Beginner Cha Cha - The Basic Step Ballroom Dance Lesson

Alright. We begin. Basic Step.
We’re going to stand this way to show you how it looks like facing each
other. We’ll have different angles for you.
So we begin by standing on the man’s left foot,
the lady’s right foot. Get this other foot ready.
We dance cha-cha-cha to the side like this. Cha-cha-cha.
The man goes forward, left foot, the lady goes back, right foot.
Step, replace the weight back onto the foot. Step.
Dance cha-cha-cha on the spot: cha-cha-cha. Now the lady comes forward, the man goes back.
Step, replace. And dance cha-cha-cha on the spot:
cha-cha-cha. Now if I do it by myself,
you will see a little bit more simpler version. Essentially we have a forward
basic and a back basic. When you go forward, it’s left foot.
When you go back, it’s right foot. So we have step, replace, cha-cha-cha.
Back, replace, cha-cha-cha. Forward, replace, cha-cha-cha,
Back, replace, cha-cha-cha. Facing you,
I have forward left foot, cha-cha-cha. Backward right foot, cha-cha-cha.
Forward, replace, cha-cha-cha. Back, replace, cha-cha-cha.
Steps are the same for man and lady. Yeah?
If we come together, I’m going to do it with the man facing the
camera, lady’s back in the camera.
We have a dance hold. When we dance Cha Cha,
we want to have a little bit of space. Maybe we’ll show it this way…
Have a little bit of space between us – not too much, and not too close.
You’re going to need that space when we start dancing all the steps.
Left hand to right hand, man’s right hand behind the lady’s back,
and the lady’s left hand just slightly off the shoulder…
like that. Yeah?
So now we dance the step. On the spot, gentlemen start by standing on
the left foot, ladies start by standing on the right foot.
There are several ways you can start to dance music.
This is only one. Not the only one,
but we’ll just use this one. We count 1, 2, 3. We do nothing.
Then we start after 1, 2, 3, cha-cha-cha.
The man starts forward basic, left foot, the lady starts backward, right foot.
Step, replace, cha-cha-cha, step, step, cha-cha-cha,
step, step, cha-cha-cha, step, step, cha-cha-cha.
A different angle: 1, 2, 3, 4,
and 1, 2, 3, 4, and 1, step, step,
cha-cha-cha., step, step, cha-cha-cha,
step, step, cha-cha-cha. We’ll do that with music.
And what we did was I purposely turned it so that you can see it from different angles.
Yeah? Eventually, I will teach you how to turn that
at the end of the tape, so don’t worry about that now.
Don’t try to do that now if you’re practicing along with me.
Just stand the step facing one direction. Now, as we continue the variations to the
Beginner’s Cha Cha, keep this in mind: keep that rhythm going consistently.
Don’t change it, don’t skip steps.
It’s always step, step, *clap clap clap*.
Step, step, cha-cha-cha. Keep that in mind. Alright?