Sure if it’s an active follower that can contribute to the existing flow of the dance, a great follower can enrich that topic like you said. On the other extreme a bad active follower will disrupt the conversation, i.e throwing badly timed boleos by herself just because she feels like it.
Unless the song / movements you’re leading are very slow / simple, as a lead you do practically need to plan the next move or two in advance while you’re performing the current one to make sure they flow smoothly.
For example, if you want to do a leaders gancho into a followers open step, you generally have to setup her step to be going around you more than it is linear so it’s a lot easier.
Same with setting up a followers back sacada in certain situations.
Even for consecutive back ochos one needs to sort of setup the beginning of the next back ocho near the end of the last one so the intention is clear.
I’ve had many teachers in privates tell me I need to plan ahead more, i.e how I want to finish a movement and what direction I want to face when I begin that movement among other things.
I imagine very experienced leads may not need to actively do this as much as they may have trained to do a lot of it subconsciously.
Pugliese is tough for multiple reasons but for me it’s mainly if you don’t know the song it’s hard to predict since it’s not as formulaic as other orchestras, and I think you need a greater vocab + more space to express the dance to his music. For example for me, it just doesn’t feel musical to dance in a milonguero style with short choppy steps (i.e ocho cortados) in very small space to many of his songs. However that style is possible with lots of d’arienzo songs and is a lot more simple to be musical with.
