Instructors: Homer & Cristina Ladas
http://theorganictangoschool.org
May 20, 2012, Northampton, MA
Video Courtesy of Todd Griffen
We began with a warm-up dance doing small, simple forward volcadas with no embellishments. We were to keep the volcada small and strong.
Follower: Do not
collapse your belly button.
Leader: Do not be
hollowed out in your chest when you lead the Volcada.
Follower: There is no
such thing as the free leg. We can control our leg, shape it. And articulate it
in a pretty manner.
EXERCISE: GRECO-ROMAN HOLD
Our practice hold would
be as if we were starting a Greco-Roman wrestling match where each person’s
hands are on the other person’s front shoulders.
- We should have straight, stable spines.
- The Follower pushes against the Leader’s
shoulders.
- The Follower tries to knock the Leader off by
pressing into the floor and not breaking alignment or collapsing anywhere.
- The Follower pushes on the Leader by being
strong and firm into the ground on her standing legs.
- The Leader plays with the Follower’s axis,
trying to push her back mostly with his body.
- If the Leader does a good job, the Follower
should let him win. If the Leader does
not do a good job, she should let him fall.
- Leaders should be stable and secure, and should
give the Follower support energy from the very beginning and all throughout.
- Leaders should not collapse in energy or fall,
otherwise the Follower will push him back up.
- The Followers should let the weight carry
through
The point of this
exercise is so that Leaders learn how not to collapse and to always be ready to
engage, and to be able to push back right away and hold his ground to always
give support to the Follower. At the moment of the Follower’s fall, there can
be no air pockets or bubbles in terms of the energy that they are both giving
each other.
VOLCADA
In this Greco-Roman
hold, the Leader leads a volcada by doing a side step diagonally back (open
back) with his left foot, and then steps diagonally forward (front cross) with
his right foot to drive the Follower’s left foot into a front cross against her
right foot.
Leader should always
face his partner.
Follower: Give a lot of
weight into the Leader, and this depends on how much the Follower pushes into
the floor. Do not collapse into your
body. Push more into the floor with all
of your joints (hips, knees, ankles) to keep upright and not collapse. Engage
your core muscles.
The Leader equalizes and
matches and stabilizes the Follower.
This is how we take care of each other.
We drilled this, trying
with different partners of varying dimensions.
Use strength to keep
each other up.
The Leader lifts
Follower in a way. It’s a sustained lift.
The Follower pushes down
with her left shoulder blade and pulls herself up, as if she is trying to get
out of a swimming pool. Pushing down to pull yourself up is not about going up
in height. It is about creating space
between your ribs. Imagine your own
wishbone being pulled up an inch. So your height will remain constant, but
there will be more lengthening in your spine from the increased space in your
rib cage.
The Follower’s right
foot pivots to face the Leader. She should not underpivot, otherwise she will
end up with twisted feet. Her joints
should be aligned with the Leader’s body.
FOLLOWER’S EMBELLISHMENTS:
With embellishments, the
focus needs to be on the floor for strength.
Both the Leader and
Follower need to engage their muscles in their cores, backs, and legs.
Exercise:
Footwork – Ballet or Sassy
(1)
Ballet:
- Foot has pointed toe
- Follower’s hips face the Leader
- Hips are level in the same line
(2)
Sassy
- Foot is flexed so heel remains on the floor
- Do not drop or collapse the left hip; keep the
hips the line level and the same by engaging the inner thigh of the standing right
leg.
Regarding ballet or sassy, master each one before you play in the middle
and do a hybrid.
(3)
The Ultimate Embellishment: Cristina’s Air
Enrosque (in-air rulo/Arabesque)
- This entails really opening up the hip and doing
a clockwise enrosque/rulo (draw a circle) out to the side with ballet footwork
(ie, a pointed foot).
- She can keep this on the ground, which is easier
when just learning to do it, and then putting it in the air, doing it at the
height of the volcada, and then resolving it.
- Follower shouldn’t be slow. She needs to be able
to do it within the time the Leader gives.
- The bend is at the knee, and the enrosque/rulo
is out to the side. For the left foot the enrosque/rulo is clockwise, in the
same the direction of where the left leg will go.
- If done on the right leg, the enrosque/rulo is
counterclockwise.
- A student in class dubbed the initiating stance
“Princes Morgan” – like Captain Morgan stance, only the female version. So our hip opens up in that same manner, with
knee straight down and toe pointed to floor.
- From the hips to the knee is isolated during the
Follower enrosque/rulo.
- At the inflection point, the knee and hips close
as the leg goes into the cross.
- There are two distinctive shapes.
- As the Leader swings the Follower, she breaks at
the hip.
- Keep hip open; the motion comes from the foot.
- At the inflection point, the Follower’s
straightens her leg out into the cross like normal.
- Can do two circles: one out to the side, and one
more toward but before the inflection point.
- We can practice this footwork against the wall,
just as we can practice doing ochos. It is important to practice to get this
into our muscle memory. The isolation of the thigh makes this challenging.
The Leader can lead
multiple volcadas in a row by doing windshield wiper footwork, so he never
collects his left foot with his right foot.
Maestros demo’d the class
concepts to DiSarli’s Tu El Cielo y Tu.
Notes courtesy of Anne at http://scoutingtour.blogspot.com
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