Rueda Hand Signs (Part 30) Setenta Y Cinco

Setenta Y Cinco is one of the four Setenta moves taught at level 3 of the Tiempo España Dance Academy Syllabus. Like all Setenta moves taught in our dance school it starts with a Mini Setenta and ends with an Enchufla Ronde. The key element, however, that makes this move different from other Setenta variations is that at the end of the Mini Setenta, leaders will go to the right hand side of the follower keeping all hands connected. This puts both dancers in a nice position where they are joined together using both hands but without being too restricted and still being able to look at each other. In this position the couple turns clockwise for one 8-count continuing to look at each other before the leader turns out of this position underneath their own right hand.

While this move is not particularly difficult to learn, it looks and feels nice to both followers and leaders. The key element described above, that is introduced in this move, is included in various more difficult variations so it is a good feature to get used to. While social dancing many people may repeat this feature various times due to the fact that it is easy enough to achieve and looks and feels nice as well as giving leaders the time to think about their next moves although it is recommended not to exaggerate the turn as multiple repetitions will quickly become monotonous and less enjoyable for everyone unless they are at least varied by the use of alardes, creative footwork etc.

The move name “Setenta Y Cinco” has no special meaning and is simply a number given to this move to distinguish it from others. I.e. while the move can be translated as 75, the meaning is more like saying “the fifth variation of Setenta”. It is in essence one of the many moves in Cuban salsa where no clever name was invented initially so it simply became known by this number to differentiate it from other moves. That being said, many dance schools and Rueda groups have categorised their own variations of Setenta as Setenta Y Cinco so this move name has become very ambiguous in terms of what is meant by it in the dance community internationally.

The name of the move consists of the hand sign for Setenta, followed by the hand sign of Cinco which is simply the palm-side of the hand being displayed to the Rueda such that the amount of fingers shown signal the number five.

Winter Holidays

It is once again the time of the year where we close down Tiempo España Dance Academy for a few weeks to recharge our batteries and come back with new energy in the new year.

It has truly been a fantastic year for our dance school and we are very proud of how far both our teachers and our students have come. We enjoyed every minute of teaching our students and are particularly impressed with the Rueda quality especially in our higher level classes which has far surpassed most Ruedas we have taken part in before opening our dance school.

It is particularly nice to see how much our dance community has grown and how many friendships have been formed in our classes with many people meeting up multiple times a week.

It has not always been easy making sure that there are no disruptions to our classes and our teachers deserve a special thank you for all the hard work they have put in again this year to make sure that everyone could get a good class. Thanks to all their efforts and dedication we hardly had to cancel any classes again even when multiple people were sick or on holidays.

As usual, we will use the time we are away wisely to review and practice a lot of new material that we will teach in the coming year and given how advanced many of our students have become we are very excited to try out even more complex variations in 2019.

Our last class of the year will be in Leeds on Wednesday 12th of December and our first class next year will be in Selby on Monday 14th January at the usual times. We may not answer queries, emails etc. at the same speed we usually do while we are away but we will endeavour to get back to everyone as soon as possible.

We hope you all have a great winter break and wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year when the time comes and we are already looking forward to dancing with everyone again when we are back in January.