I’m no expert, but here’s my understanding which I (obviously
) think is pretty accurate.
You lead the follower in the direction you want her to travel on the 1, and if you don’t lead anything else she’ll just pass you or keep going until you do something else (if you get out of the slot) or stop when she can’t go any further and head back to the original end (if you don’t). You do lead things on the other counts, or you couldn’t possibly perform even basic pattern like whips.
The style of lead is different to MJ. Very different in fact. Rather than leading spins and turns as you would in MJ for instance, you prepare your partner for the moves over the preceding couple of counts and she spins herself. I think this is probably interpreted by many MJers as meaning that things like turns are not lead, because you do not help your partner through them or ‘’drag’’ them into the motion (for lack of a better term that isn’t lead), but in reality you have just lead it earlier than you would in MJ (and assumed that your partner is competent
)
Not everything is quite this clear cut of course. If I want to lead a surprise direction change in WCS then I do have to move my partner directly much like I would in MJ, but I can usually rely on the fact that my partner can triple step without needing to think about it if I’m leading them in freestyle, which makes it a little easier from the leads perspective.
The slot and anchor step provides reliable conventions as well which frees both parties up to play a little more but still both know what’s going on.
Note that although this means that the lead in WCS isn’t as continuous as it is in MJ, that
doesn’t mean that you don’t stay connected. You
really need to be paying attention to what your partner is doing as they are free to improvise, extend patterns and hijack as often as they like, and the structure of the dance encourages all these more than MJ. If you don’t maintain a constant connection that becomes much, much harder and makes you more likely to wrong-foot your partner.
Edit: Caro beat me to it
I'll have to whip her for that later.....
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