Hello!

Here's a frustration I have sometimes on the Salsa dance floor. It varies from lady to lady.

I find that within the Salsa community where I live, there is little interest in a frame. People are into memorising sequences of steps instead of the technique of lead follow.

I call it "noodle-arms".

In closed position, I find that my right hand (which is supposed to be on her shoulder blade) is often floating off and the connection is lost. For example, if she has drifted to my left of me, her right arm will have become very bent (perhaps even across her chest a bit) and of course when this happens, my right hand will be away from her shoulder blade.

Of course, I can move to my left so that we are in front of each other. But then she's leading me. I'm not very interested in that as of course the next scene will be an exact repeat and she will be leading me to my left and there will eventually be a colision.

What I do is I stay in place and wait for her to come into my frame. Or just do a cross body lead and see if I can position her at the end of that.

The result is that there is little physical connection. Her right arm in my opinion should be the same distance in front of her as my right arm and should't move behind her shoulder or across her chest as I move the frame.

This issue is especially noticable if I'm trying to adjust our position on the dance floor. If I try and move forward we just lose connection because my hand comes away from her shoulder blade and her right hand just goes behind her back. Going back is easier because we don't loose connection from my right hand.

I find that ladies who've been shown frame in ballroom never have difficulty with this. So they get a lot of preference from me in the Salsa community.

Another one that comes up that I like to call "jiggly-wiggly".

When in a closed position, the lady is wiggling around everywhere and of course there is no frame connection because the points of connection are being jerked around so much. She can't really pick up my frame movements very well.

I have about two years of ballroom followed by about a year of Salsa. I'm a 4 times per week 3h kinda guy. I get a lot of positive comments from ladies saying what a great lead I have. On the other hand there are ladies that simply don't see it (for the above reasons). I find that when I make the occasional mention of lead follow and some ladies are very interested in it and some look at me like I have three heads because they can go through their memorized steps with there other partners perfectly well.

But my point here is that they're hearing it from me and not their instructor.


Darcy

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