- You gonna do this leg up.
Here, hold it here.
Higher.
- [Narrator] We brought two seemingly
different groups of people into our studio
to see if they could unite
in a one-of-a-kind dance challenge.
- [Producer] What is your favorite dance move?
- Do I just do it? - Let's see it, you got it.
Let's see it.
Hey, I like that.
- One of my favorite dance moves
is what we call the Suzy Q.
But then actually adding some hips.
- I like the little Dougie, I like the little,
you know, like that.
A little Dougie.
- I love tango.
and I love the Ganchos.
- I do praise dance.
I used to praise dance, so I would do like,
you know. - Ooh.
- I love a good shimmy.
Start with a little step and then give a, ta.
- Hey
- [Producer] Do you know what you're doing here today?
- No. - Not really,
no. - No, we don't.
- [Producer] Today you'll be choreographing
a 60 second dance routine to a song
that I'll be giving you. - That's fun, that'll be fun.
- Oh Jesus!
- [Producer] You'll only have 30 minutes
to choreograph and practice before your final performance.
- Nice. - Okay.
- All right.
- I love the challenge.
- I think because we-- - Absolutely do that.
- work a lot together,
it's absolutely doable. - It'll be it, yeah.
- Thank God I know them.
- [Woman] Before you start,
we're gonna be adding a few more people to your team.
- Oh, interesting. - Oh, I see
what you did there. - Are they dancers?
- This is great.
- [Woman] Teammates, please come out.
- Oh hello, hello. Wow. - Look at here, look at her.
- How you doing? - Hi.
- Hi, Carol. - Nice to see you today.
- I was like, oh lord.
Now I gotta elevate my game
or at least try to hang with them.
- Oh,
I'm trying to be appropriate.
I think I was thinking, you better don't put your hand
too low on my waist, man.
- The moment that the coaches were added to the challenge
absolutely changed
the vibe,
what was possible.
- Salsa dancing has been used in sports
to work on foot work or speed,
so I was really excited
what we would be able to offer each other.
Nice to meet you. - All right,
Okay.
- [Producer] Okay team, this is your song.
- Often, non-dancers make the assumption with Salsa
that it's all sex or too sexy.
But I feel like,
it's so often tied to culture and music.
I think because I grew up in it my whole life,
I don't see it like that.
- It's a way for us to celebrate life,
to celebrate our bodies.,
and what it is to be in connection to one another.
- It has that soccer feel
I like that, - It does.
I like vibe to that, right? - Well yeah, like...
Yeah.
- [Woman] Your time begins in three, two, one, go.
- Okay. - All right.
Okay. - I think you will take
the center with the girl and the two--
- Flanking.
- So oh, I'm holding hands?
Oh yeah well. - Like the girls
should like go around the guys.
- I'm non-binary so I don't know, whatever that falls into.
- So you're gonna go around Antonio too.
So all the girls are gonna around.
- For an a-- - Fa, nah, nah.
- She get in front and then we do, dip.
- And look at each other - Oh, oh.
at the end. - This is it.
- I'm not,
I don't what the fuck are we doing.
I guess what was happening was, ladies do this
men do this,
and I don't believe in that.
It's just universal what are you comfortable with?
I don't believe that I fit into a female or male category.
I think I'm able to bring both of those energies.
I don't subscribe to the pronouns like they or them.
I'm able to take a he, or a she or
whatever someone feels comfortable with
but at the same time, yes I'm non-binary
and I can do all things.
- I do wish that in the moment I would have been like,
hey, hold on a second,
let's take a moment and actually acknowledge
what Kris just said.
Sometimes in Salsa dancing we have
people playing certain roles.
We do need to be having these conversations
inside these spaces differently.
When it comes to partner dancing
a woman can lead in salsa dancing
a man can follow and vice versa.
A woman can dance with another woman.
A man can dance with another man.
- And let's dip on eight.
- Do you wanna dip me?
Should we switch it up? - Come on
let's dip you. - It could be fun hey.
- It could be cute. - Let me dip you, yeah.
I'm gonna dip you. - Yes.
- Oh, you gonna dip him?
- I could hold you down. - Perfect.
I love that.
- I like that. - Six, seven, eight.
And one, two, three, four, and five, six
seven, eight. - And then it should turn
to hip hop. - Give us a move
we can repeat.
- May we hear the from that part?
You can rave it.
- Okay. - You know what I'm saying.
- Let's do it an eight of that.
- So we'll go, right. - One, two, three, four.
- Left. - five, six, again.
- Right. - One, two, three
- We repeat.
- Left. - Five, six, seven
- Now start raving. - Now.
- There are things I wanted to say.
But at the same time it wasn't about me.
I dance a lot, but I never really choreograph.
And I always wanted to.
But I always had that wall up there
because I don't wanna mess up.
- You get the next move, what do you want?
- No, no, no - We can come together.
- this is, this is - Then we jump back
- okay. - into one line
This is when I think the one line
comes in. - Yeah, jump back
into one line - Instead of us separating
in a triangle, we come into one line.
So this is where we probably go
- Oh yeah. - Yeah.
- Nice, I like that.
- So this where the praise dance part comes in.
- What about you, what would you like next?
- My move is the Dougie.
You know the Dougie? - Let's do the Dougie.
- You know you get a little,
little of that, little of that.
- Yeah, keep the mouth open and all, I got it.
- Yeah, it's more like a swag.
- To be honest, toward the middle of rehearsal,
I had a moment where I thought this could not go well.
- I think we need to have a lift in there.
I definitely think we need a lift.
- How are we gonna incorporate the lift?
- Like the lift is just something easy, like you just
grab this leg and just turn me around.
Turn me around, just go around, that's it.
This is.
- Antonio is such a good partner.
- You'll be fine.
- You guys do something different, we're gonna do the lift
because it seems like you don't want to do the lift.
So, it's okay.
- Okay girl, you can lift me up if you can.
- Feel like there was a lot of ideas being thrown around
and I saw little bit of disagreement.
- This is after it, this is after that.
It was a little stressful because I'm a perfectionist.
We were working with people that, you know
they're non-dancers, so they weren't really learning
as fast as I would want them to learn.
Got you bro.
- No, no no, no we have to, hang on.
- It was tough, honestly.
I'm not the best dancer.
- We got nine minutes.
- Oh, if you all do the lift and we do
the macarena. - Wait, wait, wait.
If one do solo, we gon' all do solo.
- No we don't have time.
- So let's stick to what we were doing.
- We can do the macarena.
- I could tell that when we offered a suggestion
they assumed right away it would be too difficult.
- Can we be here, like we're in our own space as coaches
and they walk in.
And as you walk in, motivate us into getting into our
inspirational dance. - I like that.
- There's always a story behind a dance.
Not just shaking your waist and shaking your hip.
And I felt like being coaches
being in that mind frame
and then the salsa dancers come on to loosen us up.
Just like you see in the World Cup.
Just like you see at soccer stadium.
- We should just, just wile out in the last one.
We do the macarena.
Simple, keep it simple.
- Being black descent, you can come off as too assertive
even if you don't try, so I'm very aware of that.
Say things continually and then put your foot down.
We can do the macarena.
- Well we can do it while we are walking to our places.
- Are you doing the whole full version?
- The same way I've been doing since kindergarten.
- Ready? Final pose, final pose.
Six, seven, eight.
- I don't know.
- Let's see final pose guys.
- You can do this leg up.
Here, hold it here.
Higher.
- It's all right, I'll coach you through it.
You just give me your leg, you breathe.
- Ha, you'll coach me through it.
Let's do this one. - Ready?
We can just do trauma. - And smile.
Hold me up since you can hold me up, I'm heavy man.
Yeah I work out remember?
- [Producer] All right guys, your time is up.
You are gonna go and get changed for your final performance.
- Good job. - Thank you.
- Good job guys. - Yeah, shimmy, shimmy.
- I felt excited.
I felt really happy with what we had created.
- I'm a pretty sweaty person in general
so I was already like sweating from getting it down.
But I was surprisingly not nervous.
- Boy, when my daddy see this.
Man holding me up.
- Bring it in.
- The dance went really, really well.
Much better than what I expected.
You need to relax sometimes and don't be so pushy
and have fun.
- It's a win, we did it.
I think the start of it, you can tell these
different perspectives that weren't meshing.
By the end of the performance it was like
oh no, we mesh.
- If there's anything I learned from this experience
is if you believe in yourself, then you can make it happen.
And that's what coaches do right?
We motivate each other.
We believe in each other.
And as a team, we win together.
- Come on guys, come on.
Bring it in, bring it in.
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