Body Spiral, Three Tracks, Turns, and Pivots.

There are normally three positions for walking:  outside partner left, directly in front of partner, outside partner right.

Use body spiral for effective lead prepositioning and pivot tension in your own body.  This is true for both parallel and crossed systems.

The following video is provided for to illustrate spinal movement discussed in this post (turn the sound down or ignore it).


Lumbar Spine Inter-vertebral Movement Rotation... by MedilawTV

Anytime you are doing a front or back ocho correctly (separately or during a giro) or while using contra body position during the walk while in either outside position your body is in spiral tension (torso down tension) and is set to lead a turn effectively or to pivot on axis.

You may also place your body in spiral tension as a leader by prepositioning your feet and hips to create spiral energy for pivots or lead energy for turns. (floor up tension).

Some possibilities you may consider:

preposition yourself outside left for turns to the right

preposition yourself outside right for turns to the left
pretension the spiral energy in your body to lead a turn by taking a crossing back step close to your own axis on the side of the direction of the turn that you intend to lead.

Remember that the followers back step is common to both linear and circular movement and is a good place to transition between the two (in to and out of the turn), this has the effect of letting the follower know what the next two steps of the turn will be following the normal  (back, side,  front,  side...) way of turning while going in to a turn.

Example;  while walking forward, from the leaders prospective, if the leader positions himself outside of the followers right side when the follower takes a back step with her left he may step forward with his right (contra body position right) and lead a side step and then a front step circularly around him in a counterclockwise direction using his torso only (the follower feels the need to take a front step because she has just taken a back step followed by a side step so naturally she will want to take a front step) .  At this point the leaders body is in spiral tension so that he may pivot to continue the turn or possibly lead a front ocho to change the direction of the turn to a clockwise direction (leaders body is already in the proper spiral tension to do so).