Agustin y Alba

“You need to really know how to move your hips — in a way that doesn't affect your partner. That's how I can be dancing with a partner and still go boom boom boom, tak tak tak, tiki tiki all on my own.”

Showing how your own hip movement shouldn't travel to your partner when lead and follow are dancing close

“Push up diagonally. Watch your feet — if you breathe as you push up, your neck moves three times.”

The key point, demonstrated live: how the head moves on three breaths, and how it connects to the feet

“It's like making a little table between your ribcage and your stomach. And you rise up onto it.”

Explaining the Korke-style technique of moving the head through the breath, with a visual image

“There are different parts inside a song — slow sounds, fast sounds. When it's fast, go traditional or majao; when it's smooth, try sensual or circular.”

Choosing a hip mechanism based on the tempo of the music

“When you're happy dancing bachata, your mouth makes a 'U' shape, right? Your hips should draw that same 'U'.”

Teaching the up-down level movement of the hips as a U-curve, like a smiling mouth

“Don't think about dropping down — you go up, and you release on the way up.”

Explaining the breathing behind head movement, stressing that the energy goes up, not down

“When you shift your weight, try taking a curved path instead of a flat, straight line. Going from point A to point B, you don't go straight — you go on a curve.”

Comparing straight and curved paths while explaining weight change

“I think you have to wait until you feel what the next direction is.”

Explaining the limbo state on counts 1 and 5 — why feeling the direction matters more than automatically launching into the next move.

“My body is isolated. That's what makes the ribcage expand.”

Demonstrating isolation and ribcage expansion while explaining the head roll / one-point movement

“Even when it looks like I'm stepping, really I'm just shifting weight and isolating one part.”

Explaining how something that reads as a step is actually built from weight shifts and isolations

“Because in a social situation — social dancing — you don't know the combination.”

Why you have to wait and feel the next direction: in social dancing there's no set combination you both already know.

“If you go in automatically, you just end up moving on to the next step.”

Pointing out what goes wrong when you move automatically, with no limbo.

“This feeling, this sending — that's what moves me forward.”

Wrapping up: the feeling you send your partner in the limbo is what creates the move forward.

“It's important that your weight is on the toes of your front foot. If your weight is back, you end up moving with just your hips.”

Explaining why your weight should be on the front foot, and how the hip movement changes when it isn't (when it's back)

“In bachata sensual, the knees and legs are moving nonstop, constantly adjusting your height.”

Explaining leg movement and height control as one of the differences between Dominican and sensual bachata.

“Bolero is the idea of stepping into one foot and growing, then falling into the other.”

Explaining the principle behind the bolero step, a core bachata concept

“The shoulder blade spirals and drops down, and that lets the leg release.”

Explaining how the bolero spiral starts in the upper body and carries into the lower body

“I'm going to let the arm pull the chest, and the chest pull the rest of the body.”

Explaining how force travels from one body part to the next in the bolero movement

“My ribcage is moving like a rainbow. Not up and down — on one, two, it turns to the side.”

Explaining the direction of the head roll that draws a rainbow with the ribcage — side to side, not up and down

“When the leg comes down, the hips want to touch. It's not about pushing out like this — it's the feeling of your knees meeting each other like a kiss.”

A figurative explanation of how the knees and hips meet as the leg comes down

“That hip movement that's so distinctly Dominican — it comes from everything shifting out to the side, and then the body spiraling along with the breath.”

The third difference: how the Dominican hip and upper-body spiral actually works.

“When the shoulders open, the chest closes — (and the other way around too.)”

Explaining the opposition — shoulders and chest moving in opposite directions — in the head roll.

“You have to think that you want to go down into the floor.”

Explaining the double hip movement, emphasizing the feeling of connection to the floor

“The hips go back, then up, then back again and they touch. And then you turn to the left — more to the left.”

Explaining the flow from the hip direction changes (back-up-back) into the turn to the left