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Turns are mostly for the Follow if we want a Follow-Centric dance. Except for the Hook Turn, the Lead should only turn himself as an exception to the rule to avoid Leader-Heavy dancing or even the look and feel of a Macho dance. A Lead should set the Follow up for fantastic turning and not put focus on himself.

In Follow-Centric dancing, the Lead only do double hook turns, and Lead’s left and right turns with hand-shifts, if it is matched by the Follow’s turn performance. A good Follower, if she has the option, will move on to other dance styles, if she is kept down as a secondary performer or even reduced to a dance prop for the Lead, sadly enough common among Cubans.

Traveling Turns, “Vacilala” (right) and “Coca-Cola” (left) are to Cuban Salsa what body rolls are to Bachata Sensual. They are difficult to learn and very few Follows master them. Most never get it. Even at advanced level, very few Follows can do triple or double turns for a surprising simple reason. They can not even do a single turn good enough to make a double turn possible.

I think there are three reasons why so few Follows are strong turners:

In Cuban Social dances like Cuban Son and Casino, there is a strong tradition of Macho dancing or of Leader-Heavy dancing. The Leads like to completely dominate the dance leaving very little room for the Follows. That is it doesn’t matter that much that the Follows can’t turn, because they are only there to as an alyby for the lead to excel. As long as the Follow can follow-along and catch up with the Leader, it is good enough. The Follow is not expected to contriburw anything to the dance, except that she must not ruing the Leads show.

One could ask the question if a dance like Cuban Casino is at all a social dance or if it is a dancer for Leaders with the Follows reduced to helpers for the Leads.

Why double turns are important

How should we dance Casino?

The classic concept of leading and following, that the Follow should just follow and that the Lead decides the repertoire and almost anything about the dance, does not make sense in a modern world. It is so antiquated that most people either stay away from social dancing or they accept the antiquated Lead/Follow roles as a price to pay to make social dancing possible.

Modern dance styles with dance roles that better reflects modern living have not yet emerged. While we wait, we can practice Role Rotation and develop concepts like Active Following. And we can set up “rules” and requirements for the role of the Lead so the Lead is less likely to abuse his power and responsibilities.

The Lead must create a couple dance of equals, where both the Lead and the Follow are the heroes of the dance. They must both shine. The Lead must always modify his dance to the level of the Follow. Instead of out-dancing the Follow, the Lead should always do all what is within his powers to make the Follow dance as good as possible within her talent and skill-level.

Give the Follow room

Since the Lead decides the repertoire of the dance, and is dancing his own repertoire each and every time he goes social dancing, he knows his own dance down to the last detail and has a huge advantage compared to a given Follow that might experience his way of dancing for the first time.

Not only that. The Lead can plan and prepare all sort of stunts, gimmick, fancy footwork and styling, and he knows exactly where to pull it of in his dance and for how long time, and he can stop at ant moment and start something else if something went wrong or didn’t developed as planned.

The Follow is always busy following, catching-up with the Lead, often confined and restricted by two handed figures and Nudo figures so tight that she can hardly breath. The Follow never knows in advance what she will be able to do where and when in the dance and for how long, and will most likely fall behind or get started to late, and the Lead has very likely already moved on to something else she must relate to and try to follow.

Unless the Lead has trained for years, not how to shine himself, but on how to facilitates the Follow’s dance, she rarely gets a chance but to follow and catch-up with the Lead. Unless the Lead really makes an effort to make the Follow dance to give her room, she is most likely doomed to be just a shadow we hardly notice.

The Lead could, if he wanted to, completely steal the dance from the Follow and make the dance all about himself. Self-promoting Lead’s that has reduced the Follow to an assistant and often even to a dance prop, a second class citizen even on the dance floor, are sadly enough very common in Cuban Social Dances like Son and Casino.

Follow-Centric dancing

Instead the Lead should step-down and make the Follow the focus of the dance. The price for being the Lead, for being responsible for all the things that can be derived from the role of being the Lead, is that the Lead must create a Follow-Centric dance. The Lead’s job is to show the world not how good he dances himself but how good he is at making the Follow dance his dance with him: How much can he unlock the Follow’s full potential.

A Lead should never use shines, add-on styling, Musicality, etc, except in response to what he can make the Follow do. Everything the Lead does must be matched by the Follow or the Lead hijack’s the dance for himself. The Lead can only do double turns and the like if he can make the Follow also do double turns or something equally demanding.

The proof of the Lead’s qualifications as a Lead, that he has lived up to his responsibilities, is that the Follow gets the biggest applause after the dance, and that the Lead’s applause is mostly for his ability to make the Follow dance not for any stunts, gimmick or even wonderful “Musicality” details he might have done on the dance floor.

Forward and Back-Rocking

In order to turn, the dancer must step forward and turn over the forward walking foot, left or right. This is why Casino based on natural walking, where the Follow steps forward by default, is the ideal platform for dancing with a lot of turns. On each and every step, the Follower can be turned with very little preparation.

In Back-Rocking Cuban Salsa, where the Follower has a preference for taking back-steps on “1” and “5” in many situations, it is much more difficult to turn. The Leader must first lead the Follow forward because he can not rely on the Follow doing it by herself.

The hesitation caused by a fraction of a second, when the Follow suddenly recognized she is led forward, is enough to make turns less likely in many situation. Vacilala is a good example.

In forward walking Casino it is piece of cake to do a Vacilala on “1-2-3” with very little prepping. But the hesitation of “forward or back?” is enough for the Back-Rocking Follow to be too late in many situation. She is led forward on “8-1” but wasn’t mentally ready: Instead of a turn she just starts walking, and either she does a walk-around “turn” like a snail house spiral (pseudo turn) or she delays the turn to “3-5-6”.

In Casino based on natural walking, turns can be added all over the place with good flows into and out of the turns. In back-rocking sub-styles, most turns are part of choreographed Rueda moves, or the Leader must carefully prepare the Follow first.

Types of turns

Hand-led spin turns, “stir the pot”, are rare in Cuban Salsa, almost non-existing. But of cause they can be done, especially if the dancers are used to them from LA and New York Style of Salsa dancing. Personally I don’t like the Show-Performance, acrobatic, Look and Feel of a Follower being giving a prolonged “stir the pot”.

Dancers are different: I don’t like to boast, I am not into show-off dancing. My goal is meditative magic, musicality and playfulness.

One form of spin turns (aka Pirouette turns) do occur in Cuban Salsa mostly as free (hands-free) turns in some situation when a Follow is curled out or pushed into a hands-free turn. Whenever a Follow can turn freely she has the choice between spin-like Pirouette turns or traveling turns. In some situations spin-like turns are the most natural or a Follower could do them to prevent bumping into other dancers or for variation.

But in general, I recommend always to do traveling turns because that is the type of turns the Follower need in almost all hand-held situations. Traveling turns are difficult to make good enough to make multiple turns possible, so a Follower should use every opportunity to hone her skills. Traveling turns are the hallmark of Cuban Salsa.

Traveling 360

Since Cuban Salsa is a dance based on natural walking except that some sub-styles allow for back-steps on “1” and “5” making the walking less natural, the primary turn is a traveling turn called Vacilala to the right and Coca-Cola to the left. Almost all turns are full circle, 360 turns. The Follow is led into them and continues out of them ideally as if nothing has happened. On a straight line traveling turns are 360 degrees but when done on a curved line the turns must either be more than 360 or less than 360 in order to step on the curved line.

A good rule of thumb: For traveling three step turns each step of the turn must be in front of the previous and in order for the turn to integrate into the walk seamlessly, each step of the turn must land in the footprints she would have made if she had just walked forward without turning.

Three Step Turn

Traveling turns can be done with surprisingly many techniques but most of them are not that traveling “all the way” since they take forward steps out of the turn and should for that reason only be used in an emergency, caused by misunderstanding, bad leading, lack of preparedness, difficult dance floor, etc.

The traditional way, and by far the most common way to do traveling Vacilala (right) and Coca-Cola (left) turns, is to use three steps and divide the 360 turn into two half turns, 180 degrees between step one and step two and another 180 degrees between step two and step three.

The technique for the Three Step Turn is an adaption for Salsa of the universal and versatile Three Step Pivot turn. In other dance styles, the three step pivot turn is often done with collecting the feed on one-two or two-three, called “châiné”. This should be avoided in Cuban Salsa because it takes a forward step out of the turn.

The ideal is, at least in Casino based on natural walking, that the Follow turns in such a way that she for each step of the turn lands in the foot prints she would have been making by just walking forward. This is of cause the only way a three step turn can be integrated into any walk seamlessly.

In addition to traveling three step pivot turns, we have several more or less “bad” three step variations starting with a half or 3/4 Piruette, or ending with collecting the feed (Châiné turn), and the so-called Janus Turn, and the mediocre Three Step Lazy Turn (the most common in Cuban Salsa), Walk Around turns, Salsa Vuelta with back-step, spin turns (pirouette), spot turns and Two Step Turns. Exhíbela can also be used to walk the Follow into Hammerlock or Sombrero. All these alternatives have severe limitations or can only by used in a sub-set of situations.

Pivot or Half turns

Half turns are often neglecting when teaching Cuban Salsa but they are very common. The problem is that they are sometimes confused with pivots for directional change in between the two halves of a Count of Eight or at the end of a Count of Eight. Enchufla is not half a left turn but a directional change on “3-pause-5”. Likewise for the directional changes of Exhibela and Paséala on 3-pause-5 and 7-pause-Eight. They are not turns.

In my opinion a half turn can not stand alone. If they do they are just a pivot around, a directional change. The most common real half turn is at the end of a Vacilala turn on “3-5-6”. If the turning continues with a half turn on “6-7”, we clearly have a half turn added to the other turn. In that way a three step turn becomes a Four Step Turn with 180 degrees between each step. When doing a double Vacilala turn, we have a Five Step Turn doing 180 degrees between each step, and if we add a half turn, it becomes a 2.5 turn using six steps of 180 degrees!