Waltz - Promenade and Twinkle

So here's the data dump on my Waltz group class the other night.

It was a fairly full and almost perfectly balanced class, we were short one lady. We spent the first half of class working on promenade - most of us had some familiarity with the move, but we all could use work on it. The latter part of the class we spent on twinkle and left and right twinkle (or as we called the move, "George"...) I hadn't been exposed to twinkle and left and right twinkle, but I managed to pick up the basics and footwork fairly quickly. Just the last half of promenade, starting at the other end of the box, on the other foot. The nuggets I was most in need of were those having to do with my frame and lead.

The mantra "nose and toes" is something I'd heard before, and my interpretation is that the point is to signal definitively with your head and toes, without getting your hips too much out of square. I definitely have a tendency to not lead the promenade with my head, and one of my partners really helped me understand how important that is to her following, because she just had a much harder time following when I got sloppy with my head. The other thing I need to remind myself is that it also looks fabulous.

The Young Turk really helped us pay attention to what the leader's right arm was doing during the "nose and toes" setup phase of promenade/twinkle. I'd been elongating my frame somewhat, but TYT pointed out that the gentlemen should actually be executing a right turning action with his right arm, resulting in a lady that's slightly more behind in frame, and slightly pivoted open - set up perfectly for promenade. Plus she ends up cradled in your right arm which gives her the stable, supportive structure she needs to really cut loose on her develope'.

The other thing that seemed to help a lot is my focusing on maintaining a positive connection with my left hand. The right turning action and frame elongation often felt like I was taking away the strong connection we had, and a positive left hand connection made that feel much more secure and definitive. This also made it feel like I was shifting slightly inside a strong, stable frame rather than it feeling sloppy.