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Ballroom Dancing - The Tango

Ballroom Dancing - Basic Tango Posture

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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 students of all levels, whether they are interested in social dancing, exhibition dancing, or competitive ballroom dance sport. He has led many of his students to win top level gold medal competitions, and he is pleased to share his expertise with you today.

Ballroom Dancing - Basic Tango Posture

In this video, Terry teaches the basic patterns and techniques of the Tango, and provides the fundamental knowledge you need to get started with this, “the dancer’s dance”. This video series is designed for the beginner, but there are techniques that the intermediate dancer will find useful as well. Terry demonstrates exercises to help get ready your body for dancing and teaches the basic pattern of the tango. He shows the techniques that provide the characteristic mystique of the tango, and finally adds variations that will make dancing the tango quite enjoyable.

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Hi, I am Terry Dean from Terry Deans Dance Studio, were teaching the tango. Right now we are going to do the posture of the tango to help create the look that were trying to get. Whenever were doing posture, again, we have to remember that we got to lift our body, and we do that by doing ribcage isolation. So, we lift our top, lets turn sideways, so that you can see that were working just the ribcage so I can do a rounded back, or I can do a lift the top. We can also go side to side. These are called ribcage isolations, and theyre very important that you learn how to move through the core of your body in order to have a good top. Whenever were working on posture, the tango is going to be a little bit further down in the knees. So, were going to bend our knees. The lady is going to lift her ribcage and so is the man. Her elbows are going to come up. She is going to be really dramatically off to the left side. Her hand is going to be with her thumb, going under the mans arm, so their elbows interlock. We connect on the right side, we both go down in the knees, so have a very tight top, so that the ladies head, when I turn my body, her head will snap from side to side, which is very characteristic of the tango. So, the posture, again, the lady hooks her arm underneath, we drop at our knees, and I will demonstrate a basic step; T-A-N-G-O; T-A-N-G-O. So, thats your basic Tango posture. The next were going to do is staccato footwork and basic characteristic styling of the tango.