While answering a few basic cha-cha dance questions in the twitter, 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.

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