... but some dance close embrace with apilado.
Or to be more concrete - remember that apilado and colgadas and vlocadas are not actually about the "lean", but they are shared axis moves/movement principles that are based on counterbalance. The relative off-axisness depends on the ratio of the weight of the people in the couple. There are both followers and leaders who try to generate a specific look in apilado/in these moves without actually feeling where the balance points are (and often the look they imagine is based on a couple where the leader is much much heavier than the follower) and then they have the leader to basically carry the follower using strength instead of the leader using the counterbalance as much as the follower does. If you meet a follower like this it is going to be difficult if you are lighter (but it is not actually pleasant if you are heavier either - as somebody who strongly prefers to dance apilado i spend a surprising amount of time to get followers into open embrace because they try to get me to carry them around instead of using their structure to support me/our shared axis - i have more fun dancing seperate axis than "shared axis" where it really is "follower gives up axis and uses the leaders axis" (i have no idea who teaches this technique, but i quite dislike it (and it is one of the few things where i am convinced that it is not a stylistic choice, but fundamentally unsound technique)) .
So all shared axis work is based on counterbalance - if you are lighter you will have to lean more while the heavier follower will have to lean less compared to when the ratio of weights is different. Don't try to use strenght to offset this - while it is possible it will hurt on the long (and even the short run), and won't work as well as counterbalancing. Don't try to achieve a certain outward look in e.g. a volcada - the move is not in the angle of the follower, but in the counterbalance. E.g. (completely made up numbers) if you see something where the follower is at 30 degrees, and the leader at a (mostly invisible) 15 degrees angle off the vertical, and the leader is twice as heavy as the follower then if a couple where the leader is half the weight of the follower were to do the same move either the _leader_ has to go to 30 degrees, and the follower will be at 15 degrees (i would not recommend this - _a lot_ of follwers have not a lot of experience with that situation and freak out, even if the actual vocabulary/technique is the same it feels different), or the angle of the follwer has to be only 7 degrees off the vertical while the leader is 15 degrees off to keep the same balance (which i view as actually more different from the original, but it feels more the same - i think because it looks less like the leader is off balance it is more reassuring for the follower).
I would recommend practicing shared axis work with as many different weights and heights as possible and develop a feeling for the counterbalancing point.
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