Hey skaters i’m dirty deborah harry with the dirty school of skate at sugar roller skates and i’m here at the fountain valley skating center today to talk to you about couples dance skating yes couples dance skating this is going to be a first in a series of videos that i cannot wait
To bring to you okay today’s video is brought to you by pigeonskates.com they’re located here in long beach california can get you everything you need for skates and guess what i have a discount code for you just plug in d-i-r-t-y with a big old dollar sign and you can get a discount
Off all the skating products that they offer okay all right skaters grab your dance skating partner and let’s do couple skate today we have special guest skaters may i introduce to you the lovely and talented barb luster and don sivers these two incredible skaters are going
To help us learn how to skate forward couples style barb honey how long you been skating 30 plus years what about the same okay so we’ve got a lot of experience really realistically in this whole group a lot of experience but we’re going to break it down
So it’s easy for you even the beginner skater to do okay let’s assume you’ve found your partner the very first thing you’re going to have to do is figure out how to hold on to that person just right because dawn i mean does every woman want to be held in the same way
No no it’s close but it depends on how she likes to be honest like this too oh very nice so if you guys were to help a brand new couple what do you think is the easiest way to start them out right so i love this positioning because
To me when i skate with someone like this i like to have this connection right here so the back of your arm against their chest you’re pushing forward she’s pushing a little back so you’re helping hold each other up am i correct the other thing i really like what they’re
Doing is this hand positioning what i love about their hand position is don is literally holding her hand up and she’s placing his her hand on top of his so when he wants her to move he can simply bring it up or down and she’s going to follow there’s no pain
Involved in my right no pain involved also it looks good a man’s job don correct me if i’m wrong your job here is to make her look good am i right that is correct actually my job is to make him look but this simple idea that he is presenting her
Which i love and i love this kind of upward stance to it so you know what never miss an opportunity to look good the other thing let’s come around here and check out the hand hold behind the back so he’s got her behind the back and they are in
Close proximity to each other what you don’t want is a whole bunch of space if you have a bunch of space in between you two don’t you feel like there’s a disconnect here like i don’t know what he’s doing you don’t yeah and then you start to struggle and crush hands and whatnot
The hand holding over here too is really really i’m just gonna appreciate this it’s pretty i feel like she’s comfortable here i feel like he’s got a good positioning on her hip so he can move her forward he can move her backward okay these things are important i know i
Get that they’re details but they’re very very important so when you guys go to take off do you already have a standard of like i’m gonna take off to the left i’m gonna take off to the right either way but we have to know what we’re going to do first
So do you do you verbally like talk about that you’re going to take off on the left when you say take off on the left you’re meaning pushing your body weight to your left skate to skate i mean all of my weight is on my left foot yep
Then i’m gonna take an inside edge and push off that left foot back onto my right okay excellent let’s take a look at that okay so we’re gonna go up and then back i’m pushing off the left onto the right outside edge back to an inside all righty
The weight is on the left and back on to the right this is the crossover okay you guys look good let me just say that you look good so what i’m seeing is they are moving as one unit it is like we’re moving to the left switch right left
Right you know what i love love love about this i feel like i’m gonna say that a hundred times because i love so much about this but they are not pushing there is not this thing of life we gotta go here we gotta go there and we’re trying
To gain speed or power what’s happening is because they’re edging we’re edging instead they’re skating off their edges they are able to gain speed and momentum that’s under control as they shift their body weight from side to side i love that let’s talk a little bit about feet
A lot of times when we’re dance skating or really just skating in general people are always like what do we do with our feet what do we do with our feet missing out on the idea that it’s really just skating on your edges first right things we don’t want to do is
Literally try to walk forward right or kick back so i notice that when you two skate it’s a very gentle rocking from side to side do you ever feel like oh if i place my foot forward i’m gonna run into him no do you think it has anything to do with
The proximity of so you can tell that she’s very comfortable with the close proximity she stays in her space like that little lane right there and then dawn knows that there’s no point where you’re like let me give you a big old push outward right because you don’t want to
Be knocking your partner on the ground what is your favorite kind of music to do this to mid tempo or slower that way you can hold your edges so pushing side to side you can hold your edges do you think when you hold your edges that’s why it looks smooth
Yes because when you also hold your edges it helps you keep up your speed so when we hold our edges and we’re going back and forth we build natural momentum as if as opposed to that heavy push and can we see you guys skate together forward how about with a different armhole can
We can we show something like that oh look at this And if i was to change i’m home yes and what a lot of beginners like to do This is just friendly conversation Skating Okay so there’s about i would say very roughly maybe three different hand holds or arm holds let’s just demonstrate them real quickly we have the one at the beginning which is you’re kind of very like formal beautiful show me something a little bit more casual this is a little bit more casual
Oh friends show me something a little interlinked maybe oh you can go down below hey this is more boyfriend girlfriend the other one is like friend zone and this is like oh no we’re together and what’s what’s uh there we go now what’s what does this say about the state of your relationship
Conversation role have a conversation while you’re rolling no no this is true this is so true because sometimes when you want to rap mid-session and i got something to tell don that no one else can hear and i lincoln and i go hey you do do that very naturally that’s
When you’re saying something that you don’t want the whole world to say you’re like i gotta tell you something that’s going on here now let’s talk about cornering because when i saw you guys go around the corner one of the most interesting things about
It was how you put her just a little bit forward now tell me why you did that i put her forward so i can stay out of her way and so that we can both make a comfortable crossover step so let’s really look at that okay because the
Positioning around the corner is great of course don john doesn’t be like here and dragging her and whipping her around the corner well that would not be good right you also don’t want to run into each other so let’s look at the corners and see there we go
So we’re talking just staggered just a bit and here he’s gonna move her as we go into the corner do you see that arm dipped down a bit so let me ask you this if going around the corner if people aren’t able to really do crossovers in a way that’s comfortable for them
With the other person is there a step that you can do after you’ve placed your partner slightly at a stagger here that you can do that doesn’t require a full crossover okay we’re just going to go on from the side side let’s do that let’s do that
Let’s do that because we may have skaters who really want to do this but they want to work their way to yes but it does require a little bit more knee bend excellent so i don’t know eagle eye viewers are seeing this but dawn is basically just shuffling his feet
Side to side and barb’s doing more of a push out but keeping her feet close to the floor without any kind of big crossover constantly from the left and to the right bouncing it back and forth i love it don seriously how many decades have you been skating
Four four decades yes really five i feel like it’s been longer than that i know his history i think the real thing here is people if you’re just starting out with skating and you really want to try something new and fun get a partner and try this simple thing
Because as i’ve said skating is inherently social you will meet new people and you’ll try new things and this is a nice at least beautiful and pleasant way to interact with another human being i just think this is a very easy way to interact with other people
On skates and to learn a new and different skill so hopefully you guys will check back in with us when dawn and barb turn around and go backwards and we’re going to learn how to do this simple we’re going to do this simple but we’re going to flip it around and go backwards
So in the meantime you guys got to practice you know look as good as these two do i’m hoping with proper practice and decent instruction it won’t take you like seven decades to learn this okay because we i none of us have that kind of time i get
It i get it all right skaters so you know what i tell them to do at the end of every video tell them goodbye and eat your wheaties is that it okay don that’s not it i think how do you get the carnegie hall practice thank you don thank you barb
For being part of my job have fun absolutely absolutely okay you guys we’ll see you next time on the dirty school of skate channel go practice bye
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