Ballroom Basics
Tony Delgado is a champion ballroom dancer and the owner of Delgado Dance Studio in Las Vegas. He loves the growing popularity of ballroom and is pleased that people are discovering what he knew all along: ballroom is tough stuff.
"Unlike other forms of dancing, you have so many different dances. You have to learn so many different things. That's why when a ballroom dancer tries other forms of dancing, he's so well rounded."
"I would say ballet is by far the hardest, and ballroom, whereas hip-hop is by far the easiest. Just about anybody can do hip-hop. There's no technique. You can slump; you can pigeon-toe; you don't have to point your leg; you don't have to stand up; you don't even have to be on time. You can just do some movements and say, 'I meant to do it that way.' There is no wrong way because it's street dance. And trust me, I love hip hop."
The difference is that ballroom requires a mastery of many disparate forms. Traditionally, you have ballroom as a whole entity and within ballroom, it's separated into the Standard smooth dances - which is waltz, fox trot, tango, Viennese waltz, quickstep. And then the other side is the Latin dances - samba, cha cha, rumba, mamba, paso doble. And within those they also separated into the International style, which is danced all over the world, and the American style, primarily in the United States."
"It's different footwork for both styles. The Latin articulates the toe ball action, whereas the ballroom articulates the whole heel driving across the floor. To do a waltz, you're doing big sweeping movements. To do Latin, you're doing more right here, more small compact movements."
"On the other side, you have the American smooth and the International ballroom, which is called Standard. And in Standard, you cannot disconnect with your partner. You have to stay connected in ballroom hold the entire time. In the American style, you can open up like Fred and Ginger, side-by-side, cheek to cheek. So there's a big difference there."
And then there are the arms. "Flamenco would be the traditional Spanish arm styling they're using. They rotate the wrist a lot. The ladies use castanets so their pinkies are away from the rest of the hand, like you're sipping tea, and they use their wrists a lot. So this is very paso doble. Whereas, in the swing, has nothing to do with that. Your arms are loose, kind of like shaking water off your hands. And then you have the salsa and the mambo or the cha cha like you're playing the congas and the bongos...Then you have the waltz and the Viennese waltz which is more like ballet. Then you have the tango which is very masculine - strong, striking poses with the hands."
Tony said, "I've trained some really good dancers and I've taught them my spins and they couldn't do them. They'd fall off balance. They're very structured because they train you to turn the same way all the time. I can't tell you how many shows I've seen where they're hopping around. You hop around in the middle of a spin in a competition, you're not going to make it past the first round. No hopping!"
"It can be frustrating if you have two unbalanced people and they don't know it. It's like having two people singing off key and they're blaming each other and they're going, 'You're off.' 'No, you're off.' It happens all the time."
"You have to tell your brain to send messages to your feet to do one thing, to your arms to do another thing, to your ears to listen, to your eyes to watch out for people not to run into you. It's actually a lot harder when you put it all together than one would think."
And the toughest dance to master? "I'm going to say the Viennese waltz. It's very fast. You have to move very fast and you're turning...and you have to maintain your hold and you crumble very easily while you're spinning around the floor."
"That has got to be one of the most difficult dances. 'So You Think You Can Dance?' on Fox proved it. You had amazing, talented dancers and they choked badly on the ballroom dances, particularly on the Viennese or quickstep. They could not do it. They did not pull off the quick step or the Viennese waltz. They looked atrocious."
"It takes a skilled, qualified professional or judge seconds to identify good and bad. Seconds." And there are only a few things to watch for: footwork, arms, balance, hips, head placement, speed and grace - all in perfect synchronicity with a partner. That's Ballroom 101.