Easy Dance Moves for Couple Dancing | Duet Dance Studio's Live Dance Class 💃🏻🕺🏽

How's it going? So, it's so good to be here with all of you guys again for another live stream lesson. So, I am, you guys recognize me if you've been to any of our past live streams. My name is Megan, and I'll be your instructor. And then this is Grace, and we did not intentionally match today, but we totally do. And so, sorry if that's confusing for anyone at home. But our shoes are a little bit different. So, if you see a little flash of white in the shoes, then that's going to be me. But what we're going to work on today is we're going to do a little bit of merengue. And so, merengue is a great style because it traditionally is a Latin style. You can also dance to a lot of pop music, a lot of things that you can hear at weddings. It also doesn't move around a whole lot. And so, if the dance floor is kind of crowded and people are moving around a lot, it's really good to just kind of stay in place and turn your partner. So, we'll kind of do a couple basics of the merengue, and then we're also going to do a turn for the leader and a turn for the follower. And if you guys have any questions at any point, just feel free to reach out in the comments, and we'll go ahead and be checking that. I see a couple people in the comments, so just let us know if you have any questions, and we will get started with the merengue basics. So, the very first thing that we're going to do is just a basic by itself. And the good thing is it's basically very similar to the leader and follow. We're going to start on the left foot. And we're going to start with the basic in place. So, the left foot is just going to step down, and then the right foot down, left down, right down. And we're going to do this for an entire eight counts. So, what that's going to look like, starting on the left foot, we go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So, basically we're just marching in place. And this is our basic in place. So, super easy, and like I said, very similar for both leader and follower. And you can see that Grace and I are adding a little bit of what we call Cuban motion, and that is when our hips are going from side to side. Since this is traditionally a Latin dance, we can add a little bit of this Cuban motion to make it a little more fun. And we can also add a little bit of movement into this. We're going to do our side basic. So, the very first thing that I'm going to do on the left foot is start moving over to the left side. So, with my left foot, I'm going left, right, left, right, left, right, left. And then I can tap my right foot. So, again, we're doing an entire eight count heading in one direction, and then we're going to tap to go back the other way. Starting with the right foot, we go right, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, tap. So, we'll do a full eight count. We're going to turn around so you can see it from a different angle. We're going to do a full eight count starting with that left foot, heading over to the left side. We go left, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, tap. Go right, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, tap. So, now we're going to combine those two basics really quickly. We're going to do our basic in place, and then we're going to do a side basic. And then we'll dance with our partner. So, let's go ahead and turn around so you can see. And we're going to do a full eight count in place, then we'll do a full eight count traveling. So, we go 5, 6, 7, 8, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. To the left, left, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, tap. Go right, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, tap, left. Great, and then from there, after we've tapped left, we can just repeat that over and over again. So, now we're going to get into a dance position with our partner. We're going to start in what we call a two-hand hold. There are a couple different ways, and we'll show you the different ways in which you can get into this merengue basic. But we'll start with just a two-hand hold. I'm going to be the leader today, so I'm holding my hands out underneath with my palms facing up. So, Grace can put her hands into mine, and then I can make sure that I'm connecting the back of my fingertips to the palm of her hand. Especially when we get into those turns, it's very important. So, leader, make sure that you're holding your hands out, almost like you have two glasses of water. And then followers, dunk your hands in. So, we'll go ahead and try this basic in place, and then we'll go ahead and add it to our side basic. And since we're facing each other, Grace is going to start with the right foot instead of the left. So, leader will start left, followers will start right. And we'll go ahead and do our standing basic together, and then our side basic. So, we go 5, 6, 7, 8. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Side 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. And back, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. So, I do want to try this with a little bit of music before we move on. So, we'll go ahead and turn on our music. It's going to be a little bit faster than what we've been doing, but I'll keep counting it out for you. Hopefully, you'll be able to hear me with my mic on. And, yeah, we can get started with some music. All right, here we go. Okay. I have some basics for you. If you guys have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments. But, now we're going to start in on a turn for my followers. So, the turn that we're going to do for my followers is called an outside turn, where my follower is going to go over that right shoulder. And, again, we want to make sure that we have plenty of time to set this up, and we want to be connecting to our followers' palms. That way, we can send them out and give them plenty of space to get into this turn. So, this turn is going to be two full counts of eight. The first count of eight is just going to be the setup. So, we're going to do a half basic facing each other. We'll go ahead and demonstrate before we break things down. We go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Great. So, pretty simple. We're just going to push our follower out, and that's going to happen on five, six, seven, eight. So, you'll see my arms are just sending my partner back, just giving a little bit of a push with my fingertips and the palm of my hand, making sure that there's plenty of space for this turn. And then, for my leaders, you want to keep moving your feet and just draw a clockwise circle over your partner's head, and then we can offer our right hand again and get into that position. So, you want to do that turn with your left hand, again, over your partner's head, and you don't want to raise it too high. You want to keep it at about 90 degrees, right over, like you're drawing a little curler. So, for my followers, once you feel that send out, you're going to take your steps backwards with them. So, you're going to go back, six, seven, eight. And then, starting on that right foot, we're going to go around over that right shoulder. Using tiny little baby steps, we go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And by the time that eight happens, again, you should be facing your leader. Something else to keep in mind, on that very first step, you can already start by turning your body out. You don't have to start in front of your leader and then start to go around. You want to already be starting that turn on that one. You'll notice when Grace and I start that turn, it's already at an angle. So, keep that in mind while we're starting in on that turn, and we'll go ahead and do that turn a little bit faster. And I'll actually do it from this angle so you can see Grace's feet a little clearer for my followers. Five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, push out, five, six, seven, eight. Grace turns, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Great. And let us know if you have any questions about the outside turn. It's a pretty simple turn for you, so just keep practicing a little bit. I do want to try this one with music as well. And we can keep moving on for a turn for the leader. Let's go ahead and practice this one a couple of times with some music. All right, we'll do our same music again as before, so similar timing. So, if you want to pause right here and practice that other turn and then come back, feel free to do that if you need a little additional time to practice that first turn. But we're going to go ahead and move on to a turn for the leader that we call a waist roll. And in this one, we're actually going to be switching places. So, we're going to do that same send out that we did before. So, we're going to do our one, two, three, four, send out, five, six, seven, eight. But this time, we're going 180 and the leader is rotating over their left shoulder. So, I'll start with the leader footwork first. So, we'll do our four count in place. One, two, three, four, send out, five, six, seven, eight, just to create some space. At this point, my left foot should be free and I'm going to start moving around in a circle and a little bit forward going one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And notice that I started facing away from the camera and now I am facing the camera and should be turned 180 from where we started. And I moved a little bit forward with my first couple of steps. So, as I start that, initiate that movement of getting my partner around me, which will make more sense when we bring the follower into this. But I'll go ahead and do that footwork one more time. So, I'm in place. I do my first four counts. One, two, three, four, I send out, six, seven, eight. I go one, two, three, over my left shoulder, five, six, seven, eight. Great. So, for my followers, you're just going to be going around your leaders during this. So, once you feel that leader send out, we'll go ahead and do the follower footwork. So, the leader is going to send you out on five, six, seven, eight. We do our four in place. One, two, three, four, send out, five, six, seven, eight. And then the leader is going to walk into our right hand and their left hand. So, then we just walk around them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. And I'm making a counterclockwise, or sorry, clockwise circle around my partner while they're turning the other direction. So, I'm going around slightly while my partner is coming just to give them a little bit of extra space while they're going through that turn. So, let's go ahead and do this together. And we'll go ahead and do this start from this angle just so you can see both the leader and the follower. So, again, once we get into this, I separate, we drop the hand. And I'm coming in and bringing Grace over to my right side for this waist roll. So, I want to make sure that I'm not just sending her over by herself this way and sending her into a direction that I can't also break into this arm right here and kind of red rover myself around. So, I want to make sure that I'm leaving this arm down here exactly where it is and I'm rolling myself into it when I go in there. So, we'll go ahead and do the whole thing together. Five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Waist roll. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Great. And you'll see we are, we've switched places from where we started. And the follower is doing a little more movement from the leader than the leader, but the leader is still doing a little bit of movement. So, we'll go ahead and do this turn one more time from this side so you can see it from this angle. We go one, two, three, send out. Five, six, seven, eight. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Great. And you'll notice that we do disconnect in the middle of this turn. That's totally okay. Just make sure, followers, that you're at least bracing your leader's back so that way it's easy for them to find your hand on the other side of the circle. So, we're going to put this all together. Well, I do want to practice this with music, but then we're going to put it all together in a little sequence, and we're also going to talk about getting into a different hand position or a pose position. So, we'll go ahead and start with some different music first, and then we'll talk about these positions and put it all into a little pattern. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Just as many basics as you need in between those turns, but we are going to kind of put things into a little sequence now that won't have as many basics, but we will do a basic in between that. So, we're going to start with our regular basic in place, then we're going to go into our side basic. We're going to do a basic in place, then do our outside turn, another basic, and do the waist roll. So, it's going to be everything that you learn in order, but we're going to be adding that basic in between. We're going to reset and make sure that we're on the same pace, make sure we're feeling pretty good, and then we'll go ahead and go into those turns. Before we do that, though, I want to talk a little bit about doing closed holds. So, if I have Grace stand in front of me and holding her arms out in a T, then I'm going to go ahead and karate chop under her arm, and she's going to relax for her left arm on top of my right arm. And we want to stay connected here. It's really important that way she knows what I'm doing and I know what she's doing. It's a lot easier to read what the other person is doing if we stay connected on this side and we don't get sleep. So, we want to make sure on this side that we're in a nice flat, and we want to make sure that we're not crisscrossing our fingers, because as we try to turn with crisscrossed fingers, it's going to hurt really badly. So, we want to make sure that we're in a nice flat on this side, and it's nice and relaxed. We don't want it any higher than our shoulder. So, when we start this basic, we're in this nice closed position, but the footwork is going to not change at all. The only thing that's going to change is when I send out, I'm pushing with both arms a little bit further than what I was doing before. So, we're going to go ahead and try all of this together. And like I said at the beginning, the good thing about the merengue is you can dance to traditional Latin merengue music, or you can also dance to a little more modern music, the top 40s hits or any like pop hits, 80s, really anything. The merengue is super versatile, and that's what's a lot of fun about learning the merengue and knowing how to dance at parties with the merengue. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and do something a little bit more... If you have made it this far, then you have a nice little pattern that you can take out with you and practice over and over and just get really comfortable with it. And you can even start to kind of play with some additional turns. Instead of going clockwise, maybe you take your follower counterclockwise. So, the last thing that I want to talk to you about is what I mentioned before, a little bit of hip action, that Cuban motion. You'll notice that Grace and I are using our hips as we go through. And the most important aspect of this actually isn't our hips, it's our knees. So, when I bend, so I'll turn so you can see, but when I bend my right knee, that's going to make my left hip pop. And notice I'm not bringing my right knee up to have it bend. I'm pushing down into the ground, and that's causing my left hip to rise higher than my right hip, and vice versa. So, when I flip to my left knee being bent, then my right hip pops, so on and so forth. So, take a moment in the mirror to maybe watch how your hands fluctuate. So, one hand gets higher and the other gets lower when you're just bending your knees. And then as we keep doing this knee bend, then we can start actually picking up our feet when we're doing that. And that is going to be how you incorporate this into your merengue. So, I'm just picking up and pressing into the ground. I like to picture myself in Italy, and I'm pressing grapes to make wine. It's sunny, it's beautiful out. So, I'm pressing into the ground with my feet to make sure that I'm not picking up my knees like I'm marching. I'm pushing down into the ground, starting with my center. Just like that. So, that's how you can kind of incorporate this into your merengue practice. Focus more on the footwork first as you get more comfortable, then you can incorporate that cube in motion. Also, feel free to practice in the mirror. It might feel a little silly, but I promise it helps just to even see where your hips are located when you bend those knees. It always helps to kind of have a visual for that. Like that. And then, if you have any more questions, feel free to reach out to us. You can always send us a message either here on YouTube on our Instagram page, or you can also send us an email at info at duetdancestudio.com if you have questions about the merengue. We also, our bread and butter is our wedding dances. You can get onto weddingfirstdancelessons.com and check out our custom choreography. We do, so if you're getting ready for an event or if you're getting ready for a wedding, you can get on and see which custom choreography is right for you. Maybe you have a song picked out, but you don't really know what to dance to yet. Otherwise, we also have free choreographed dances that are super fun that you can get on and check out there as well. If you want to learn more styles than just the merengue, we also have our DIY date night program, and you can go through and do all of, we have like swing on there, salsa. We have some slow dance. We have some slow black strap. We have all kinds of different styles on there that you can learn from the comfort of your own home, make patterns, take your dancing out into the world. We're going to do this entire pattern one more time, but again, if you have any questions, just let us know. So we'll again do something a little more, we're going to do that upbeat top 40s, more poppy music again. To count out loud to whatever music you decide to dance to, I wouldn't get a feeling for the beat, but the good thing about the merengue is anything you feel like it's a march to, you can dance to. So if you get onto our website as well, we have our music playlist on there. That's duetdancestudio.com. We have a merengue playlist on there. But like I said, this goes with more than just traditional merengue music. So it goes with a lot of styles, or a lot of songs that you would hear at weddings, or any sort of events, or just even out dancing. And again, let us know if you have any questions, or if you would like to schedule a lesson with us to learn more merengue, or maybe another style, just let us know at duetdancestudio.com. And thank you guys so much for joining us, and we will see you next time. Bye guys.