Yay! More Balboa dancers! You're very welcome :)

Hello Milano Balboa! Nice to hear from you :)

More to come!

Hey Sam! It's been amazing to see how your Balboa has developed since we first saw you at Bal Rendezvous in 2012. So good!

@@BrisbaneBalboaSwingDance Aww thanks! Miss you guys!

Hi Ryan! It's not really set in stone and you can try it both ways and ask your practice partner how it feels different. Sometimes the way you do the come around could be varried depending on what you are going to do next. For example, if I'm doing a come around into Lollies I try to rotate my partner very much on their own axis. If I'm going back into a basics I often have my partner move with me a bit more to prepare for the next basic. The important thing is always to make it feel flowing and comfortable for your partner.

Ha ha, that's so cool :D

Hi Phil. Yes, returning to a neutral position is a pretty normal response to having a free arm under ordinary circumstances, but there are sometimes extra dynamics that can start to come into play. I double checked with Emma and in this case she doesn't return her arm for several cumulative reasons. The first is that under normal Texas Tommy circumstances it's the leader who gently moves the follower's arm out from behind the back for them during the unwind. Secondly the placement of the arm has been taken outside of the normal range of stretch and compression so when the leader does not rectify this situation the follower might wait to see if this was done on purpose before deciding that the leader has no future plan for that arm position. Thirdly, if you try just spinning on the spot with totally relaxed arms they will trail behind a bit, so this actually doesn't feel like a totally unnatural thing to do. Fourthly, the follower is turning further into the wound up direction rather than the unwinding direction, if that makes sense. And if that still feels weird, remember that anything you do a bunch of times will start to feel like "a natural move" (to quote Maxi Dorf). So even if everything I have suggested seems like bunk, then maybe your partner could try making it work for a bit and see if it starts to feel better. This move might be kind of an edge case for success rate at a typical social dance, but some people focus on different ideas in their following and I have actually had this move happen automagically with one particular dancer when I wasn't even trying to lead it. Anyhow, I hope all that is of some help to you. Cheers, Rob.

Thanks Rob - really appreciate you taking the time to give such a detailed answer. We’ll keep practicing with those points in mind!

You're very welcome!

And it's been a whole year, must be time for us to teach it again! Thanks Pat :D

Brisbane Balboa Swing Dance Yayyy!!!

It has a bit to do with how we were originally taught, we do work on passing by each other closer during out&in movement these days, but old habits die hard. Another reason is that it also depends on what we are trying to do. Sometimes we don't need to come into a "t-shirt" connection, so we don't do it just for the sake of doing it. We often get very technical in our classes, but then we also like to remind people that it's not civil engineering, it's just dancing. If you sometimes don't stick perfectly to the building code or don't work to exact tolerances in civil engineering your bridge might not meet up in the middle or it might collapse. In social swing dancing as long as you are both having a good time and no one is getting hurt you are probably doing it right :)

Hello! We teach every week in Brisbane, Australia, but it might be difficult for you to attend our classes on the other side of the planet ;) We hope our videos are helpful to you and your students.

Brisbane Balboa Swing Dance Many thanks are excellent teachers ,keep watching your videos,they Will serve me a lot for my classes