Ladder of Moves - Adapting to your follow

A very common symptom with beginner salsa leads... is the obsession to learn 'cool' moves (which tends to be very complicated).

This is understandable, as we'll be really fascinated by how nice it looks and want to increase our vocabulary of moves as much as possible.

What many fail to understand is, .... dance is not about complicated moves.... or one move after another.

It's about enjoying the music together with your partner.

In my opinion, one of the key motto that leads should adopt is --> "When she looks good, you'll look good too!"

There are many many factors to consider and take note of with regards to making your partner look good. Things like giving her space to style, time to catch breath, stability after spins, etc. etc.

This entry will talk about one of them -> Adapting to your follow (level of dance skill)

When I 1st dance with a girl, I will start with very simple moves to 'test' what's her level and her current physical state. (even a good follower can be tired and not be able to dance to her peak capability)

Gradually, I'll increase the 'difficulty' of those moves until I can sense that she's at her limit to follow those moves.

When I find that particular point, I'll just stay there or maybe go 'lower' a bit so that we can both enjoy the dance.

By doing this, we can avoid the situation where a the lead tries stuff and follow cant react properly. This often results in frustration and sometimes unpleasant 'accidents'.

The main objective though, is that the follow can react and dance to her best and thus making her look good.

If this is achieved, I'm quite sure u'll have new happy dance partner after that 1st dance :)

Now, to be able to do the above, leads need to develop what some of us call a "Ladder of Moves".

That would be something like this:
1) Very basic stuff - CBL, Simpel Turns, CBLT (can be used with complete beginners)
2) Intermediate stuff - Basic Copa, 2 handed Titanics, Al Pollo, etc. (can be used with novice follows)
....
....
X) Bastard moves that tricks the follow and changes her direction/momentum like crazy (dont try unless u know that follow well)

It is quite important for leads to master the earlier levels instead of skipping them and zooming to the complicated stuff.

In my opinion, the earlier moves are the important ones, it's where both lead and follow can show off their styling. In a 3 minutes dance, I'll typically use 80% of the song doing basic and intermediate moves, and only do about 3 or at most 5 complicated stuff.

So advice to leads... develop your own ladder. And make sure u can lead all the earlier steps of the ladder extremely well. Coz those will be the ones u use most.