For both on1 and on2, in her spectacular part, the follow uses three steps. In on1 it is 5-6-7, in on2, it is 2-3,5.  This means that the follow has 33% more time to conclude.

A couple of friends have really got into on2 salsa (Eddie Torres style), the site Addicted 2 Salsa presents more complicated moves in on2 timing and many more experience dancers seem to prefer on2. So what is the difference?

Well for one, you move in opposite directions in on1 and on2. A salsa "eight" is made up of two musical bars, held together by the clave. Sometimes it os a 3-2 clave, sometimes a 2-3 clave.

In LA on1 yo use the first bar for the setup, and the second for something more spectacular. In on1 in is the other way around. I fail to see that this would be the selling point for on2 though.

Secondly, as a consequence of this inversion, the lead moves backwards in the first bar, instead of forward. This is really tricky if you've done a lot of on1.

Thirdly, you break (change direction) on 2 and 6 instead of on 2 and 5. Some dancers think this is more in line with the feeling of the music. It is more oriented towards the percussion, the conga specifically.

However the big difference in in how much time you have to make a spin, turn or whatever else spectacular you have in mind. The reason is that you still count 1-2-3, 5-6-7 in on2. For both on1 and on2, in her spectacular part, the follow uses three steps. In on1 it is 5-6-7, in on2, it is 2-3,5. And there is a pause in between 3 and 5, where the 4 is. This means that the follow has 33% more time to conclude her spin, turn or other spectacularity in on2 than in on1.

One morning when my mind was clear as an autumn day, I counted the number of moves I know and use when doing social salsa dancing. It came to sixty. Now, a move is defined here as one eight, so nothing fancy in length, and many of the moves are simple variations on each other. I am however growing tired of them. I think I would be happy with about 300 moves.

Many of the moves I have learned but don't use I picked up at drop-in salsa classes. You try them a couple of times and more often than not they cannot become a part of your social canon, either because they are intrinsically too difficult or because you haven't cracked exactly how to perform them.

Then you see other guys' moves at the socials and you realise they are quite similar to your working repertoire, yet different enough that you'd like to add them. If I could remember every good, simple move I see I'd be at 300 fairly quickly. My instinct is then to take up the camera and record their moves, but I am not sure this would be socially acceptable. Another avenue would be to memorise them, a third to derive some rules from what they are doing and synthesize them.

Give that my brain is more into rules and principles than actual data, I think I will need to go with option three and try to reconstruct my fellow dancer's moves from a few distilled principles.

So what principles or themes are then available? There are cross body leads, copas, walks, open breaks and turns in place. The girl can be transported in the slot forwards and backwards, and can be turned while travelling. Hands can go into hammer locks or embraces, or be held above the head for spinning and turning. The girl can be to the side, in front or behind. And all of this can be combined in different ways. Could this be analysed ad synthesized? Sub moves?

Many of my new moves happen by mistake. A misunderstanding happens with the follow, and she does something quite interesting and you see what you did wrong and make that into a new move.

Two weeks ago or so I participated in a very inspiring workshop held by Fernando Sosa. One of the things I noticed he did was to turn the girl one more turn than what I would think of. Basically, when you are moving the girl in any kind of rotation, even if it is just half a turn to make her change direction, you can add a full turn to it. The girl ends up in the same position but after a bit more motion and drama.

If it is a two handed turn, you can place her lower hand on her body where you can pick it up again after the extra turn. As an example, let's say you are in open hold, turning the girl CCW to get into a hand knot, left hand over. Well that is just one turn unless the hand knot is going to be impossibly knotty. But if you place the girl's left hand on her body, you can turn her one full turn, pick it up and continue with a final turn.

Essentially the same move, but with more action.

I am also thinking of positions that could be turned it to transportation, but that is for a later blog post.

Taking again a cue from Mikael, he recommended med to take a course in body isolation. In fact, this is what he recommends most people to do.

So, what is body isolation? As far as I can tell, it is about becoming aware of the different parts of your body, and being able to while dancing control them more independently.

I started taking two introductory lessons at the biggest salsa dance school here. I chose another school later on, but that was merely for practical reasons than to do with any lack of quality at the first one.

Anyways, we practiced doing movements with only the shoulders or hips, isolating each shoulder sometimes and combining the movements with different steps and timing.

This training had an immediate and surprising effect on me: After the first lesson my posture while dancing was so much better. I simply looked much better while dancing. After the second lesson, my posture in general improved tremendously! I walk feeling about one inch taller than usual. I found this surprising, since we had not even practiced posture. The reason for the improvement in posture is that you can only do some of the movements while having good posture. Specifically you cannot roll your shoulder forward independently unless you have good posture, and the diagonal hip rolls do the same further down in the body.

I then switched schools and have so far only been to one lesson. In this course they started out by talking about center of gravity and having your weight a bit forward. I will return with more info on this as the course progresses.

I would be of the opinion that as long as you and your dance partner are happy, how it looks to others is not all that important. Still, watching yourself on video is a great way to get feedback on your dancing.

We're a group of people self organizing into some salsa practice every week, the main organizer being Mikael. Mikael is a details oriented guy, and for the first time in a long time I had the opportunity to watch myself on video. It was apparent that my head keeps bobbing up and down as I move through the salsa steps.

Why does that happen, and what do you do about it? I realized that just concentrating on "not doing that" wouldn't work, since my body would either have no idea of what to do about it, or compensate in a way that would be, to say it in a nice way, highly original. Now, this is a perfect case for Mikael to crack so I asked him about it.

Mikael explained that the upwards and downwards motion is a natural consequence of stretching and bending your legs, and if you want to keep your head still height wise, the rest of the body needs to compensate for the legs. I had figured out as much myself, so I asked him "But precisely how do you do that?".

Mikael explained that the hips, back and shoulders adjust for this by moving in an s-shape, that contorts and expands in such a way as to precisely compensate for the legs' upward and downward motion.

But in contrast to in sports, where you tend to do this balancing by moving your hips and chest forwards and backwards (like if you go down a hill on skis or roller skates), the moving s-shape is in this case moving sideways through your body. Your essentially adjusting the length of your spine by twisting it sideways. This involves thinking about and moving your shoulders, tummy and hips. And this is in fact the Cuban hip motion. Mikael showed a bit of body isolation and how to practice in front of a mirror to get it right. Now Mikael likes things to be correct from the beginning, while I prefer to get it in the right direction and then having it gradually come in to place by the context of what you are doing.

Mikael also remarked that the way I place my feet was incorrect. The background to all this "sloppiness" from my side is that due to scheduling constraints I have only attended drop in classes in salsa, and because of their very nature there is no opportunity for the teacher to pay attention to each participant as to how they do the basics.

On top of this Mikael explained that at many beginner's courses where you are supposed to get the basics, sometimes they do teach such a simplified form of the steps as to be wrong. They teach you to stand still on 4 and 8 (when you in fact should be in a fluid motion) and to place the feet side by side on 2 and 6 (when they should never be placed side by side, since that is ugly).

In a nutshell it's time for some practice in front of a mirror and adjustments of the very basics of my dance. Next social event will tell if I can keep it all going, without losing the ability to do my moves.

Just as you can stop her turning before doing a 180 (in e.g. a cross body lead with travelling turn), you can do a 180 in a move that you previously did not think of doing so with. For example, a cbl where you keep or catch grip of both hands, it is naturally to stop in an embrace, both facing in the same direction. However, it is possible to continue the follow's turn another half-a-turn, and you end up side by side. This then easily leads into a shuffle. In addition, since you have an embrace it is easy to make her do figures more or less on the spot by controlling her motion forwards, pulling her back one or more times.

If the cbl starts with left over right cross handshake you can do the same, but without the embrace.

While dancing socially, I sometimes try to focus the attention on something, to explore it. It can be posture, energy or passion.

This week I started focusing on something rather obvious - the woman.

Of course you always do that in a way, but the way you are taught salsa it is easy in the beginning to focus on your own moves, posture etcetera.

But come to think of it, the man is only there to make the woman look beautiful (or dynamic or whatever). So this week I started focusing on the folllow's moves. What I did became secondary: I just needed to be in the right place at the right time one way or another. Dance partners vary a lot in timing and temper, not to mention height.

It is really all about focusing on what I need to do to make her do her moves. I think this approach, besides being a bit self evident, will be proven fruitful.

One variation with regards to open breaks, is to remain in front of follow or step to the side. For example when doing a one handed open break with the left hand to follow's right, you might put up the right hand in front of follow and lead her into a double turn in front of you.

However, if you step to the left side doing this, the double turn can turn into a traveling turn, and in this way you can set up follow for a side by side embrace or for a new cross body lead.

With no turn and no change of grip, stepping to the side woud lead into a copa. Stepping up on the left side (follow's right hand side) would be the start of a 360, or you would move around follow arresting her forward motion on her waist or shoulder. Or if you move outwards while stepping up, it would put you in a half copa.

I will put in the links to the moves when I have the time.

Some moves that are normally ended with the dancers aligned in the slot can instead be ended with the dancers side by side.

• For example, in an open hold, you can do an open break and then turn the follow around in front of you into a two handed embrace. If you step to the left hand side as she is coming in for the embrace, you will end up side-by-side.
• If you start a move in a diagonal one handed open hold (left to left, or right to right), and move the follow in an inside turn, you can step up beside her while turning yourself half a turn and stop her with your leading arm around her shoulders. Again you end up side by side.

Currently this site is organised around the concept of moves and positions. Typically although not invariably, a move is one "eight" long, that is two bars in the music. This is where the counting comes from, as in "123-567". Each move has a start position and an end position. In this way it is easy to put together a routine.

However as I am adding more moves to the moves section, and when doing actual social dancing, it is becoming more apparent to me that there is a middle position, and interim position, that you typically reach on 3 and leave on 5, and that many moves share an interim position, and that in fact you then can take the first part of one of those moves and combine that with the second part of the other move.

So it seems a good idea to break down a move into two sub parts. In that way you should be able to cut down on the number of moves you need to remember, because by doing combinations you can still reach a respectable number of apparent moves in your repertoire.

An example of an interim or middle position would be the "Side by side holding hands, lead to the left" position. It is a start position for the move "Side by side holding hands to side by side embrace to two handed cw turn", but it is also the interim position that you reach on three for the move  "Lead's left turn hand overhead, to one handed embrace of follow", and that move can have a windmill as the second part (although at his point in time I do not seem to have entered that variation move into the site yet).

I think I will start with making a new headline called "middle position" in the moves and link that to what position you have in the middle of the move. Later on maybe this smaller unit, sub move, or half move or whatmachacallit, should be the unit you combine to make a routine. Not sure yet.

Alternate between shoulder and waist

In some moves you guide follow on her shoulder. In many cases the waist can be used instead of the shoulder (examples), And conversely if you are already using the waist, use the shoulder.

In (move) you can stop her by wrapping your right arm around her waist, or by putting your right hand on her shoulder.

When you do a cross body lead with a travelling turn, your leading hand will perform some kind of circling motion above the follow's head, to guide her in her rotation. If one instead lowers that hand to waist level, the follow's turn will automatically be arrested when that hand makes her own hand wrap around her waist or back. Be careful though when wrapping her arm around her back so her wrist does not get strained.

Dancing with your partner next to you - facing in the same direction - gives variation and can look very elegant, especially if you get the shuffle right (where the follow can fling her head into a dramatic pose).

You need ways to get into the side-by-side position, you need ways to get out of it and you need interesting things to do while you are in it.

Getting into the position

A cross hold works well, since it will "unfold" nicely into a parallel grip once you have flicked the lady around. A one handed diagonal grip also works well, especially left-to-left if you are going to have the follow on your right hand side.

Getting better at dancing. Current theme.

Current theme is variations. Remembering moves is hard work, and some of those that you learn are difficult to perform on the dance floor. A couple of variations can come in handy, where you are basically doing the same move but varying one thing in the move that makes it different and will present the follow with a bit of surprise and variation.

You can for example vary the height of the leading hand in a turn, keeping it low to let the follow wrap her arm around her body or if she is turning in the other direction, move her into a hammer lock.

When stopping the follow's rotation, or guiding her into a rotation, one may also alternate between stopping and starting the motion by means of her hand, shoulder, waist or hip.

Thirdly, if you normally do stop follow's rotation, you can try to not do it and instead turn her another half a turn, leading you to stand side by side, facing in the same direction.

Alternate between stopping and not stopping the follow's turn

In (move) you stop the follow so she is facing away from you, by holding her shoulder or around her waist. But if you do not stop her, she will do a 360 turn and you can set her up for a new cross body lead.

In (move) you end up in a Titanic, by spreading her arms wide and low. But if you keep the hands high, she can do a 360 turn instead. If you keep your right hand low you can guide her into this move instead.