Welcome to the wonderful world of phrasing!
The short answer to your question is that there's more-or-less two methods of making that phrase change, and if you're interested in it at all the one you'd probably want to use will depend on the music.
The first approach is starting on the "starting on the one" in a phrase. It's most appropriate when the new phrase has a definite feel of starting fresh. From what I gather from your post this is most likely what you're doing already.
The second approach is the "big hit" method, and I'd go out on a limb and say that it's the more useful one if you're dancing to modern pop music and the like. This happens when the previous phrase has that build up you mention and finally reaches it's peak at the beginning of the next phrase before continuing in a more normal fashion. Luckily it's also the most intuitive for most of us
The trick with those big hits is to either set up something dramatic if you can hear it coming from far enough away to do so, or to figure out how you can modify whatever move you're doing on the fly to make something out of it if it sneaks up on you. In my experience, setting stuff up is easier but learning to make something up in the moment is more rewarding in the long term.
It sounds to me like you're on the right track already. Yay!
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