Friday, February 13, 2015

Lead v/s Follow: 5 quick tips for a suave Salsa experience


Leaders:

1. Keep your leads lucid and distinct. What is easy to understand is easier to execute.
2. Leads need to be timely, not forceful.
3. Look at the dance from your partner’s perspective with respect to movement and direction; ‘her left, my right’ will put you on a collision course sooner or later.
4. Make a mental note of how your partner responds to cues. Start slow and improve upon what both can manage; discard movements that your partner clearly doesn’t understand.
5. Set your partner free. Shines are a good way to test how comfortable either partners are with musicality and free movement.



Followers:

1. Be cognitive, not pre-emptive. Trying to guess the lead is just too speculative and it robs you of the time to use the music.
2. Let the music set you free. There is never just one way of interpreting the music/lead. Keep experimenting.
3. Give subtle cues to the partner if he/she is being too rigid or forceful.
4. Don’t let styling get in the way of your dancing. You need to make sure that your styling goes with the flow of the dance and does not catch your partner off guard.
5. While most men struggle with basic lead and timing, followers can communicate a change in rhythm and pace by adjusting the frame/body language or sometimes even through facial expressions. You can lead too, without the partner even realising. 

5 comments:

  1. The beauty of salsa is in perfect coordination of performers. The leader leads, the follower follows, but finally it's their combined efforts which makes the outcome a delight.

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  2. It's the combined grace which creates a masterpiece every time, irrespective whoever leads or follows.

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  3. In salsa it's 2 people creating a picture of grace and poise and need them to be in a perfect sync to give a performance which is visual delight.

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  4. Like soothing music, a well coordinated salsa dance is soothing on the visual senses. Delightful and calming too.

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  5. Salsa with its graceful coordinated moves, creates a picture both charming and sensual.

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