How to swing dance pretzel

Pretzel – Country Swing AZ

Type   Turn, Combo
Level Level 5 Intermediate
Other Names The Octopus (when done twice or more), Reverse Pretzel
Comes From   Butterfly Open Position, Hammerlock, Sliding Door
Leads To   Butterfly Open Position, Hammerlock, Toss Away Spin

Description

In the Pretzel, the leader and follower’s hands are connected in open position, and through a series of turns they turn back-to-back and then wrap around to Open Position.

There are two moves called “The Pretzel” and they look very similar, but they are opposites. The move where the lead turns first is “The Pretzel,” and when the follow turns first this is “The Reverse Pretzel. ”

You may find one variation more comfortable than the other, and you may find one more ideal for your repertoire–so why not try both?

Pretzel

Lead:

Begin in Butterfly Open Position. Lift your left arm, rotate your hand grip in your partner’s hands (loosely) as you step with your Right foot to turn CCW (left). End this step in Hammerlock position (only momentarily), with your feet in a little more than shoulder-width stance.
Step again, this time with your left, to a wide stance facing opposite your partner. Lift your left arm to let the follow pass under it. You will be back-to-back for a moment.
Keep your feet stationary for this part, twist with your waist a little to face your partner slightly. Lift your right arm so she can pass to the other side. Follows will rotate to the left as they pass under the second time. You are now in Hammerlock on the other side.
- This step comes immediately after step 2, since the momentum will help carry your follow through to the other side.
Step back with your left foot as you turn to the left, passing under your own right arm. This will take you back to Butterfly Open Position.
- A Cuddle will feel very natural to do next, so you could carry the momentum right into it.

Follow:

Step your right foot past your partner . Keep your grip but loosely, so the lead can move your arms where they need to be. At the end of this step you should be in Hammerlock position for a brief moment.
On the next part, step your left foot next to your right foot, then right foot behind your lead’s heel to turn CW (right) to face opposite your partner, back-to-back.
Carry that momentum to the other side to step behind his other heel with your left foot and pass under the lead’s right arm.
Step right, left to turn CW again and face your partner.

Reverse Pretzel

Lead:

From Butterfly open position, lift your left hand and open it flat like a high-five. Use your right hand straight through at waist-level to guide your follow under that arm to get into hammerlock position. Loosen the hands to rotate your grip as you do this, and take a quarter-turn to the left.
Lift your left arm and pass under it, then the right arm to pass to the other side. As you do the second pass, turn to the left so you are in hammerlock on the other side.
Pass your right arm between you and the follow, with a loose palm grip to unwind the follow and return to open position.

Tips

Lead

In step 1, some leads get stuck with their arm over their shoulder. All you have to do to fix that is put your arm back and in front of your follow.
For the pretzel, think “I go, you go, you go, I go.”
Stay tall, and maintain close contact by feeling the contact of your partner’s back brush against yours, back-to-back, in the middle of the move.
If you do not use a loose grip, the turns will not work. If you struggle with that part, try practicing with interlocked fingers, or turning flat palm-to-palm with little to no gripping. It’s possible to do a pretzel these ways.
Aim for smoothness and good connection rather than speed. Some leads will strong-arm their way through the move and end up injuring their partner or themselves. You don’t want to be one of those leads!
If the follow is used to only the Pretzel, she may be confused by the directions of the Reverse Pretzel. The opposite may also be true. Leads who have not read this guide don’t know which one they actually do–they just know one feels “right” to them.

Follow

Variations

The Octopus: do the pretzel twice in a row
Pretzel Reverse-Pretzel Combo: Pretzel and finish with Cuddle, then undo the moves to do Reverse-pretzel.
Some people will start with a reach behind the back and finish with the Pretzel. I consider this a Half-Pretzel. In my opinion, it tends to look sloppy because the reach behind is not an intuitive cue (it’s hard to look and feel for that hand that suddenly appears at your opposite side).

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What is swing dancing? Part 2 | Culture

Balboa

What to dance when the big band plays dixieland? Of course, Balboa! This elegant dance is nothing more than a fusion of the collegiate shag and the Arthur Murray shag. Regulars at the Balboa Park Club in San Diego call themselves "balboa dancers". They came up with a new dance, which was distinguished by the glued bodies of partners, rapid movements of the legs, a “ball-like” straight posture and smooth sliding on the parquet. Balboa is now considered a salon dance. The ladies wear evening gowns and high-heeled shoes, while the men always dance in tuxedos. nine0005

Lindy Hop

Climax! Finally we got to the glorious lindy! Once again looking into the maelstrom of history, we will see how all the newspapers glorify Charlie Lindbergh, who made the legendary flight across the Atlantic ("Lindy Hops the Atlantic!"), And the jolly dancer George "Shorty" Snowden claims that he dances the Lindy Hop. In every joke there is a share of a joke, but now you can’t tear off the name with ticks! However, sometimes, for the purpose of conspiracy, this “black” dance was called a jitterbug, which in Negro slang meant “bad white dancer” . .. nine0005

That's when the swing coup happened! Crazy rhythm, frenzied legs, flying partners - it's hard to believe that Lindy Hop has another side: the beautiful, almost feline plasticity of the dancers in a slow dance. But the true spirit of the Lindy Hop is in freedom. This is freedom of the soul and freedom of the body, freedom of improvisation and spontaneous creativity, freedom in the interpretation of music. By and large, there can be no erroneous movements here - any of them has the right to become a new element of the dance! nine0005

East Coast Swing

The Lindy wave that swept over America shocked ballroom dance teachers. But the moment came when the popularity of swing reached its peak, and it could no longer be ignored. Then the ballroom dancers, reluctantly, began to dance East Coast Swing, the East Coast swing style - a smooth, like a merged dance, flowing from movement to movement. It could be danced to slow, mid-tempo, and fast jazz or blues. nine0005

West Coast Swing

Swing fever was literally spreading at the speed of sound. Dance followed the music, being its visual expression and the embodiment of its energy. West coast swing (formerly western swing) is a West Coast swing style, a "sophisticated", more relaxed stylistic variation of lindy hop. Slow West Coast Swing is a spectacular dance with tremendous internal energy, like a sponge, absorbing the various movements of other dance styles. A whole scattering of styles instantly appeared: St. Louis imperial swing, which "reconciled" swing of both coasts, the New Orleans version, nicknamed Jamaica (Jamaica), Texas push and whip (push and whip), as well as sweeping bop (bop) and dance number one in Sweden it is a bug. West coast swing is danced in especially difficult conditions on crowded dance floors (so you can train in narrow corridors). nine0005

Boogie Woogie

During the war years, Lindy again had to "jump" the ocean in order to push the Europeans to the idea of creating a dance that could be danced whenever you find it difficult to sit still to the sounds of the characteristic high-speed piano playing. Boogie-woogie is a fad dance. One name is worth it! Boogie dancers literally soar above the ground, making a pretzel with their feet and dizzyingly spinning their partner in a state of complete detachment and pleasure. Unlike Daddy Lindy, the dance has become more compact and the very “drive in the legs” has appeared. nine0005

Boogie-woogie formed the basis of jive and rock and roll. But both of these dances separated from swing because they lost their swing free base. In ballroom jive and sports rock and roll, improvisation is extremely limited. In some way, the possibility of self-expression of the dancers was lost.

In the 50s swinging America was swept by a new craze comparable in scale to the swing boom - Bill Haley and his Comets (Bill Haley and His Comets) created new music that reflected the freedom-loving mood of the time. It was rock and roll . But music and dancing have always drawn creative impulses from each other, so the boogers, lindy-hoppers and other swing guys did not lose their heads and soon danced confidently to rock and roll too!

In subsequent years, swing dances were forgotten. But fashion, having made a circle, as it usually happens with it, returned to its starting point, and now we can safely say that these dances have gained immortality on both sides of the ocean. nine0005

Let us have a wild swing renaissance! Find your dance and welcome to the world of swing! According to one of the dancers of the notorious Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, "these dances keep you young, make a person happy in difficult times, because they make you smile." nine0005

Tags: America, entertainment, origin, dancing, culture

Great Depression? Dance swing!

Swing and pre-war dances are back in fashion in North America. Who's guilty? Economic crisis!

Gray-haired Americans remember that during the Great Depression, America danced. Big bands were all the rage and they were all dance bands.

Early jazz forms of the dance that would later become known as "swing" were danced in the southern states. However, the South was slowly moving north: racial segregation, Jim Crow, the lack of a future drove African Americans away from the cotton fields of the South. In the North, the treatment of blacks was by no means ideal, but at least it did not endanger people's lives in the same way as in the South. nine0005

The dance style brought from the south mixed with the local styles of Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Detroit and Fili. As a result, many new dances appeared and almost every city had its own style. The term "swing" can be used here to refer to a range of dance styles: lindy hop, charleston, jitterbug, shag, balboa, blues.

There is such a hormone cortisol, professionals sometimes call it the “hormone of death”. It has positive qualities, saving, but it is also produced under stress and leads to wonderful and often deadly results. When we hear about the haunts of New Orleans or St. Louis, about honky-tonks and the quarters of Storyville, these are, in general, places of accumulation of establishments, at first quite primitive, where hormonal battles between cortisol, testosterone, estrogen took place against the backdrop of a raging adrenaline and all sorts of purely cerebral delights such as very pleasant endorphin storms. nine0005

The Great Depression and dancing... I must say that the Great Depression, I agree, but African Americans had it before the economic crisis of 28, and since the transformation of life into slavery. The backstory is important here... Well, in New Orleans they danced opposite each other, making locally baked pretzels; they danced, clinging to each other so that the buttons of the man's coat were visible in the form of prints on the back of the lady (the chest, but not the ribs, served as a protective element from serious injury). They danced in a row, making fun of the gait of local kings (from gangsters, gigolos, weekend dandies to hunched-over nouveau riches). nine0049 They danced, throwing up their arms and legs as if they were about to fly away from the plantations of the south (which they eventually did!) - in short, there were many options. There were much fewer goals: to defeat the gray matter and relax, to find a girlfriend for the coming night or, which happened less often, for part of life, or even for the whole ... , Basie's orchestra swings recklessly! But this is the era of be-bop! Parker, Davis, Mulligan, Goetz, Cohn, Tristano, Evans, Morgan, Brown - they all have already chosen the road to the bridge leading to New Jersey, to Rudy van Gelder! Now Dizzy and the Birds will start playing at home in Louisiana! And at the same time, the Great Depression, which went through the shock therapy of World War II, is smoothly moving into an era of prosperity. And the masses dance less and less and listen more and more. And if they dance, then it’s not an acrobatic jitterbug worthy of the Olympic Games and requiring high-quality underwear from the ladies, but something slow, breathless, a kind of vertical embrace with small steps .

How to swing dance pretzel

Pretzel – Country Swing AZ

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Lead:

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