As I say, I'm happy with the basic 6 & 8 count patterns, - I have done a few intermediate lessons which are all well and good, - but one thing I don't understand is, when should you walk-walk, and when to triple?
If i'm shown a new pattern, of course i'm shown when to do what.. - but I dont want to be doing set-patterns forever.. - I would like to expand on what i'm being shown, play with the music etc.. - but how does one (both myself & my Follower) know when to walk-walk or triple step?
Its my understanding that we both need to do the same else we'll both end up on the same foot (instead of opposite feet).
Wheee...!
OK - point the first: you don't need this yet. We're talking overdose of run-before-you-can-walk.
Point the second: there are much more interesting ways to break out of "set-patterns" than jacking with your feet.
Point the third: if you want to break out of the dull routine of standard footwork, there are already ways of varying/dressing-up/disguising the standard double and triple rhythm patterns without needing to actually change them.
I'd personally recommend at least two years of practice before you start coloring outside the lines here.
But, you didn't ask any of that.
A bit of vocabulary I find useful: think about the dance in units of two beats. Walk-walk fits into two beats, and has an even number of weight changes. So that's an even unit. "Triple" is three weight changes in two beats, so that's an odd unit.
Most of the time, leader and follower stay together by dancing the same number of weight changes in a unit. But the math still works if one partner adds or takes away two weight changes (my partner dances a triple, while I take a single step).
So you can stay "opposite footed" while doing different footwork.
However, staying opposite footed isn't necessary by any means. The most common form of this is jokingly referred to as "advanced footwork". Advanced footwork usually ends up looking like the leader isn't doing any footwork at all (Student: "what's the leader's footwork for this pattern?" Instructor: "One .... Six").
(Part of the joke here is that it is advanced - all of your lead still needs to be there, you can't cheat by using your feet. But mostly it's advanced because it's lazy).
The trick, or at least a big part of the trick, is learning to separate your lead from your footwork. Dancing in open position, the only thing that your follower feels is your hands - if you can move your feet without changing the way your hands move, then you can do anything you want with your feet without disturbing partner.
A good drill for this is to hook a bungie cord to a partially open door. Hold the cord in one hand slightly stretched, and start moving around - if the cord or the door moves, that tells you that you are disturbing your lead. With practice, you can move to anywhere you can reach, at any speed, with any footwork, without your hand actually moving. Don't forget to practice with each hand.
OK, next part: there exists an idea called a pattern extension, which sticks an extra pair of beats into the middle of a pattern. For example, I can turn a 6-beat side pass into an 8-beat side pass if I can get partner to dance walk-walk walk-walk triple-step triple step. How does that work? there are two cues. One is relative body position - not so important for this discussion. The other is that my lead doesn't tell her to shift gears from walking steps to triple steps. In other words, there's just the tiniest hint of an acceleration in the connection to tell her "triple now", and if I take that out, I can indicate to her that she should stay in walks.
One place where you can see this idea illustrated is the "syncopated triple". The default triple step has a step ball-change rhythm; the extra step comes before the second beat of the unit. A common syncopation has the dancer instead putting the extra step before the first beat of the unit; ball-change step. The follower is usually considered to be able to do these at her own discretion, but they can be lead.
In other words, she's switching from walk walk / step ball change to walk walk ball change step. If you squint at that, you'll find it looks an awful lot like walk / step ball change / walk. So the leader can ask her to do this by taking his "you should do a triple now" hint and moving it up one beat early in the pattern.
In addition to the actual notion of the lead, there's the problem of matching the follower's expectations. In other words - when we are staying in the set-patterns, some of them are 6 count, some are 8-count? How is the follower supposed to know which is which - especially when the patterns are almost the same up to that point?
The classic example here is a closed whip versus a turning basic. The answer has to do with where the follower steps on count 4. If she's stepping toward the leader on count 4 (as in a whip), she'll be expecting a walk-walk next. If she's stepping away from the leader (because she's already past him), she'll be expecting her anchor triple. (Note: these are learned, but not necessarily conscious expectations).
So these two ideas get put together - she knows to triple because she's getting a lead t triple AND because you've placed her on the floor in a place where triples make sense.
All of the above is purely mechanics - how to make it happen. A much harder question is "how to know whether I should lead a triple or a walk?" That leads into a discussion of musicality....
At it's core, musicality is changing your dance to match the music that you hear.
You stick a triple here because this bit of music has "more" energy than the previous bit, and you want to match that with your movement. You deliberately remove a triple there to call attention to the fact that the music has throttled down.
Definitely not something you over do - we don't normally dance an entire song in walks; rather you'll dance normal rhythms most of the time, so that the changes stand out better from the basics around them.
The guiding stars here are much the same as those we use to decide which pattern is the right one to do now: is the music building or falling, high or low contrast, is there a particular metric accent I want to bring to the foreground, etc.
That's the high level answer, anyway.
Again, I'd emphasize that normally you'll already have a lot of great dances under your belt before you need to make this a conscious part of your dancing.
