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This is one of my favorite Casino videos on YouTube, more than 10 years old. The style of Carlos Rafael Gonzalez is mesmerizing at moments, especially in this video with Jennifer as Follower. Jennifer is a forward dancer, forward by default, no back-rocking, she only takes a back-step if the Leader clearly leads her into doing so. This is right out of my Casino text-book.

But the video is a good reminder that even the best social dancers often make big, grave errors of well-formedness. Not only in social dancing where shit always is likely to happen but also in end-of-class and workshop videos. Even in choreographed tutorials, like this one. And they get uploaded to YouTube anyway, with major errors!

The reason is that errors sometimes look good and work very well in the situation. Only a dance educated eye will notice. But even fantastic looking figures can be evil because they make other better options impossible or unlikely, or because they undercut the integrity of the dance or makes it more difficult for the dancers to get better.

I could discuss this video for hours but we will only look at the Coca-Cola left turn going into Exhíbela behind the Leader’s back. They do this combination four times in the video with varying degrees of success. In the first only Coca-Cola is good, in the last three only Exhibela is good.

Good Coca-Cola – bad Exhíbela

The Follow is led into Dile Que No con Coca-Cola on a straight line. She turns Coca-Cola on 5-6-7, pivots around and steps forward on one into Exhíbela but next she pivots around already on “2-3” and walks back on “3-5-6-7” and forward on “1”. This Exhíbela is clearly not well-formed.

A well-formed Exhibela is a walk with two 180 degree walk-around turns on “3-pause-5” and on “7-pause-1”. It is an important guideline always to use the pause on “4” and “8” as the anchor or pivot point for directional changes. If we change direction on let us say “2-3” or on “5-6”, we undermine an important default, that can guide us through many difficult situations when Lead or Follow have lost track of what is happening in the dance. Not only that, directional change on “2-3” or “5-6” makes it impossible or unlikely to add turns to the Exhibela walk or to use the directional change to break out of the Exhíbela pattern.

Bad Coca-Cola – good Exhíbela

Let us continue with a clip where the Coca-Cola turn is terrible but now the Exhíbela is perfect, right out of the Textbook.

The Follower steps a L-shapen DQN and the Coca-Cola is on a straight line as before. But this time she doesn’t manage to pivot around on “7-8” and step forward into Exhíbela on “1”. Her right leg is trailing far behind pointing in the wrong direction. But the Exhïbela walk now uses “3-pause-5” to turn around and next we see the the last half of Exhíbela on “5-6-7” and forward on “1”.

A Coca-Cola left turn with a trailing leg on “1” after “step “7” is bad because it makes a double Coca-Cola turn impossible. In order to do double turns the first turn must be perfect. And it makes it very unlikely for the Follower ever to integrate Coca-Cola turns seamlessly into Paseo Walks, Caminala Walks, Paséala walks, Saloneo walks, etc.

If a Follower can not even get a standard Coca-Cola from DQN right, the classic Coca-Cola she has experienced more times than all other Coca-Cola turns put together, she is not likely ever to do less common Coca-Cola turns spot-on.

DQN con Coca-Cola

One more word about the DQN con Coca-Cola we see in the video. I for my part always try to make the Follower start DQN stepping on a curved line. L-shaped DQN doesn’t exist in my Casino. And I normally try to turn the Follow on a curved line around me and that is difficult because it requires that the Coca-Cola turn is more than 360 degrees. I also do Coca-Cola turns from DQN on a straight line but then I mostly do it one handed in order to bring the Follower back again in front of me instead of around me.

But now and then I also do the straight line Coca-Cola from DQN two handed like Carlos in the video because sometimes the intention is to flip the Partner Circle so to speak. East becomes West and West East. We end up in Caída position and that is why we can continue Coca-Cola into Exhíbela because we have rotated the circle 180 degrees.

When the intention is to continue with Exhíbela both a curved line Coca-Cola and a straight line Coca-Cola work well.