While answering a few basic cha-cha dance questions in the forums, I found a great video that helped illustrate how you can lead different styled cross-body leads in cha-cha (where you can skip the cha-cha step). You can always stick to the basic in doing the cha-cha step in place while performing a CBL, but after a while, that gets pretty boring (yawn!).

After you master the cha-cha step (you can do it without thinking), you can add creativity by modify your cha-cha steps and body movement in a CBL move. Remember, you can always NOT perform the cha-cha step, however, that requires you to have great timing so that: 1) you never throw your partner off time AND 2) you can easily get back in sync with the music. To be more clear (so I don’t get into trouble), while you may have modified your steps to not perform the cha-cha-cha to the music, the steps you replace them with must still be in sync with the music.

Here below is a clip from a couple social dancing cha-cha at the Puerto Rico salsa congress. It should provide more inspiration and creativity for those searching…

[More at the Forums]

For those wondering, the first song is ‘Panama‘ and the second is ‘Salchicha on Huevo‘.