How to Do Merengue Open Position

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village, my name is Rodney Lopez and this is my lovely partner Amelia Maldonado. We're here at Dance Manhattan Studios here in New York City, and today we're going to teach you the merengue. You don't have to spend your whole dance in what we call closed position or dance position. You can open up the dance frame a little bit. We call this open position in dance. What I'm going to do is take her by the hands like so. Now, how you hold her hands is so important. Gentlemen, just keep your palms up. What we're going to do is we're just going to sort of send the lady backwards a little bit. Again, let's do this in 4 beat measures. Ladies, you're just going to start with your right foot and go back. You're just going to go 1, 2, 3, 4. Notice how Amelia takes 4 steps back. Now, I'm going to apply a little pressure and pull her back to me on 1, 2, 3, 4. This is a breakaway step where the lady goes back and then comes back towards you. Gentlemen, you're going to give her a gentle push back. 1, 2, 3, 4, she comes back, 1, 2, 3, 4. While she's doing all of that, I'm keeping my feet stepping in place the whole time. "