The Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company

Welcome back! On Monday we started learning cha cha, and we'll continue this through the end of next week. Cha cha (sometimes called "cha" or "cha cha cha") originates in Cuba, and has been evolving as a ballroom dance since at least the 1950s. The first video here is a demonstration by Slavik and Karina, ranked as the #2 professional latin couple in the world until they split last year (you might know Karina from her work on Dancing with the Stars). Slavik and Karina have a very understated and confident style that I love, and Karina especially is a supremely strong and elegant dancer.

The next video is of a competition final from 2005. This is much more similar to how you'd experience a ballroom competition, except normally many more couples would be on the floor (as the announcer mentions, these are the top ranked amateur dancers in the world by invite only). Eugene and Maria, couple #1, are from the United States, and performed at the UCSD competition last year. A final usually involves six couples, and they dance all 5 dances at this level (the video here cuts out the rest).

Congratulations on completing your first ballroom class at Claremont! On Wednesday we learned the basics of blues dancing to provide you with some fundamentals, and I wanted to provide some videos to give you a better idea of what blues dancing looks like. Here are a few:

Mirabai is a wonderful follow from Argentina who travels all of the world blues dancing. Mihai is primarily a blues instructor based out the bay area, and he also does a fair bit of Argentine and Argentine/Blues fusion. I don't actually know that much about Stryder, but his styling is very influenced by West Coast Swing.

Styder sent me the following email, and my response is following it:

Hello, this is Stryder. Just wanted to clarify some information on your "Blues Dance Review" article. Mihai is actually dancing primarily Tango, with a smattering of Blues thrown in, but not much. Fusion isn't actually being done, he's switching back and forth between his blues and tango. His intent was to demonstrate more Tango than Blues. What I danced was more akin to Blues and what it would look like. And I can understand where you see the WC influence, but while I am trained and studied in American Smooth and Rhythm, I primarily dance Lindy Hop and Blues. I West Coast more for the hell of it, and truth be told, fake it. :-D I've worked briefly with Jesse Dickson, but never with any intensity.

Stryder

As far as Mihai's demo goes, I agree that most of the choreography comes from Argentine, but his rhythmic interpretation, posture, and styling are not based in argentine style. You could attribute a number of these to blues exposure, or social dance in general, but I definitely think that there are some significant blues influences in his performance.

In regards to my comment about your dancing, I perhaps mistakenly made the assumption that the lindy/ballroom training was taken for granted (being a ballroom/lindy dancer myself). I made the comment about West Coast out of the way you take some of your steps and lead some of your body movements with your elbows, both stylings that have become the paradigm for modern WCS dancing especially with leads such as Benji and Pete Green.

I believe the lead in this video is Sean, a dj from DC who now is based out of LA (he DJed the last set at Friday night blues on Friday). A very subtle and introverted style.

That's all for now folks; tomorrow we start cha cha!