I've been dancing salsa for a little over a year now. I love doing shines, but have found that many men simply don't seem to want to break from the partnerwork. I can only assume that in some instances, the men are not confident in their own shine capabilities, and so they never want to let you go so to speak? I REALLY REALLY LOVE doing shines, so I feel like I'm being stilted when men do this. But I guess there's no way to gently pull away from the guy, and just start doing shines, without coming off as an obnoxious show-off or something, is there?? :--)

Thanks!

That's one of the setbacks of dancing the follower's role in a partner dance. You have to follow every single lead. You can try to break away during a free spin and not pick up his hand, but you'll come off looking presumptuous, obnoxious, b--chy. A woman did that to me (that wouldn't be you would it?) at a club once and while I thought her shines looked cool, I never got the desire to ask her to dance again.

just wondering why you never had the desire to dance with her again.

Can somebody explain what the term shine or shines means. Some of us are foreigners and like me a bit lost here. The same with leaders and followers. The man to me is the leader and the lady the follower ..always.

If you really want to do a particular move, you could try saying something to your partner, like "do you know how to do shines? I've been working on them."

Also, if there are particular guys who are more fun to dance with because they challenge you or let you do certain moves, then you can try to get them to dance with you more by simply attempting to make eye contact across the floor so that maybe they'll come across and ask you to dance. Or you could even ask them yourself. (Women can do that these days.)

Shine. It's another name for dancing a solo variation.

You should discuss it off the dance floor rather than pulling away.

If you start breaking away, then you're not following.

I'm sure you wouldn't appreciate it if you had a partner that didn't feel like leading.

You can dance by yourself if you aren't interested in the lead follow at times or find a partner who's interested in the same thing. That's why I mentioned to talk about it off the dance floor.

Myself, I'm not big on shines as I'm working on other stuff right now. I did have a partner who liked shines a lot. She didn't really break away but she would miss a pick up after a release or would ignore attempts to pick her up. I stopped dancing with her because I didn't want worry about every time I release her that she might not follow for a while. I suppose I could work more on shines but I still don't really want to dance with ladies who don't feel like following.