The Hook Turn, also called Giro de Son, is mostly used by the Lead. But a Follow could use Hook Turns in hands-free free styling. The Double Hook Turn, Giro de Son Doble, is for the better Leads, and we see double turns often in show dances, in social dance demos as well as in social dancing. Despite the fact
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I might use “Matrix”, the Macho Dip, at training sessions for pure fun and fitness, and I might even use it in my secondary dance mode of crazy dancing. But I almost never use Macho features in my main mode of dancing for a simple reason: It undermines the focus of my dance. I want the look and feel of
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Let us talk handholds in social partner dancing, let us take a closer look at the basic handholds for the start position of Open Position in Cuban Salsa and for Salsa in general and for several other social dances like Bachata: “Claim the Wall” (The Cup) , The Pistol (Gun), the Spiderman, and he Classic Cuban Macho handholds. What are
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We should use named moves, with a start and an ending, small mini-dances, as little as possible. We should focus on basic figures of one count of eight in order to have as small building blocks as possible. The smaller the building blocks the easier it is to improvise and be music driven. At almost any moment, for each count
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I believe that a Lead should ideally know and practice hundreds of basic figures and moves, but only use a small selection in any one dance. It is better to use 10 figures 5 times in one dance than to use 50 figures one time. In the Social Dance Practica Video below, more than three minutes long, I only use
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In social dancing we should only use so-called moves as an exception to the rule. A named move, often with a silly name, is a combination of basic figures with an added beginning and ending in order to give us a self-contained mini-dance that normally starts with Guapea in Open Position and ends with Dile Que No and back into
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In shows, workshop videos and social dancing, we sometimes see a Follow being led around the Lead with her arms and hands high for two counts of eight or more, doing a couple of 360 turns along the way. Such figures are mostly nameless and often improvised or choreographed as an unfinished products in need of being generalised and optimised.
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ExhÃbela Inverso is a Basic Figure of one count of Eight, one of the four CaÃda Walks, starting and ending in CaÃda Position. The Follow walks “1-2-3-Inside Turn-5-6-7-Outside Turn”. The defining feature of Exhibela Inverso is the outside half left turn on “7-1”. When this outside turn is used alone, we could also called it “ExhÃbela Inverso”, even when the
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This is one of my favourite figures, and a good example of a figure that only works in Cuban Salsa with forward walking dance mode. The Follow needs to walk forward on all steps. Just one back-step and the Coca-Cola Walk falls apart just as it is the case with many others of the very best figures. This Coca-Cola Walk
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A hands-free Coca-Cola, or a free Coca-Cola meaning that the Lead let go of the Follow’s hands and set her free to turn exactly as she wants, is surprisingly rare in Cuban Salsa. Hands-free Coca-Cola Double Left Turns are so rare that they are almost a sensation! This might have something to do with the way most Cuban Leads dance
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