One of the many misconceptions that most leaders have when social dancing is the idea that they have to constantly change their moves to impress their followers or even just to keep the dance interesting. I have had this idea myself from the very start and still get a lot of leaders asking me how many moves they need to know before they can give the follower an interesting enough dance.
The answer is most followers will be quite happy to dance at all, meet new people and often enjoy other aspects of the dance more so than a succession of different moves. While leaders tend to get a lot of enjoyment out of the number of different moves they do, followers often get more enjoyment out of aspects such as styling, ability to respond to signals, music and timing etc. Of course everyone is different and it is not fair to put all leaders and followers under the same umbrella but it is definitely not worth stressing out over some arbitrary number of moves that someone may throw around that should be learned as a minimum before leaders dance socially. If leaders are nice people who follow the general etiquette, are considerate dancers, and do not lead forcefully but rather try to be on time and lead as clearly as possible, then most followers will prefer the resulting dance to the opposite type of leader irrespective of whether the moves are constantly varied and advanced or whether they repeat quickly and are more basic by nature.
Finally, a common misconception is that leading happens predominantly by the leader giving the follower a “strong” signal with their hands. As discussed in part 1 of this mini series the hand signal itself can be very subtle but as long as it is accurate the follower will have no problem picking it up. However, it is not only the hand signal that is important for leading, but also the body position and the timing of the leader which will give the follower the direction they need to figure out what is coming next. Most moves in Cuban salsa are led on the 7th beat as that way the follower has just enough time to prepare for the next move which starts on the 1st beat of the next 8-count. Getting the timing wrong even just by one beat is highly confusing even for experienced followers so this aspect is just as important for leaders as the signal itself. Similarly, the body position is key to leading and can in certain instances be the most important cue to signal the next move. It is in fact possible to lead some elementary moves such as Vacilala or Exhibela using only the body position as a guide where the leader and follower do not hold hands at all but can nonetheless communicate moves to each other simply by the way their bodies are aligned.
