A lead should always be an invitation, never an order. You're not in charge, leads; nobody's in charge because dancing's just for fun, and your partner is your equal. Lead & follow is just a game you're playing together; never take it seriously. Never push or pull your partner; never crank her arm. Invite her, and she will move on her own. Or not; her choice. Following is voluntarily responding to invitations: sometimes accepting, sometimes not, sometimes accepting in an unexpected way and surprising your partner. The better you get at lead & follow, the less you know who's leading and who's following because you're both doing both, or maybe neither; you're creating a dance together, mutually. Everybody dances; nobody gets danced. Good partner dancing is respectful, humane, egalitarian, kind, generous and playful. Read more about creative lead-follow.
Leading & following are tools for communicating with your partner; no one should ever feel stuck with doing just one or the other. Sure, when you're first learning partner dance, you focus on learning one of them, but that's an early stage. Good dancers learn the other part to some degree, and we want our students to aim for that from the very beginning. You're not stuck following because you're a woman; leading is not some God-given privilege that comes with the Y-chromosome. Good dancers lead and follow simultaneously: both partners communicate, and both partners listen, the whole time they dance.
Whatever the 2 of you do is the dance, period. Nothing that happens is a mistake. If one of you does something unexpected, intentionally or otherwise, that's part of the dance. The only mistake is reacting negatively to the unexpected. This is dancing, we do it for fun and joy; negativity has no place in it. Never get negative about the unexpected; run with it instead, play with it, make it work. Do everything you can to make the dancing work. Don't insist the dance be done "correctly," a certain way, and don't dance instructively, to help your partner improve. Correcting is poisonous and disrespectful, unless your partner specifically asks for it. Respect your partner, not dance traditions, correctness, or other mental constructs. Do everything you can to turn your partner's "mistakes" into fun, into unexpected adventures.
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Cross-step waltz is a wonderfully playful, creative, easygoing, swooping dance that's very easy to get started with. If you've never done partner dancing before, cross-step is a great place to start because cross-step basics are so easygoing and intuitive you'll be up & dancing right away; you can learn enough the very first night to dance the night away. There are literally hundreds of playful variations and figures in cross-step waltz, add we keep coming up with more, so there's always something new in this class. Check out some videos of us cross-step waltzing to get an idea of the variety & playfulness of this dance.
Turning waltz is also known as Viennese waltz and rotary waltz. It's the dance they do at the balls in Vienna, and it's a very simple dance, just turning with your partner as a couple, one way and then the other, spinning gracefully around the the room. Some dance teachers teach fancy steps, figures and variations for turning waltz, but the more I waltz, the less I care for the fancy stuff; it seems like a distraction from the elegant simplicity of simply turning with your partner. Our classes focus on the basic turns, left and right, and easygoing transitions from one to the other. Waltzing better is simply waltzing more smoothly & effortlessly. Our approach makes it very easy to get started; you'll be up and turning the very first night of class. Watch a video of us waltzing. Another waltz demo.
Turning waltz is a very egalitarian dance; turning gracefully and easily requires equal contributions from both partners. Nobody gets "danced around;" everybody dances. Each partner holds his or her own weight and balance; you don't hang or lean on each other. Your arms are relaxed, and you hold your partner very lightly; you use your arms just to stabilize your position relative to your partner, and to help with guidance. Because the contact is light, no one ends up with sore arms or shoulders, even if the music is fast. You dance relatively close with your partner, which makes it a bit easier to turn to fast music.
Slow waltz is a very different approach to waltzing compared to turning waltz or cross-step. It's especially wonderful for those tunes that are just too slow for other kinds of waltzing, even cross-step. It's based on an open box step, and also borrows some sensibility (and some figures) from Argentine tango. Where Cross-step is swoopy & playful, Slow Waltz is dreamy and floating. It's very smooth & elegant; you relate to the floor differently than you do for other kinds of waltzing. There's a video of Zachariah and Linda dancing Slow Waltz in the video page.
This dance starts with a familiar cha-cha basic (breaking on 1, for you Latin dance geeks; on 2 just ain't right for this kinda music) that's adapted for non-Latin music: it's more laid back, relaxed, easygoing, bluesy/swingy where regular cha-cha is more intense and focused and, y'know, Latin. Swinging cha-cha is great for slow swing, midtempo blues, ballads, etcetera. It's a very intuitive dance, and any moves you already know from regular cha-cha will fit, plus you can easily adapt 8-count swing moves for it (e.g. lindy moves). A couple of my partners have described it as lindy danced in a slot instead of a circle, but then it's also got all these Latin-style moves from regular cha-cha. Video of Swinging Cha-cha.
Our version of foxtrot is based on a slow-quick-quick (SQQ) pattern rather than the SSQQ pattern because it's aimed at dancers who already know how to waltz; using a 3-step pattern rather than a 4-step patterns means you can adapt the steps & moves you already know in waltz to foxtrot music: swing, ballads, uptempo blues. It's also very easy to mix rumba and blues steps and styling in with this version of foxtrot. Here are some videos of foxtrot mixed with rumba & blues.