the cuban salsa blog

The follow’s game is a psychological one…

Here are 4 simple guidelines that we believe every follow should ponder on before getting out on the dance floor.

1. Keep your head out of the game.

Easier said than done, right?

Figuring out your lead is not your responsibility. Once you truly accept this, your dance will change. You will become flexible.

If your body does not understand the lead, compensating with logic and using your “head”  is bad business. You can’t think your way through a dance, and although many of you have tried, you probably learned by now that it doesn’t work.

2. Don’t stick to your style.

When social dancing, let go of your ideas and preconceptions about what Salsa is and isn’t. If you dance Cuban and your lead is NY, congratulations, you just became a NY follow, and vice versa.

“Now what if I don’t know X style of dance, and my lead is trying all these moves that I don’t understand?”

Choices:

A. Learn to dance like your lead so that you can “follow” him.

B. Try your best to guess what the lead is trying to do.

C. Do only what you physically felt compelled to do.

Choice A is just plain backwards, learn for the love of the style. Choice B is what most follows do and the results are usually horrid. A follow hopping around through her own moves is just not cute.

The answer most beneficial to following is C.

3. Avoid commitment.

Think twice before taking that big step, literally.

This is the only technical advice that is applicable in most situations. Do not commit yourself to any one direction with large steps. It’s kind of hard to take them back.

I see it all the time.

New follows taking step sizes well over the length of their foot and going everywhere but where their lead intended. It looks awkward and goofy. Salsa is a spot dance, save the large steps for accents.

It’s much easier to recover from a small misstep than a big one. Taking smaller steps is the fastest way to improve several aspects of your follow.

Keep the length of your steps somewhere around the length of your foot and avoid radical deviations. Minimize your commitment ladies, and always keep your options open.

Equilbrium feels good.

**Thanks for the reflections Joe. I think all of us, male and female, should remember to adjust to our partner. Casino heads, If you are dancing in a circular trajectory and she is tripping over her feet, than dance in a slot! It’s much easier for us to switch to slot than for her to learn circular movement, on the spot. If each partner strives to accommodate or “listen” to the other, you have a much better hope of reaching an “agreement” on the dance floor. -Eduardo

A guest post by Joe

There are times when learning how to lead Salsa feels like learning  how to drive a car.

There are parts of that experience that I do not want to repeat (like learning how to parallel park) or being a geeky,  awkward teenager; learning how to lead some salsa moves is a lot like learning how to steer a car.

One of the things I remember is how each car handled and how much I had to turn the wheel to get the car to go
where I wanted to.

One of my parents had a compact and the other had a big boat sedan with a hood long enough to land an airplane on it.

With the compact, I didn’t need to turn the wheel very much or very hard.  With the “aircraft carrier” I had to turn a lot more and a lot harder.

When dancing with beginning follows out at socials, i’ve  noticed that I really have to “turn the steering wheel” more aggressively.

And when I come back to a Paso class it is not always easy for me to switch to a lighter lead, I keep wanting to turn that wheel like I am driving the car that needs it.

What has started to “click” in for me is that I need to better adjust my lead to the follow.

If they require more lead, I give it to ‘em.

For the ones that don’t need as much torque and pressure, I go light.

Recently, I don’t think I have been giving my follows enough space to breath and express themselves. In effect, I have been taking over the dance, so ladies, I need to apologize for that.

I will try to better match my lead to the “feel” of the follow in the future.

First, leads learn to speak and follows learn to listen.

In the beginning of learning Salsa the Cuban way, it’s very important for the lead to learn how to speak to their partner with a very clear and deliberate “voice”.

During this first stage, I think the follow should concentrate ONLY on listening and doing exactly what the lead compels them to do.

You can’t just overlay interchanges of faux styling between partners to make it appear as if there is dialog going on! This is simply each person taking turns reciting what they memorized.

Second, leads learn to invite dialog and follows learn to recognize and respond to the invitation.

Read the rest of this entry →

**Follows: It is imperative that you feel the exact speed, and type of turn through your lead’s arm. In the Cuban style of Salsa, the arm in the air is not a visual signal to let you know a turn is coming. It is a line of communication and all details are contained in your lead’s fingertip pressure. You have to listen with your body.

A guest post by Joe

In class we spend a lot of time working on connection and how to lead and how to follow. The fundamentals.

Eduardo and Stephanie have devoted several blog entries to connection and our roles.  And as a lead I have a lot of things I need to do.

Sometimes it seems overwhelming.

I need to react to the music, keep tempo, keep my follow safe, remember the turn pattern that I am about to lead, and not bore her just to name a few things.

A follow with intuition that recognizes when something is not quite right and can recognize what we leads are telling her through physical connection is just…super.

All of the above hit home for me recently during a dance at Cuban Revolution.

At one point in the dance I had a lot of space available on the floor and wanted to start a turn pattern, as soon as I started to prep her, I noticed another lead hop into the space right behind her that I was about to lead her into.

If we kept on going my follow would have had a hard collision with another lead, and she couldn’t see it coming.  Since screaming “look out” didn’t seem appropriate my instincts said to lighten up the prep and not to move my arm much.

Without missing anything she recognized not to step back very far and when I continued to lead she continued to do the turn pattern.

She understood something was wrong, and what I “said” to her, when all that was going through my conscious mind was look out, and OH NO! Here comes a chain reaction of collisions on the dance floor.

Follows, we leads appreciate you and what you do.

In my case, a light prep and my arm not moving much told my follow, “Warning! Danger! There is something behind you, don’t move back very far.”

When considering that one simple gesture said so much I recognized the importance of connection at that point more than ever.

A guest post by Reed Colver

As a follow, there are so many things I must be aware of simultaneously, that I can’t ‘think’ about any one of them. I have to let my mind go and sense everything until they really are no longer individual pieces. The moment I think or focus too hard on any one piece – the music, my feet, what the lead is doing – I lose all the pieces. It’s a bit like trying to grab a handful of water. Try it – you’ll see what I mean.

One of the most insightful moments as a follow came – as they usually do – almost as an afterthought. One of those ‘try this’ moments when several things fall ‘click’ ‘click’ click’ into place and end with a quiet – ahhh. I was working on feeling the lead through my arms  – creating that tension at just the right moment, while keeping my arm loose the rest of the time, but yet always keeping it slightly bent and not to let it go beyond my shoulder.

I would find  the tension, but then loose the the looseness. Or remember to keep my arm loose, and then forget about the bend.

Remember grabbing that handful of water? Yeah, it was one of those classes.

Just about the time I started to wonder why I hadn’t taken up knitting instead, we tried something different.

“Stop thinking about your arm. Just focus on the pressure of your fingertips against the lead’s fingertips. Feel the movement through the fingertips.”

‘Click.’

Suddenly I was feeling – feeling – the lead in an entirely new way. And I stopped thinking about my arms and focused on allowing my fingertips communicate with the lead’s fingertips.  And, amazingly, my arm seemed to follow more naturally.

‘Click. Ahhh.’

This requires me to feel, and not think, about the lead. To sense the lead’s movements through my fingertips, and allow the rest of my body to follow. It allows space in my awareness for music, rhythm, and for that to become part of my movement.

I find it creates a direct connection with the lead that, in its subtly is infinitely more powerful than gripping the lead’s hand or thinking about my arm.

I’m not saying it’s the magical answer that suddenly solved all those problems. (I’ll admit, I still have moments when I contemplate the benefits of knitting). But when I lose that connection and start thinking too much, remembering my fingertips brings me back to that place of awareness.

That handful of water? It’s possible. But only by gently scooping it into the palm of your hand. Try it.