On Friday I taught levels 1-3 how to Mambo. I’ll be honest, I used to do it every year but as Freshmen, my juniors were very easily distracted and my sophomores were… well, hard to handle we’ll say!!! 🙂 This year my freshmen are so good that I seriously think the good Lord is paying me back for living through the previous two classes and loving them in spite of their wily ways. LOL ….. soooooo…. I decided to resurrect the Mambo.
At first I was going to limit to the Freshmen but then I felt guilty leaving the older kids out so I just taught everyone. The lesson went like this: Discussion in Spanish of what dancing is like here and in Spanish speaking countries followed by a listen through of the song we were going to be dancing to. I gave them two versions of Rie y Llora (sorry no accents)… One by Justo Lamas and one by Celia Cruz. When they had heard both, we discussed which version they preferred and why. Then I gave them a lesson in Mambo.
It is so easy! If you have any rhythm at all you can do this!!! Practice at home in the mirror before you go to class but if you sell it with your huge enthusiasm, they can’t help but get into it! We started just feet, then added hips, and finally hands… I let them try with a partner too! We danced to Justo’s version because it is a little slower but then I let Celia’s version play and we tried to keep up!
There were about 10 minutes left in class and they had been sooooo good that I pulled out a song we found on our last trip to Spain. It was pretty hard to find but FINALLY on iTunes I did. It’s called Follow the Leader by La Banda del Diablo. It is mostly Spanish but there is a little Spanglish in there too. 🙂 I had them stay in the Mambo circle and I got in the middle. When the singer said Follow the Leader Sigame..Sigame… I did a crazy dance that they had to imitate (think lawnmower, sprinkler, chachacha, crazy dance grabbing my foot and moving knee back and forth… LOL You have to have very little shame to go there…) then in the song it gave directions of what to do and they LOVED it! It is such a fun song!
If you want Mambo lessons, I’ll make my daughter record me and we’ll post it on FB or you could also look there for a professional (which I am NOT!)