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.

Following these 4 points will go a long way in making your social dance experience a little more fulfilling for both you and your partner. And isn’t that the whole point of social dance anyways?

1. Start slowly.

No matter what, accelerate slowly.

Take it step by step, feel out your partner’s capabilities and for the most part, stay within that range. Cheat a bit, but keep it to a minimum!

For example, if all your partner can do is walk to the music, you must work all of your magic within that walk. Take what they know -basic steps- and create a dance from her basic steps. Be creative and understand a tight lead can do wonders for even the most inexperienced dancer.

2 . Indicate that you are going to indicate.

Always lead early.

If you lead early, and she follows slightly late, there is plenty of time for musical play. Keep this in mind. Don’t just give her a prep, give her a pre-prep! This means an early indicator of an early indicator. How about that?!?

3. Keep secrets.

If she “messes up”, smile, smooth it over and make it a secret between the two of you. Don’t flinch. If you mess up, it never happened.

4. Use the minimum force required by your partner.

Use only what you need. This is totally dependent on your follow, and the song that the two of you are expressing together.

Please work to apply at least ONE of these points to your social dance. And that means you have to go out and actually dance.

Professional training + dance floor experience = tremendous dancer.

Tango Confidential, Marcy Goldman

This weekend I had a chance to hit up the Salsa and Swing dance down at the Elk’s lodge in Raleigh hosted by MAD academy. There was a beginner Salsa lesson before the actual social, and whenever  possible, we join in on the lessons in order to refresh our “beginner’s mind” and hopefully walk away with some new perspective.

During the lesson, girls and guys face each other in two long lines, with the guys rotating to the next partner every few minutes or so.

Feeling so many different embraces instantly reminded me that you can feel pretty much everything about your partner simply by their embrace. It speaks volumes. Without even dancing, and before even taking a step, keep in mind that everything about you is transmitted in this closed position.

What does your closed embrace say to your partner?

“I’m nervous as hell, and that’s why im pushing down so hard.”

“I really don’t want to get close so I am creating a huge awkward bow between us.”

“Damn you are hot, so I am going to scoot in as close as possible.”

“I’m off in space somewhere and that’s why my arms are so limp.”

“I am a little nervous the words ‘position’ and ‘woman’ so that’s why I am squeezing your right hand so hard.”

Think about this next time you start your dance in the closed embrace. What do you want to say to your partner through the manner in which you hold them?

Leads: “I’m relaxed, and I know what I am doing. You can go ahead and relax too.”

Follows: “I am in a state of relaxed alertness. Whatever you throw at me, I am ready and willing to follow.”

The best things in dance go unsaid and are completely invisible to the eye. But make sure you are fully aware of all the little whispers going on between you and your partner’s body.

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 →

The venerable Thich Nhat Hanh

A guest post by Reed Colver

“Drinking a cup of tea and the tea being drunk is a distinction that evaporates. Drinking a cup of tea becomes a direct and wondrous experience in which the distinction between subject and object no longer exists.”?-Thich Nhat Hanh

When I read Thich Nhat Hahn’s words about tea, I immediately thought of the relationship between the lead and the follow.

We talk about ‘light leads’ and not being a ‘heavy follow’ in class. We talk about not gripping each other’s hands for fear of accidentally letting go.

If we do – so what?

One of the great things I’ve been learning is how to work with the lead, or as a lead with the follow, so that together we are visibly neither on the dance floor, but we are a unit. So if you do accidentally let go, read each other, have a fun moment – play! – and reconnect.

One of the unique elements of learning at Paso is the synergy created between follow and lead that creates a shared dance. To sense and feel one another as dancers. We are both responsible for the moment, and sometimes that means having to improvise. And have fun.

Read the rest of this entry →