Leaders - How do you lead cross body?

[vit]

My opinion is also that it isn't a good idea to teach Milton's or other alternative ways of CBL and similar figures on beginner's classes

But it's not because it would be hard for beginners to learn it. There is another problem that I faced on some ballroom hobby classes. Some teachers were claiming that leader is responsible for almost everything in the couple. While this actually is a sort of true, insisting on that produced followers that were not able to remember even their steps in most basic figures, so they were totally depending on leaders. And leaders were not able to lead them properly, as they never danced with a good follower to get a feeling how to lead them . So couples were pulling or pushing and arguing with each other whole of the time and everything was a big catastrophy.

Learning beginners this way would do the same

 

[olamalam]

in order not to confuse beginners, this version of xbody can be tought as a different move. like half 360. i remember that i learned 360 about 2 months after i started salsa. so, this can be taught as well and when beginner come to more advanced levels, he will use it instead of normal xbody when necessary.

 

[DaveFUK]

in order not to confuse beginners, this version of xbody can be tought as a different move. like half 360. i remember that i learned 360 about 2 months after i started salsa. so, this can be taught as well and when beginner come to more advanced levels, he will use it instead of normal xbody when necessary.

I actually agree with Vit.

Whilst yes you can sort of get a novice to do a 360(rotating cbl) their technique wont be good because they just don't have the requisite skills, dance frame, connection etc to perform it correctly and teaching it too earlier just breeds bad habits for later on when you need the 360 as a fundamental for something more complex. There's to many people out there who can't even execute a basic Cbl well so to add another layer of complexity is asking for problems.

Whilst I've put fingers to keyboard I might as well add my penny worth

I don't usually use Miltons technique unless the floor is REALLY packed and then I'd probably choose not to actually dance
Having said that I don't ask the woman to move more than my hip width in the CBL, and no my hips are not that big! I find that many guys IMHO lead cbl to long and a lot of followers take to big a steps and so travel much further than they require or I lead. I dance and teach to do everything within about a 3 foot long slot. You don't need anymore than that. This means the follower is not having to sprint up and down the slot no matter how fast the music is(within reason). The down side is it requires much better technique from the lead and follower to be able to keep things this compact.

 

[olamalam]

I don't usually use Miltons technique unless the floor is REALLY packed and then I'd probably choose not to actually dance

Yesterday I was at bar salsa and was packed as usual. I noticed that unconsciously I'm doing a longer side step on5 (with on1 timing) while leading xbody turn on the packed floors to make my partner travel less.