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Posture and Balance are essential to master before you can move together with a partner! Otherwise, you can throw your partner off.

You will also look great if you have excellent posture and balance.

When Balancing, it is useful to stand on one foot at a time while keeping perfect Posture.

Closing your eyes will make it more difficult.

Holding your stomach (called your "center") toned will help with both your balance and your posture.

Practice these skills by yourself in order to perfect them.

You can also prepare for turning by yourself. The key element here is to learn how to rotate your body while maintaining your balance!

This skill may take you a very long time to perfect, so don't be discouraged. Practice makes perfect!

I don't expect you to be perfect at this before moving to the next skill... but keep coming back to practice turning so that over time, your body will learn what it feels like to turn properly.

It helps to hold your center (stomach area) tightly toned and to visualize yourself as having a perfectly aligned body.

Practice all four kinds of turns:

- Clockwise on your Right Foot

- Counterclockwise on your Right Foot

- Clockwise on your Left Foot

- Counterclockwise on your Left Foot

Optional: For those who feel "Rhythm Challenged"

If you have a hard time with rhythm (that's OK... many people do!) it is possible to practice by yourself to get better at it.

Again, this skill might take you some time to learn before you are completely comfortable with rhythm. If you are not feeling confident, practice this skill regularly until you are.

Just put on some music with a good rhythm and practice stepping in time with the music. Do this with a variety of different kinds of music until you feel comfortable.

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After you have worked on your Individual Preparation, find a Friend or Partner to practice connecting with!

Most beginner (and many experienced) dancers try to lead by Pushing or Pulling their partner. This can be very uncomfortable and even cause injuries!

In many cases, this is because they have been learning "steps" and "patterns" for dance styles without learning how to properly connect with their partner. As mentioned before, this is what most dance classes (on the web or in the club) teach so it is perfectly understandable.

In this video, we are having fun with demonstrating pushing and pulling with some drama, but in the real world it is much more insidious and NOT fun!

In this lesson, we want you to experience what Pushing and Pulling feels like so you can:

- be aware of how it feels

- let your partner know if the connection is feeling this way

- never do it again!

Connection with your partner is the foundation of good dancing!

This is the essential skill which many of the following skills will build upon. It is very important that you have a good understanding of this concept, and that your body knows how it feels to have a proper connection.

Connection describes the presence of a "tone" between partners which is created by their two bodies. It comes from the weight of their bodies rather than from the pushing or pulling of their arms.

Make sure to LEAN from your ankles, not bending from your waist or knees.

Don't Push or Pull your partner! This is a VERY common mistake which we need to prevent.

When making a connection with our partner, we normally want to have our elbows by our sides.

Don't use straight arms with locked elbows.

Don't collapse the arms, make sure to keep tone between the two of you.

Both partners must either lean towards or lean away from each other.

If they aren't both using the same kind of lean, then their bodies aren't creating "tone" which characterizes connection.

If the Lady moves away when he leans towards her, or if she moves towards him if he leans away, there is no connection.

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In Mirroring, the Man establishes an intention to lean either away or towards her. The Lady creates the connection.

The Man can use one hand or two.

Practice this skill for a long time until if feels natural, with the Man moving his connection up, down, left, right.

Practice Mirroring with your Partner. The Man Initiates and the Lady Mirrors in order to create the Connection.

The Lady is also responsible for Mirroring any Rotation which the Man Initiates as shown in this lecture.

Rotation comes from body movement, not from pushing or pulling with the arms.

Rotation normally comes from the movement of the center of the stomach area.

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A Leader will Initiate Movement by simply moving himself. He does not try to create movement by pulling or pushing his partner.

In order to lead effectively, he must learn how to move his weight from foot to foot Confidently and Clearly. If he is too wimpy, she will not be able to understand what he is trying to lead.

In this lecture, we practice moving confidently from one foot to another, while maintaining an awareness of our center from which movement normally begins.

As an aside, in my group classes I have the men march confidently in a circle expressing their masculine role. It is not uncommon for the ladies to spontaneously express their approval by cheers, hoots and cat-calls... they really love a guy who can move himself confidently, even if he is just moving about on his own!

On the other side of the coin are the men who are so sensitive that they are too cautious and wimpy when they attempt to lead. They might take small steps, step around the lady, or just move very delicately. In spite of his good intentions not to be too aggressive (or often a lack of confidence) the lady is confused because she can't understand what he is trying to do.

Often the ladies react to this situation by "back leading" him or by going into her head and trying to figure out what he is trying to do, then react to that. This reaction just makes the matter much worse.

Bottom line... guys, it is VERY IMPORTANT for you to learn how to move yourself Confidently and Clearly!

The Man Leads by:

1. Setting the Intention by leaning towards or away from her

2. Waiting for her to Mirror his lean

3. Moving his Body

The Lady Follows by:

1. Having an Awareness of his Intention to lean towards or away

2. Creating a Connection by Mirroring his lean

3. Sensing when his body is moving and then Moving with him, while maintaining the Connection

In order to Lead Rotation, the Man:

1. Initiates an Intention with her using a very slight amount of rotation from his center. The direction of this initial rotation should be in the OPPOSITE rotation from what he will LEAD.
2. Waits until she Mirrors his intention to create a Connection
3. Leads her by Rotating himself in the desired rotational direction

In order to Follow Rotation, the Lady:

1. Senses his rotational intention
2. Mirrors his rotation to create a Connection
3. Receives his rotational movement and allows her own body to rotate as a result of his rotation.

It is important that she continues to rotate at the same speed which he led.

Ladies must develop an awareness of whether the Man is Connecting with her or Leading her.

Common problems for Ladies to avoid are:

1. resisting his movement by standing her ground and pushing back
2. allowing her elbows to collapse behind her

When connecting, the Man's body is leaning or rotating either towards her, away from her, clockwise or counter-clockwise. When leading, his body is moving along the floor.

As he moves his body, she allows her body to move while maintaining the connection.

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Ladies are responsible for continuing any Movement which the Man initiates.

This lecture shows how to move back and forth with a linear, continuous movement.

This lecture reviews the concept of the Lady's movement.

It also shows a great exercise to use for practicing the Lady's movement forward and backwards with a two-hand position.

The Man initiates her movement, then lets go of her. She continues moving until he stops her. The exercise is repeated over and over until it feels natural to both partners.

It is important for the Lady to offer her hand for the Man to take when he chooses to. That way, he can always take her hand when he needs to.

She should not take the Man's hand. If she tries to take his hand when he is trying to take hers, then they may both miss each other's hands. Another problem which can occur is she might take his hand but he intended to do a completely different pattern than she anticipated.

The Lady's Turn is Initiated by the Man. Once she starts turning, she keeps turning until he stops her.

A common mistake Ladies make is to stop turning by herself whenever she feels like stopping.

Traveling turns are very commonly done by Ladies, but sometimes also by Men. There are many kinds of traveling turns, and the one presented in the video is one of the simplest.

In this kind of turn, we:

1. Keep our feet pointing forward with respect to our body (it is OK to slightly turn them out if you prefer)
2. Keep our feet separated by about our shoulder width (less if we want to travel less, more if we want to travel more)
3. Step onto a foot, then Rotate our body 180 degrees
4. Next Step on the other foot and Rotate 180 degrees
5. With every Step, Rotate action, we keep rotating in the same direction (either clockwise or counter-clockwise)
6. Movement should go in a straight line
7. Look in the direction we are moving

Turning in place can take a long time to master! We are reviewing this important skill here since it is part of our movement skill set.

The first thing to do is to make sure your body has perfect posture. Focus on keeping your body toned in the center and keeping your body upright. Do NOT look down, since this will throw your balance off.

Next, we want to make sure that we are balanced over the foot we are turning on.

Wind your body and/or arms slightly in the opposite direction you want to rotate in.

Unwind your body and/or arms in the direction you want to rotate and then hold them still.

As we rotate our body, we can either lift the unused foot, or allow the toes to lightly brush the floor. This can help with balance if needed.

Of critical importance is to maintain your balance as you are rotating. This is far more important than making many rotations with poor balance. It is useful to check your balance before turning, while turning and after turning.

Practice all four ways of turning (clockwise and counter-clockwise on one foot, then the other.)

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In this lecture, we show you how to create and to use the Lady's natural body Momentum to shift effortlessly between the inward and the outward connection.

The Man is responsible for Leading her Movement in the direction he wants her to move. Her body keeps moving until he stops. Her body Momentum will keep moving in the original direction until a Connection is established between them.

If the ending connection is away from each other, you should both experience the sensation of a rubber band being stretched apart.

If the ending connection is towards each other, you should both experience the sensation of compression.

Note that we are using flat hands for these exercises in order to clearly demonstrate the inward connection, however when you are actually dancing, the hands usually stay with the position we are showing for the away connection.

In this position, the Man's hands make hooks that are parallel to the floor and the Lady's hands make hooks that are perpendicular to the floor.

In this Lecture, we show you some great exercises to reinforce the feeling of Momentum using the analogy of a Shopping Cart for the way the Lady's body movement should feel to the Man.

Have fun with this feeling... once you get the sensation, it will feel really wonderful for both of you!

Some of my students find that actually experimenting with a real Shopping Cart at the store gives them a very easy way of experiencing this feeling firsthand. For best results, put some heavy items in your Shopping Cart first.

A very common problem is for the Lady to react like a "Shopping Cart with a Motor." When the Man gives her a Lead, she moves too quickly... faster than he is moving. She ends up either pulling him, pushing him or collapsing into him.

About half of the Ladies in my classes do this the first time out, so if you or your partner experience this don't despair!

The solution is for the Lady to remember to maintain the Connection with the Man as they are travelling whenever their hands are connected. When their hands are not connected, allow your body to move at the same speed he initially led.

With this exercise, you will create Linear Momentum, convert it to Circular Momentum and let her out back into Linear Momentum.

Notice that the Lady travels in a straight line after the Man releases her.

It is SO IMPORTANT for the Lady to continue moving even when the Man stops actively leading her!

This lecture demonstrates the incredible difference between the very common behavior of untrained Ladies to stop when he stops actively leading her and the use of Movement and Momentum to create flow.

You are optionally invited to try the underarm passes if you want to, however we will cover these in a future lecture.

It is so important for Ladies to let go of thinking and trying to anticipate what the Leader is trying to do. If she can get out of her head and allow her body to do the dancing, it becomes much more flowing.

Closing her eyes is a great way of experiencing this!

All too often, untrained dancers use Pushing and Pulling in Underarm Turns and Side Passes, usually creating discomfort and sometimes resulting in hurting the Lady's shoulders.

In this lecture, you will learn how to apply the concepts of Connection, Movement and Momentum to effortlessly lead and follow these kind of movements, which are very popular in a large number of partner dances.

We demonstrate how to use these Dance Skills with quite a few commons steps and patterns. You are invited to try these steps as you desire, and experiment with other variants. Again, we are not focused on teaching you steps here, rather how to apply the concepts you have learned to a variety of different steps.

A Dance Frame is used in many of the popular Partner Dances. It is also called a Closed Position.

One of the biggest challenges many people have is keeping the frame as they rotate and execute different steps and patterns.

In order to get the feeling of keeping the frame, a great exercise is to rotate together while keeping the frame intact.

Using your Connection with each other, you can develop a very stable feeling of connectedness with each other. You don't want to feel that the connection is loose or wobbly, which would result if there isn't enough body tone.

Another great exercise (not shown in this video) is to stand in Closed Position, then shift to a Promenade Position in which the Man looks to the left of his left hand and the Lady looks to the right of her right hand. (In this position, they can move together in the direction they are both looking.) The trick is to move back and forth between Closed Position and Promenade Position while maintaining proper tone with each other.

Waltz and Foxtrot are very popular Partner Dances which can feel so much better when using the skills of Connection, Mirroring and Momentum.

In this lecture, we show you how to do this with a two-handed position, just for practice.

Once this is learned, we show you how to use these skills in the traditional Closed Position Frame position.

Rumba and Cha Cha are also popular Partner Dances which can benefit greatly from the use of the skills you have learned.

Using Rumba, we demonstrate in great detail how to apply these skills to some common steps used in both of these dances.

Pay close attention to where Connections, Mirrors, Leads, Follows and Momentum are used as you rapidly move between them in these dances. It is very important that you resist the temptation to push or pull as the movements become more complex and faster.

Note that applying these principles to Cha Cha is nearly identical, except that the footwork for Cha Cha is different and the tempo is faster.

Rumba Footwork and Timing: Slow, Quick, Quick (or 2-3, 4, 1 for International Style)

Cha Cha Footwork and Timing: Slow, Slow, Quick, Quick, Quick (sometimes called "Step, Step, Cha, Cha, Cha")

In this lecture, we show you how to use the Essential Dance Skills with the Underarm Turn in Rumba.

If you are a beginning dancer, this pattern may be challenging to master. Our intention is not to teach you the steps we are doing, rather how you can apply the concepts you learned to any partner dance you might want to learn.

When you are practicing, it is important that you think in every step and position about Connection, Mirroring, Movement and Momentum so you can internalize how this feels.

In this lecture, for a comparison we demonstrate how Rumba is commonly danced using Pushing and Pulling rather than the methods you have learned so you will know what it looks and feels like when you slip into bad habits.

Salsa is a very popular partner dance, however it is so common for Salsa dancers to have almost no body connection with each other, since this is not typically taught to them. Many of them use a loose "flippy" arm style which almost guarantees that leads must be executed using Pushing and Pulling.

In this lesson, we will show you how to dance Salsa using a proper body connection and the other skills you have learned.

We also show you how to combine the body connection with the Latin hip movement which is characteristic of Salsa. Note that this concept is also applicable to the other Latin dances.

In this lecture, we provide an introduction to using Connections, Movement and Momentum in East Coast Swing.

More details are shown in the following lectures.

We introduce a new concept, which is an Impulse created by the Man to lead her into the Rock Steps. The Impulse is initiated by a quick movement towards her, followed immediately by a movement away from her. The result is the partners separate from each other and move into the Rock Steps.

This lecture contains a slower breakdown of the basics.

This lecture adds an underarm turn and other moves, explaining in detail how body leads can be used.

We invite you to fully enjoy Partner Dancing using all of the concepts you have learned in this course!!!