Getting back on count
A short guide for casino dancers who get off-count and want to recover without a hard reset.
Beginners are cursed with not finding the count and being off count without knowing, which bothers onlookers. Improvers are cursed with knowing how to find count in most songs, and hence they are the first to feel discomfort when falling off count. You can’t just defibrillate the dance with a hard stop, like you would a heart to restart the pulse. So, here are some of the ways I get back on count – fixing the car while driving it.
Rodeo, casaté, familia
If you take away one technique from this article, it should be this one: you can prolong any of the indefinitely rotating figures (rodeo, cásate, familia) with enough counts to synchronise the dance again. This is by far my favourite way to shift the count, since it can correct any offset, goes unnoticed due to staying connected to the follower, and she gets to show off too. The only real difficulty is that at some point along the way, either the left or the right foot will step twice in a row.
Cruze
In rueda, it’s not uncommon for everyone’s guapea to be off by exactly one bar. The cruze figure is the simplest way to fix it without ceasing to move, namely by grabbing the follower and forcibly repeating the last bar of guapea to offset the dance by four counts.
Downsides of using cruze in pair include that it can only fix four-count offsets (although to be fair, these are the most common), it’s not subtle, and more importantly that it is basically impossible to lead, because it requires the follower to start the cruze bar with the same foot (her left) which she used to end the previous bar.
Suelta
One simple and flexible technique is to just disconnect from the follower, get yourself on count as subtly as possible (dressing it up with any shine you want) and then reconnecting.
For offsets of exactly one bar, the issue is that your weight is on your left foot when it should be on the right and vice versa. This can be fixed by doing any shine that uses all 8 counts of the music, because these end every bar with the weight on the same foot. For example:
- Every bar of a mambo step ends on the right foot, so by doing an odd number of mambo steps, you will have your left foot available on 1 to do any figure on count.
- As a variation on mambo, you can replace the taps on 1 and 3 (and 5 and 7) by kicks.
- Another playful variation is to replace these kicks by knee raises, where you clap under your leg on 2 and 4 (and 6 and 8).
Crown with partial mambo
Shines fix the leader’s count. The thing is, reliably leading the follower into changing purely her footwork (i.e. which feet hold her weight on what count and when she taps versus steps) is really only possible with force. This was the case for cruze, and similarly, you can clasp both her hands and move her around to mirror a shine of your choosing.
Yet, this isn’t subtle at all, and your follower won’t like her hands tied like this. A much better alternative is to hold a crown (after sombrero, Bayamo, doce, montaña, exhibela, …) and do the mambo trick above. To signal that you will keep holding the crown, expand your chest and/or stretch your arms out and down. Take care not to squeeze her hands while you do this.
This method, like doing a prolonged rodeo, keeps the connection alive while being low in forcefulness. The only downside is that the left foot is trapped for half of each bar in a mambo step: that is, you can start a DQN on your 1 (if you were on-count), on your 2 (if you were ahead by 1), on 5 (if you were ahead/lagging by 4) and on 6 (if you were lagging by 3). That is: you can adjust your count by \(-1\) (\(+7\)), \(-4\) (\(+4\)) and \(-5\) (\(+3\)). Worst case, you thus have to do multiple alternating mambos-DQN-sombrero sequences to get back on count, but at that point, just do a rodeo.
Conclusion
Rodeo and mambo are the best way to re-synchronise your partner and yourself when you lose count. Rodeo is the most flexible, and mambo is a good and shorter second choice for certain offsets like when you have your bars switched (your steps do 1-2-3, 5-6-7, the music does 5-6-7, 1-2-3).
