How to Do Basic Merengue Dance Steps

Video Transcript

"I'm starting with the basic Merengue step. What makes this dance so easy is that you're basically stepping on the down beat of the rhythm. It's very constant and never changes. There's no pauses. If you're hearing the rhythm, that's exactly what your feet are going to do. They're going to step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step. That's the basic rhythm. Let me break it down. As you step on the right, you bend the right knee, which in fact straightens the left and it creates a little bit of a sit. Then as you shift the weight. All I'm doing is I'm shifting the weight. I'm sitting back on my right hip as I bend the left. Then you alternate, bend the right, alternate, bend the left, right, left, right, left. With this basic step, you're going to want to be able to move slightly around to the left or to the right keeping the feet in a constant motion. You're going to want to be able to travel. You can do it faster or you can take your time and take a nice slow turn taking as many steps as you want. That's the nice thing about Merengue. On the turn, you can take it at your own pace."