December is here, and it’s time to get ready for Christmas! Every day between 1^st and 24^th December you can visit our Countdown to Christmas and find a new free video featuring a quick tip from top international coaches, and new Ballroom Genie contributors, Tony and Amanda Dokman.

If you’re looking for the link, that’s all put away for this year now. See the next entry to find out how members can still access all the new tips!

• Read more about Tony and Amanda

Every tip is illustrated by a specially chosen video from our library, and they range from ways to avoid common technical mistakes, through dancing better as a partnership, to insights on how competitors can please adjudicators.

To benefit from these fantastic tips and improve your dancing in the run-up to Christmas, visit every day and watch the new video! To get links to every video sent to you, you can join our mailing list here. We will also be posting links on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

It has been a little while since our last update, but we’ve been working very hard preparing some new goodies for you, and the first instalment is now ready! Here are 7 new Quickstep figures – all popular basic steps:

• Natural turn at a corner
• Natural pivot turn
• Chassé reverse turn
• Reverse pivot
• Change of direction
• Double reverse spin
• Zig-zag, back lock, running finish

There’s one free sample clip for every step – just follow the links above. As always, members can log in for access to over 9,000 videos, including slow motion, 9 camera angles, and individual partner views. If you’re not a member yet, you can sign up today to get all of this for every step in our library of over 150 figures.

Coming in December: Countdown to Christmas!

We like to celebrate the run-up to Christmas with our own version of an Advent Calendar. Every day from 1^st to 24^th December, you’ll find a new free video on our site featuring a quick tip from top international coaches. The tips range from ways to avoid common technical mistakes, through dancing better as a partnership, to insights on how competitors can please adjudicators!

To find the first video, just come back on 1^st December. To benefit from all the new tips and get a link to the new video every day, you can join our mailing list here. We will also be posting links on our Facebook and Twitter pages.

We’ve just added 5 new Quickstep figures, all danced by World Professional Ballroom Finalists, Alexander Zhiratkov and Irina Novozhilova. The new steps are:

• Scatter chassé to right, no turn
• Point, flick, slide to right
• Slow, quick and slow pendulum points
• Turning step-hops from closed position
• Outside change to PP

There’s one free sample clip for every step – just follow the links above. As always, members can log in to find slow motion videos, 9 camera angles and individual partner views. Happy dancing!

We’ve just added 4 new Tango figures, including some basic steps and a couple of more advanced variations. They’re all danced by World Professional Ballroom Finalists, Alexander Zhiratkov and Irina Novozhilova.

There’s one free sample clip for every step – just follow the links below. Members can also log in to find slow motion videos, 9 camera angles and individual partner views. Here are the new steps:

• Open reverse, lady inline (closed finish)
• Four step change
• Telemark, telespin
• Throwaway oversway, recover to PP

To celebrate Ballroom Genie’s 3rd birthday, we’ve just added 4 more Tango steps. Follow these links to find one free sample clip for every step:

• Back checks from PP
• Left whisk from closed position
• Same foot lunge point from left whisk
• Turning five step from same foot lunge

As always, members can log in to find over 50 videos for every figure, including slow motion and 9 camera angles. If you haven’t joined yet, you don’t have to miss out on these useful features any longer – sign up today!

We hope you enjoy the new steps!

This is the first Quickstep update featuring our new dancers, Alexander Zhiratkov and Irina Novozhilova, and it includes some exciting competitive variations. The new steps are:

• Syncopated forward lock step
• Double forward lock step
• Tipsy to left, side check, back check and oversway
• Scissor kicks (spur variation)
• Oversway point from PP
• Turning double hops rising to hover
• Travelling split jumps

Members can log in for slow motion (particularly useful for Quickstep), as well as individual views of each partner’s steps and 9 camera angles. There’s also a free sample video for every step.

This update brings us to over 150 steps and 8,000 videos, and you can find links to all the steps we cover here. We hope you enjoy the new ones!

We’ve just added some more Foxtrot steps. This time you’ll find some basic figures, along with a couple of more advanced variations:

• Hover feather from pull step
• Two fallaways and feather finish
• Top spin
• Hover telemark
• Four feathers

If you’re a member, you can log in to discover over 50 videos for every step, including slow motion and 9 camera angles. If you haven’t joined yet, there’s also a free sample video for each step (although you can get access to much more by joining today!).

Longer videos: Update

The feedback on our longer videos last time was all positive, so the new videos are all longer too, including full preceding and following figures where possible.

We hope you enjoy the new steps!

We’ve just added some more steps, all from the Slow Foxtrot. They are:

• Open telemark
• Feather ending
• Basic reverse wave variation
• Syncopated curved feather
• Outside swivel
• Whiplash from outside swivel
• Outside spin

As always, members can log in to find over 50 videos for every step, including slow motion and 9 camera angles. There’s a free sample video for each step too.

Longer videos

As requested by some of our members, we’re experimenting with making our videos longer. For the steps we’ve just added, we’ve typically included the full preceding and following figures for the featured step.

Do you like this? Would you like us to extend it to our other steps? Please tell us what you think.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the new steps!

This week, we’ve been filming some more figures for Ballroom Genie. Our amazing dancers, World Professional Finalists Alexander Zhiratkov and Irina Novozhilova performed many steps for us in Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep and Tango. That included lots of syllabus figures and a few extras requested by our members. Over 100 cameras tracked their movement using special markers on black suits, and we’ll be working through all the data to create new videos for the site over the next few months!

It was a great day, and we look forward to sharing the new steps with you. If you’re a member, you’ll get over 50 videos for every step we filmed! If not, there is always one free sample video for every step. You can find all the figures currently available on our steps page.

We wish all our visitors a happy and healthy 2016 with lots of dancing!

We hope you enjoyed our Advent Calendar. Along with the lights and tinsel, we’ve put that away for now. If you’re a member, you can still find all the tips on their individual step pages – just log in and visit the steps page and look for the figures with speech bubble icons next to them.

If you’re not a member yet, give your dancing a New Year boost by signing up! We can offer over 7,000 videos and more than 100 expert tips to help you improve your moves in 2016 :-)

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