Paradas are a gentle way to tell your partner to stop moving for a moment by building up a little barrier. The continuation of the dance is often started with a movement passing the barrier – hence “pasada”.

A pause can be such a wonderful moment during a dance – it adds another dimension to the continuous flow of movements by standing still for a few seconds and then rebuild the flow. It also connects us stronger to the music where pauses are a vital element to colour the song. We look into the possibilities how to express pauses in the music with paradas. After that we dive into the wide range of pasadas which make the re-initiation of the dance so exciting.

And we will certainly not forget to check out when it is useful to dance paradas and when not 😉

The close embrace was for a while not very highly regarded and considered old-fashioned. But nowadays times have changed and dancing in close embrace is again en vogue in the salons all over the world.

In this edition of “Werk aan de Winkel” we investigate how to create comfortable & free movements in this intimate embrace. That’s what a dancer is thriving for eventually. Naturally we end up with round movements around our axis which enable us to develop more complex figures as sacadas and ganchos effortless.

We build up the workshop carefully around the basic elements and the body awareness necessary to achieve these complex movements. A quest for all dancers according to their own possibilities.