Vals Essence - How To Hover And When To Release

We think this is part of the reason why waltzes are considered romantic: this idea of being off balance and liking it.

Artist Name:: Q Tango
Song Title:: Desde El Alma
Album Title:: Live Four QTango
Artist Website:: http://www.qtango.com

From website: Created in July, 2009 by Erskine Maytorena, a third generation tango musician and opera singer, QTANGO performs authentic Argentine tango arrangements throughout the southwest, with multiple tours including appearances in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, San Diego, Tucson, Sedona, Las Vegas, El Paso, Santa Fe and Albuqeurque. Specializing in the traditional tango music of the "Golden Age" of the great Argentine tango orchestras, QTANGO's dynamic and powerful music keeps dancers on the floor and listeners enthralled. Every song is a novella; a story of love, betrayal, desperation and hope. QTANGO's musicians give the audience a unique and intimate experience, an acoustic resonance only an orchestra can provide, a journey into the romance, passion and elegance of tango. Whether touring as a quartet or performing gala events with over 14 musicians, every performance is sophisticated, engaging, nostalgic, and moving.

00:04: So, ballroom waltz has a lot of things that I like about it.
00:07: But the styling for tango vals and ballroom waltz is a little different.
00:11: One thing that I want us to use, but with a different styling, is the sense of hover, of suspension, and then going on.
00:17: So, my learning of ballroom is more from watching channel 8. But that said, I'll show a bad version.
00:25: I'll show my version, which is not trained.
00:27: He knew I was going to get on that bad thing.
00:30: But, so, for example, there's this sense that you're, you know, up and away,
00:33: And then you go up, and then fall, and then up, fall on. Then you hug.
00:42: And I want us to think that, maybe we'll use a rise and fall?
00:45: Maybe we'll use the rise and fall, but it won't be so large.
00:50: So, instead of going... Really, if you look at my ankles,
00:52: Instead of going way up on the balls of my feet, and then coming down, into my knees,
00:58: I'm going to go... I'm going to lift up only in the body. In the body, I go up.
01:02: And I'll go maybe the tiniest bit, but not much. In the ankle, that is.
01:07: And then we'll go... Ah.
01:12: So, you'll see, that the change in level is so subtle, but it's still there.
01:16: If you look at both of us, in the close-up camera,
01:20: Here's staying the same level... And if we wanted to do, ah.
01:28: So, we do have a soft rise and fall, but half of the rise and fall, is actually about the way that we fall into the next step.
01:37: It's about the flow, rather than about the...
01:39: It's not about changing levels so much, it's about allowing our bodies to go into the step.
01:44: It's... Can you listen to the way the music kind of pulls you and then lets go.
01:50: And we kind of do that with our bodies, but we do it much more level.
01:54: David has a really cool thing he says about the dewdrop.
01:57: Right, right, right, right.
01:58: So, I want you to think, that, in this particular case, it's the movement comes out of your body, like a dewdrop, falling off a leaf.
02:07: It's here... Ah, and then it falls.
02:10: So, it's not like the dewdrop wants to fall, "Oh, I'm out of there". It's sort of, like, you know, very fast dewdrop.
02:17: I want you to mean there's one drop, it builds... Ah, and then it's off.
02:22: And it's the music that takes it off. You can hear that, in the music.
02:26: So, there's a lot of suspension. So, if we dance, I'm going to exaggerate:
02:31: One, two, three; one, two, three; and then ah whoo...

Series:: Vals Essence
Tags:: vals, Technique