bride and grooms have you made the decision not to memorize stressful choreography for your dance
well good on you we've got the one essential skill that you need to be able to dance together
easily naturally and authentically together for those of you who don't know us already she's
clara and he's joel and over the past 15 years we've been using our competitive experience as
ballroom dancers as well as coaches to help total beginner couples have fun and confidence dancing
together if that sounds like something that you're interested in subscribe and hit that notification
bell so that you're notified every time we post a new video the skill that we're going to be
teaching you in today's video is what we call the rebound now the rebound isn't something that's
necessarily big or flashy or even sexy but it is super essential for people to connect as a dance
couple on the floor definitely we've used this skill with so many of our wedding couples and
it just makes the transition smoother everything looks more natural and at ease exactly the video
is going to be broken down into four different parts part number one is going to be the first
level of our warm-up game part number two will be the second level of our warm-up game part number
three is going to be joel and claire showing you how it works within a dance and part number four
we're actually gonna dance to music and you'll see it in action so enough talking let's get started
so for our rebound exercise number one we like to do it as a game and this is something that we do
for all of our couples whether they're in studio at the ballroom or even in our online course or
national wedding dance method so what we're going to ask you to do is stand in front of your partner
about this far away and leads your job is to either lean forwards towards your partner
or lean away from your partner and follows we are responding to that by
balancing off our partner there we go the goal of this game is in twofold number one
we're gonna start to build the awareness between you and your partner so that leads
you are clear about giving some information to your partner and follows you're not going to be
anticipating or trying to guess what's happening so that's the first goal there's always connection
there and the second thing is that we are going to start to understand the communication through
the hands yeah so again gentlemen or leads you are going to go forward towards your partner
and ladies we're balancing them off and we're going to then so donald
i was being a good girl not anticipating what he was trying to do but nearly responding to
the action good job claire now if we talk about the hands for just a second let's go
into a little bit more detail about the hands so gentlemen leads what we're going to do if
i just face you for a second we're going to have our hands about this far apart and if you notice
my fingers aren't pointing straight they're actually turned in towards the inside of my
body a little bit yeah and notice how joel's palms are facing upward
ladies our palms are going to be facing downwards and we're just going to place it gently holding
our own arms ourselves not putting too much weight on the dome and place them in his hands yeah we're
just going to tilt it a little bit just so that you see what's happening right there
yeah as we do this now when for instance gentlemen we start to lean forwards towards our partner
notice how the connection goes to the back of my fingers and the palm of the lady's
hand and this is happening on both hands we're just using my left clara's right just to show
that in front of the camera and if we now move backwards the connection changes within the hand
to actually have what we call a hook connection and so the pressure is felt more in the fingers
from knuckle to fingertips all right so if we just demonstrate that one more time and we're going to
tilt this just so that you see if i'm going to now pull back claire will feel it in the fingers
and if i lean forwards she's going to feel it in the palms of the hands yeah that's something can
we just show joel how it's incorrect because a lot of people when they're getting started
they don't know that it should be like that and they do it more in the fingertips so this would be
that what we've seen very often yeah fingertip kind of grab connection yeah which is not very
strong at all yeah and it's kind of uncomfortable actually you're kind of funny looking it's kind
of easy to slip off yep so we're looking for a nice full hook connection yeah let's move back
over here and we're going to do this a couple more times so if you have your partner with you
now's the time to get off the sofa and we're going to try this together all right so leads
come forwards follows you're going gonna feel it in the hands oh i tried to trick
nice try there we go good now one thing to keep in mind again is that we're trying to travel
our bodies forwards and backwards and we're not trying to overpower a partner yeah so we
want to make it easy for our partner especially leads if you're a lot bigger than your partner
then you don't want to smash them or yank them off balance all right so just keep that in mind
yeah so let's try this one more time and this time do not watch the screen so this is for you guys to
do on your own don't follow your lovely teachers on screen okay we're just gonna do it while you
guys are doing it yeah it's not about copying your teacher it's about responding to your partner yeah
we're trying to build skills here not trying to just be sheep and follow what's on the screen
okay good a few more times awesome and give your partner high five for that nice work excellent
well then guys you've just graduated from level one of our warm-up game very good we've already
started now the communication between the two of you as well as warmed up the hand connection now
we're going to go on to level two of the game which is turning this static action into motion
all right guys let's jump into level number two of this warm-up game
we're gonna start again facing our partner and watch what happens in this one
we're starting to move exactly so like what clara just said we're getting now the action in motion
instead of being static as gentlemen we're gonna have ourselves facing our partner as usual in
level one and we're going to go ahead and lean forward and then take a step instead of just
leaning forward on the spot and it could be also if we're gonna now lean backwards and then we're
gonna take a step that way yeah and as follows instead of counterbalancing that action we are
actually now going to respond by going in the same direction so we're going to stand there perfectly
straight and as you feel the lean you're going to feel it through again the palm of your hand there
and respond by then taking a step back yeah and on the flip side as he's going backwards you're going
to feel it more in the fingers and respond by going forward exactly so gentlemen again the goal
of this game is to be able to communicate to our partner and to make her go backwards and forwards
yeah and we're going to try to do this as smoothly and as elastically as possible because as the
skill is named it's a rebound which has a little bit of we'll say give and take and a little bit of
action and reaction just like a ball bouncing off the ground or an elastic band getting tighter and
then snapping back to its regular shape so again gentlemen we will decide and then the follow goes
and ladies don't anticipate what he's going to do just respond by moving to what you feel yeah
one of the things that we always tell our students is we don't want to spill the coffee
so we can give an example as if we're going to do this dance and we'll just
use this as one hand although we want you to do in two hands and pretend that claire
is now holding a coffee in her left hand and as they're doing this game
leads we do not want our follows to be spilling her coffee if we weren't doing it so correctly
now all of a sudden coffee all over the floor still on the floor big mess and we're not looking
that good as dancers so think about keeping the coffee in the coffee cup by being smoother
yeah the way that we're going to do this is by having what's called a sweet spot in the range
that our arms are moving so we won't have our arms totally static and now we're feeling like we are
too robotic that's not going to look so good but neither are we going to be too
relaxed with our arms and then there's not enough connection
so what we'd like to say is if our arms right here beside ourselves are about we'll say 50
if we would go to zero percent this would be now we're totally together and 100 would be totally
fully extended and so if we're starting at about 50 we're looking to keep our arms between 50 and
we'll say 75 range sometimes 80 but nothing much further so we're gonna go and there if we just
stop you notice how our arms did extend a little bit and that's kind of like a shock absorber or an
elastic band that's just taking the energy and then rebounding our partner it's going
to go to here about to 50 and then we're going to get ourselves back out to 75. yeah and that's
going to be the key to making sure that we are smooth and looking natural on the dance floor
and that way there's no jerkiness and spilling the coffee but of course ladies we have to do the same
so match that amount that the gentleman is doing exactly one thing that beginners do a lot of is
they think okay well i'm gonna be moving my body forwards so they forget about the hands and the
arms and then often there's a toe stepped on yeah exactly and that could be both for the man and
for the lady so ladies if i don't respond with my body then that's what happens again step down on
the toes so make sure you connect your arms to the rest of your body and they move together so that
you feel the pressure through the body when the man leads and then you respond to that by moving
your center exactly and if we show the total opposite this would be for instance if gentlemen
we are only moving the arms and not moving the body and trying to now yank the lady forwards and
backwards with very uncomfortable arm actions and it's going to look a little bit disjointed yes so
when you see people that are looking robotic or jerky or you know just not very smooth that this
is what we're talking about we need to establish that sweet spot in the arms yes exactly one more
thing is that ladies we want to make sure that you are responding to the follows i'm sorry the leads
and so if i'm going to go and do this you'll see that claire will be responding to my movement
yeah instead of instead of going on your own and thinking oh i know he's going to
go forward so i'm just going to go backwards already and i know he's going to go backwards
so i'm just going to go forward and then now it becomes a reversal reversal of rolls which isn't
very natural when we're dancing together as a couple on the dance floor yes we may
have talked about this in other videos but um the reason why we have a lead and a follow is because
usually for the most part typically the man has a bigger body weight and that is easier to then tell
the smaller body weight to move around exactly so let's try this one more time and this time
have some fun with it start with something very simple going for a few steps forwards
and backwards getting that transition feeling the communication through the hands and as you become
more confident we can be a little bit more cheeky and having a little bit more of this is after a
bit of practice erratic movement yeah and again it's all through the hands communicated but it's
really the bodies that are moving forwards and backwards and we've got that little bit of a sweet
spot that little bit of elastic elasticity why can't i say that word today elasticity
through the hands and through the arms and when you get very skilled not only can you communicate
stepping on each foot but even stopping in between steps exactly have fun with it and let's continue
now that we've done the two levels of games write down in the description below
whether you tried it or not and how it went exactly this is one of our first videos that
we've done with games we've got tons of them in our natural wedding dance method online course so
if you like it write in the description below and we'll make sure to do more in
the future videos so everyone at home is probably wondering how do these games translate to actual
dancing yeah that's right we're just walking forwards and backwards and there's a movement
so let's just see how this works all right we're going to ready take our close dance position and
we're going to start with a nice easy home base pattern yeah now from this home base pattern we
have a bunch of different things that we can do in our repertoire but we need to have a little
bit of separation first and we're going to use our skill of our rebound so as we now create that
rebounding i've already been able to get clara to start moving backwards yeah from here we're
going to have this rebound before i get clara to dance a stationary underarm turn yeah magical
exactly what we don't want to do for instance is we were dancing our home base pattern and enjoying
each other's company and all of a sudden leads i'm thinking about doing an underarm turn and
i just try to lead clara to do an turn straight away yeah we were too close i actually hit joel
with my hand there because i didn't have time i didn't know that it was coming exactly so
we always want to create some separation first get the partner or the follow in motion first
and then we start doing whatever move we decide to do yeah it's a great way of actually giving
the lady a heads up that we're actually going to do something yeah and it could be something maybe
slightly more complicated so we can be doing our home base pattern and here we go we get
some separation rebound and then we get her to do a passing rebound and we get ourselves back
together in that way exactly if we didn't use that skill of the rebound and we were maybe a
little bit more jerky either with the arms or we let the arms go too far it's going to look
a little bit like this so we're dancing and maybe we know we have to do the rebound and we now shove
yank and then the arms go to full extension and then we get ourselves back together sorry clara
but as you saw there was some awkward moments there um instead of it being smooth
as in comparison to our first demonstration yeah and even though we're you know exaggerating maybe
a little bit but we see it very often exactly all the beginner couples they don't know where to have
that sweet spot of the rebound and make it nice and smooth exactly we could also use this now for
continuation from one figure to the next so we can add now a sense of complexity to our
natural dance our non-choreographed dance where we have now bounces and we can get ourselves feeling
like we're a little bit more connected every time i'm going away from joel there's a little rebound
right there exactly and that's how i could start to communicate a little bit more authentically
with my lovely partner to ask her to go into new direction go into here go into there
yeah and ladies we just build that skill learn how to react to it every time there's a rebound going
forward or backwards and actually it's very much like level two of the game which is just walking
exactly we're not trying to spill the coffee yeah and neither are we trying to detach from the arms
and just moving again and now we're stepping on each other's toes and ladies same for you
don't just stand there and let the arms go behind you yes we need to keep those arms connected and
respond and communicate exactly zoom zoom we have some fun with it yeah the rebound is a lot of fun
exactly oh and one more thing ladies we talk about this with all our couples do not anticipate what
the action is exactly we are in response mode we are responding to the gentleman's actions we
are not deciding for ourselves whether we're going backwards or forwards exactly so let's take a look
and see what that might look like so here we are we're dancing and now i'm just gonna oh i'm gonna
oh i'm gonna go forward i'm gonna decide i'm gonna do that and oh now i'm gonna go forward again i'm
not waiting for him to lead that and hopefully you notice that it doesn't look connected it doesn't
look authentic at all exactly and it makes us as a leads and we're just like standing there
like oh well it literally is a role reversal and basically i'm now the leader and he's the follower
and i'm just kind of standing going what are you doing it makes me feel kind of like why am i even
here yeah exactly we're making him obsolete so here we go we're going to be dancing that again
gentlemen i am leading claire i'm feeling that rainbow i'm waiting for it and i'm feeling the
rebound there it is before i start to come back forward exactly and then we can start dancing
once again maybe we do a two-hand rebound room and then we get ourselves too handy get ourselves back
together just remember there can only be one driver in the couple now that you've seen the
rebound in action we're gonna do a short little unchoreographed dance for you it's gonna be two
really slow music so that you can see that nice elastic action that connects us to each other
all right here we have the music i'm going to take dan's position with clara
yeah we're going to start with a nice simple home base pattern and we always want our students to
do a nice easy home base pattern so that they get connected and they're less stressed about
stringing together so many different figures there we go there's the rebound yeah so as i said this
is all unchoreographed so i'm just responding to the actions that joel's giving me yeah and
i'm just trying to use those skills that we did in the games to try to communicate with clara there's
you can see as he's doing the rebound there's a separation so we have lots of space away from
each other and it also gives me a heads up that something is to come yes exactly so as you can
see throughout this whole demonstration we're being as smooth as possible without spilling the
coffee for clara we had a little bit of elasticity and getting into that sweet spot with the arms and
we're able to do different positions whether it's just forwards and backwards stationary
turn i think i did a passing turn or two i already forgot um and then we did a side-by-side one which
was a little bit more advanced but we were able to also have a little bit of elasticity in that
action as well yes which it makes it much easier to communicate to me and therefore i can follow it
there you have it you've just learned the rebound now at the beginning of this video
we did say that it's not necessarily that sexy or that big but as you can see it's super essential
it's going to make your dance more natural more smooth and way better than memorized
choreography exactly speaking of natural and smooth if you'd like to have a little bit more
help making your dance natural and smooth check out this natural dance checklist that you can
download in the description below and don't forget to like subscribe and hit that notification bell
because we'll be giving more tips and tricks in more videos to come exactly and tips and tricks
are part of our natural wedding dance method course so if you want to get those plus tons
of different information from joel and clara and direct coaching check out the description below
there's going to be a link there that you can connect to us thanks for watching bye