If you say so....

I've started taking Latin classes and have come up with a few additions to my "ballet and ballroom" list. I thought learning to step heel first was hard, but it was nothing compared to having the correct posture for Latin dances. In every style of dancing I've studied, be it ballet, jazz, or modern, or even yoga, the one constant was the posture, the alignment of the pelvis with respect to the spine. The butt's brought in without being tucked. As a natural swayback, this has always been one of my biggest weaknesses and one of the most common corrections that I get in ballet class. So when I get to the Latin class and the teacher tells me to, in effect, stick my butt out, well, it's not so simple. I'll start out that way, but I'm having to put so much attention on where to put my feet and which way to swivel my hips that my posture automatically goes back to what my body has known for 29 years. The teacher keeps explaining the correct posture to me as though I haven't understood him. He doesn't understand that while my brain knows what to do, my body has other ideas! I took a few master classes last month, introductions to Cha Cha and Samba. The teacher was great and imparted a ton of information vocally and also by example. I've found Cha Cha very frustrating thus far, so when the teacher called out "Turn out your legs and point your feet," I thought I was in heaven. Finally something I'm supposed to do in a Latin dance that feels natural. After practicing what I learned for a few hours, I discovered that tilting my pelvis forwards seems to make it easier to produce the correct hip movements. If that's wrong, for goodness sake someone tell me (here! now!) before I get that in my body. If that's right, I can think in terms of "this is where my pelvis needs to be to get my hips where they need to go" and not "do the opposite of what you've been told your whole life." Just got back from Hawai'i, which has nothing to do with dance except that I watched Mad Hot Ballroom again on the flight back. Those kids can dance!