Cuban Motion

Right now I’m not taking as many private lessons due to financial reasons but one of the great things about the studio is I am still able to go to all the group classes which reinforces what I already know and shows me some new variations on those steps also.
Sense we are not doing as many we really pack as much into a lesson as we can. Two things that really help with that is one I seem to absorb what they give me quickly (Amy another one of the instructors there has nicknamed me the dance sponge) and two I practice what they give me on my own time either at home with choreography written out or coming in early before group classes to use the dance floor to practice on my own.
Next month there is a local dance event called Freestyle showcase. A Freestyle is where you are on the dance floor with multiple other couples dancing to a certain style. You are graded individually on your level in that dance. There is also a section called a 2 dance, where it is 2 dances of either Smooth or Latin style and you compete against the others on the floor. I plan on doing both the Smooth and the Latin 2 dances.Tonight we focused all our time on a dance routine for Rumba one of the dances in the Latin 2 dance. I’d done a Rumba before at a spotlight party, in fact it’s the one I have on video. We are using those steps and expanding it. Now after all that let’s get back to the title of the post here. Cuban motion is the effect where you bend 1 knee and keep the other one straight this causes the hip on the straight leg to go up then you switch. This is what causes the Latin motion in the hips, if you just tried to do the hips with out the knees it just wouldn’t work. As we worked on the steps we worked a lot of alternating bending the knees and changing weight. Sometimes I had to pause and go back and cover something again because it was a lot with the knees, the hips, the steps the arm movements and layering it all but I really felt like we made a lot of great progress. Looking forward to the showcase and competing.

Bronze 1 Checkout

At the studio you can choose which dances you want to focus on for your majors, then have dances that are your minors that you don’t do as much and those dances you want to just skip. It's very customizable. I choose to make my majors the same as those they have for the majors at dance competitions; they are also some of the more common. They are Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, Rumba, Cha Cha and Swing. 3 smooth and 3 rhythm dances. Today I checked out of Bronze 1 level of all of those dances and can now move on to Bronze 2 steps. It’s such a great feeling of accomplishment. Making my teachers proud of my progress, the support from the other students, its got me feeling so good. Was also a very cool feeling when I was having my evaluation to be able to do a step when it’s called and have it come easily. Now on to learning more and more.