Ballroom Latin Dance Made Simple And Easy
Secrets Of Mastering The Rumba Figures Through Basic Techinique
May 6, 2009
Anyone who has just started to learn to dance Rumba may find it difficult to remember all those new figures and patterns with unfamiliar names according to any International Syllabus. While memorization has always been a process in everyone’s learning path in dancing, there is a more efficient way to learn and remember the Rumba figures.
Start With The Basics
First of all, calm down and forget about the complexity of any figures. Just concentrate on the basics. For instance, there are two Rumba Walks: Forward and Backward. This is the most important and most practiced Rumba technique. It may take years to dance Rumba Walks well, even if one has already understood the basic concept of body movements. But it is worthwhile to invest the time in drilling the skill into the muscle memory.
As in walking, there are always changes in the direction i.e. left or right. Here comes the second and third group of basic techniques.
The Turning Walks
While doing the Forward Rumba Walk, a sudden change of direction (due to lead or follow) may require the dancer to turn to the left. This is called the Turning Walk. Such movement happens when a Forward Walk step is not completed with full transfer of weight to the front foot. Instead, the front foot is being turned to the left on the ball following the body before settling all its weight on the right after the turn.
Similarly, a Turning Walk could be made to the right as in the first step of the lady’s Underarm Turn in the figure of Alemana.
The Hip Twists
The lady dances a lot of Hip Twists in Rumba. This is basically a change of direction to the right given when the man stops the lady from continuing her Forward Walk. The lady twists her hip to the right and brings the rest of her body to the right. She can then continue with further Forward Walks and Turning Walks into the Fan Position.
Sometimes, a Hip Twist could be danced backward to the left for lady as in Back Basic Over Turn. Or it may be danced to the left as in the second step of the Sliding Door.
Simply put, the Hip Twist can be treated as a form of hip rotation as in Rumba Walks. A Hip Twist causes a greater degree of rotation than the normal hip rotation in Rumba Walk . However, a beginner dancer may not realize the similarity of technique between a Hip Twist and a Rumba Walk hip rotation.
Putting Everything Together
Having mastered the three groups of technique above, try to pick any bar of Rumba figure and break it up into some combination of the three groups of technique. It may come as a surprise that most figures are actually made up of these basic techniques and nothing more complicated.
In case of some less recognizable steps, just think of the basic Rumba Walk technique or the hip rotation done in different directions. For example, in the lady’s step oknown as the Alemana, she starts with a Turning Walk to the right under the Man’s arm and moves on to a Hip Twist to the right back to facing her partner. Then she completes the steps with a Forward Turning Walk to the right. From there she may continue with whatever is appropriate from her lead.
By breaking down a Rumba figure into groups of basics, a dancer is then able to interpret steps with much more technical clarity. It is also less likely to forget any steps because the components are all made up of basics.
