Counter action

Just finished a series of workshops with the wonderful couple of Esteban and Evelyn over the weekend. I was quite fortunate this year because I was able to attend at least half of their classes, having missed out the first half of their stay in Singapore since I was overseas last week. In fact, I was also away last year because of another conference at about the same time in Canada.

This time around, apart from some very clear explanations and examples of Nuevo concepts such as the volcada, I found the concept of contramovimiento, or counter action, especially challenging. I think therein lies the secret of the dynamism in their dancing.

What this means is that – as I understand at this point in time – by moving in a slightly opposite direction to the follower, an elastic torsion results. This provides a necessary acceleration required for some very unusual boleos, for example, such as to the side or front. A second concept introduced was to explore the possibilities when moving around the axis of the follower – undisturbed in the case of boleo, and tilted in the case of volcada.

Very, very interesting ideas indeed. Wondering how long it will take before I can internalise these ideas!? 🙂