As indicated by the title of this post I have decided that the preparatory cycle should be longer than six weeks. I’m going for an eight week cycle above a six week one as in a six week cycle I feel people would be too aware that they are repeating themselves. I would prefer a sense of revisiting as opposed to repeating.
This weeks material was; walk, lead her ocho to the closed side as you ocho backwards, lead her side step and stop her (both with your chest and by placing your right foot inside her right foot), with your chest move her weight back to her right foot, lead her ocho to bring her back in front and walk.
I vaguely think it’s called an ocho curtado, but I’m not entirely sure. Either way it gets him leading with his chest especially in the side step. The class went well and I even had a couple doing the phrase to the open side without prompting, which is great that they have picked up the exploratory nature of tango on their third class!
The ocho cortado as I learned it starts with a check step (leader’s left, follower’s right), out of the rebound, she takes a forward step on the close side, then a side check step, then a contrabody torsion by the lead to have her cross. Alternatively, from her side check step, she can take a forward step, which requires loosening the embrace to give her room. I like the first version, which works best in muy close embrace. It has a cool effect of crossing her simply with your torso. Just taking her from a side step close side position and crossing her is a good floor exercise in contra body rotation. The leader can even keep his feet facing forward, with no footwork – but only as an exercise.
The lead’s foot work is from the rebound of the check step (left), he steps behind the left foot with his right (almost at a “tee” to the left), collects his left next to his right, changing weight to the left, and then accompanying her side check step with his own (right check step), then collecting and walking out straight. “quick quick slow, quick quick slow” works with the first and third “quicks” on the first check step (fwd left) and the second side check step. Oscar Casas has a good video on ocho cortado variations.
I never did get into the ocho cortado until the end of the second four week series, or even the third four week series. I see it as one of the first somewhat complicated piece of vocabulary for beginners, followed by the molinete.
I use this to get the proper “check” in the check step of the ocho cortado. “Imagine you are part of the wedding party, standing at the front of the church during the ceremony, and you notice a cockroach crawling across the floor towards you. You just put your foot out a little bit and squash the little bugger, trying not to let anyone notice what you are doing.
It’s gross, but it always gets a laugh and seems to convey the kinesthetics properly, because the whole thing is ruined if either lead or follow sink into their knee too much in the check step. It’s more like the knee is a really stiff spring, versus a loose spring.
You can also make the whole thing really rotational and see how far around to the back of you she can be led, but you have to be careful about tailgating traffic. I can lead it almost as a 200 degree turn and then back to the LOD, but you end up not all the way back. It’s like 0-200-15, so there’s a little course correction.
Hope this is something you can use. Again, Oscar Casas on YouTube is a good source.
Here’s the link to Oscar’s vid…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSFw10k-eLA
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