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Waltz Hesitations

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Terry Dean: Hi! I am Terry Dean from Terry Deans Dance Studio. We are teaching you the waltz.

The next ballroom dance pattern we are going to do is hesitations. Hesitations are like they sound, you are going to hesitate. This catch you from when you are doing your waltz box rhythm to stop in case somebody is in front of you or you need to change directions, so it's just a hesitation when you step on one step and hold for two beats. They are going to work like this. The man will step forward as the lady steps back, one and we are going to pull our foot in for two, three step back one, two, three. So, we are holding one, two, three, one, two, three, so instead of stepping on every beat, we are stepping only on the one beat and holding and pulling our foot for two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three.

Now, these hesitations can also be done from side-to-side and they look like this one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Now, what I am going to do is I want to demonstrate the hesitations from a box step, so we are going to change from the regular box rhythm into the hesitations and that look like so one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, hesitation two, three, hesitation two, three, hesitation two, three, hesitation and back to the box one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three. Thank you.

One thing that you will learn is that the waltz box step is kind a like home base, whenever you learn in new pattern, you always come back to the box step. So, in this case we did the box step first, went into the hesitations forward, back, side-to-side and then back to the box step. It's a very easy step, but it's very useful when you are trying to manipulate around the dance floor.

The next thing we are going to do is a waltz underarm turn.

Expert: Terry Dean

Ballroom Dancing Expert

www.terrydeansdancestudio.com

Terry is the owner and principal male dance instructor of Terry Dean’s Dance Studio, in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has been teaching ballroom dancing for 30 years and opened his own successful studio following a 19 year career with Arthur Murray Dance Studios. Terry has received accolades for his choreography and has been honored as Virginia State’s Top Studio and Top Teacher twice. He and his staff teach More »