One of the most popular, iconic, and delicious tango moves is a parada to the Revel’s front pivot. It’s not an easy one. The Mark stops the Revel on one foot, curving his body around her as she is still spiraling.
To decelerate we always use the control system of the extension of the joints during transfer. But parada to pivot is tricky because it has two changes of embrace.
Procedure:
- Mark for the front pivot.
- The Mark uses lateral shoulder-flexion to change his direction while leaving her on her current trajectory. He turns so that instead of his hips being perpendicular to the Revel’s after the pivot, his hips and chest will face her.
- He makes a front projection just in front of her toes where he wants her to stop pivoting.
- Finally, he extends the knee of his base leg while making vertical shoulder flexion to close the embrace. The knee extension levers his chest toward hers, (perhaps all the way into close embrace).
As always, both of his legs need external rotation for stability and extra hip flexion for stability and room to maneuver.
To make the move more dramatic he can do any of the following:
- accelerate her pivot (stronger contraction of obliques)
- have her pivot with her free leg projected in planeo (by flexing his base leg during her second projection of the previous step, just before marking the pivot
- flex his back leg during #4, so that he arrives to the final position with his head lower than hers, looking up at her – this is referred to as “the goddess move” (the vertical shoulder flexion allows him to flex without taking her with him)
After the parada is the classic Revel’s moment. If he maintains the position of the arch, he gives her permission to adorn. She doesn’t have to, but he may give her some time for this. He ends this time (or never starts it) by marking her next projection (it’s often front, but needn’t be). To make the next projection (or to tell him she’s finished or not interested in adorning), she passes her free leg’s foot (with pointed toes)across her own base foot, and then traces an arc on the floor around his front foot toward her projection.
Classic Pivot Parada
