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The most common Coca-Cola al Revés (“the other way around”) is called Setenta y Uno al Revés. Very many of the best Leads use Coca-Cola al Revés, and it can be started directly from Caída position (start position of Dile Que No and many other figures, moves and walks). We don’t need Setenta. My video archive for Coca-Cola al Revés includes social dancers/teachers as different as Carlos Rafael Gonzalez, Yoel Marrero and Yoandy Villaurrutia. If many Leads should reduce their repertoire to just 10 moves on top of basic figures, Coca-Cola al Revés would be among them.

Setenta moves having Coca-Cola al Revés as the “Crux of the Matter” is often confused with moves called Setenta Complicado al Derecho y al Revés and Setenta al Derecho y al Revés because “al Derecho” is often missing from the names to make them shorter. But these moves are very different and they have Setenta Inverso al Revés as Crux of the Matter. I will make a tutorial about it soon.

The two video clips in Video #1 is from a Practica Training Session with me and Mona, Copenhagen 2022.

The right arm Gancho we know from Setenta y Uno works as a charm to start Coca-Cola al Revés. But a Lead has many ways to make a right arm Gancho without doing the Setenta Hammerlock first. We can just do it at anytime we get into the Caída position. And, as I have said, we don’t even need the Gancho because we get out of it as soon as we start the move, Gancho is mostly “style”.

Common Error

The most common error when doing Coca-Cola al Revés happens in the count of eight after the Follow comes out of the Coca-Cola turn on “5-6-7”. The Follow needs to walk a normal Exhibela. She should not walk four steps right and just do a return walk with two steps as in Exhibela Largo and Sácala. Inside two handed moves, the normal Exhibela is best. The Follow should step right “1-2-3”, turn, and walk back left on “5-6-7”.

In order lo lead the Follow properly, the Lead must already on beat “2.5” indicate with his arm movement that an Exhibela turn is coming, in order for the Follow to angle her right foot a little to the right when it hits the floor on “3”. That makes it much easier to turn around and step over on “5”.

Many exits (continuations)

After the return walk of the Exhibela part, we have almost countless of options for how to continue. The Follow steps forward on one, exactly as if she has started from the start position of open position (Guapea), except that Lead and Follow are positioned side by side, but with a little ingenuity, we can do all the same things we can do from Guapea! My favourite continuation at the moment is a Setenta turn into Hammerlock, then Enchufla and Rodeo. In the first video clip I use Enchufla, outside turn and Rodeo.

But it might be possible to shift hands, and do Sombrero, Balsero, Dedo, etc. I am going to experiment with that! This is exactly the wonders and excitement of social dancing: We can be creative and explore the options of any move on the run as compared to hard-wired, choreographed, brain-dead moves in Rueda de Casino.