly an extremely successful television programme. There are aspects of it open for criticism of course, but overall, the joys of dancing or being a member of the audience are very effectively broadcast to the nation. I would actually go so far as to say that the programme has altered the national psyche.

Before ‘Strictly’, in some people’s minds, the thinking was that dancing was just for girls, women, gay boys and gay men. In beginner level Salsa classes, for example, there were always more women than men. The men who did take part had often been pestered into doing so by their girlfriends or wives. Some were clearly petrified and thinking that they didn’t really want to be there, they weren’t going to be any good and that they might even turn gay by the end of the class. Thankfully, after several years of watching burly rugby players, athletes, gay and straight men of various shapes and sizes succeeding on the dance floor and enjoying every minute of it, the penny eventually dropped. These days, lots of men are keen to dance.

Hurray to that!

Now there’s even the opposite problem. Following skills can usually be learnt quicker than leading skills because leaders have to memorise a whole repertoire of sequences. So now there are more men than women in some dance classes!

When I was teaching A Level dance to begin with I was assigned all female classes with only occasionally one boy in the mix. With this age group I would combine The Strictly Effect together with Diversity winning ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. I would credit the two shows for jointly increasing the number of boys in A Level classes up to two or three each year. The indication being that more boys were planning a career in dance and more parents were accepting it as a career choice for their sons.

I have to say, I rather like the progress that’s been made. I’ll be discussing how we can go even further but I’m immensely grateful, to both shows, and the men who have courageously taken part for redressing the gender balance and getting more men into dancing.

First Impressions: Happy. Attractive. Exciting.

Written in  July 2014

Apologies for the long delay in posting this next entry. I’ve just recovered from a nasty infection. The Irish Salsa Congress was a useful extra incentive to get better as quickly as possible. I can’t believe it’s been going for nine years now!

Over the weekend I chatted to some people who have recently taken up dancing Salsa and it reminded me of when I first discovered it. I had completed my degree and diplomas and had started my job teaching A Level Dance. A friend of mine wanted to go to our local Salsa club. I really wasn’t keen, but as I always like to encourage people to participate in dance, even if it’s not my favourite style, I agreed to go along with her. My lack of enthusiasm was mainly because I thought it would be like Ballroom dancing. My understanding of Ballroom was based on occasionally watching ‘Come Dancing’ on the television when I was younger. To me it just looked like couples gracefully walking around a dance floor in pretty outfits. There didn’t seem to be much skill involved. I thought it looked easy and nothing like the ‘proper’ dancing I was doing (Ballet, Contemporary, Tap and Jazz). So in my mind I was being ‘dragged’ along to this Salsa club.

The first thing that struck me, when I was in the bar adjoining the main room of the club, was the music. My eardrums started to think they were on holiday somewhere warm and exotic. It lifted my mood. Then of course I was confronted with a whole room full of people dancing. And remember, this was several years ago… I had never seen so many men dancing all in one place! It only took a quick observation and analysis to work out that they were definitely not all gay and they were a lot more attractive than Morris men! I was in heaven. Needless to say, I was very interested to stick around and find out more.

Photo by Dee Organ

I thought the dancing looked amazing… fast and sexy. I started asking questions. “Are you professional?” Some of them looked professional to me. “No” was the answer I got. So wow. That was impressive. “Is your routine choreographed?” “No we’re just making it up as we go along.” How could that be possible? It was so fast and two people were moving effortlessly together as if they were one. Now I was really impressed. A year earlier I had written my dissertation on ‘The Notating of Improvised Postmodern Dance’ so I was very familiar with improvisation within the Contemporary dance genre. In comparison, this Salsa dancing was much more complex and exciting.

At this first encounter I made up my mind…                                                           I needed to learn how to dance Salsa.