Eight Count

 One of my favorite salsa songs, Tu Amor Me Hace Bien, has 118 eight-counts in it.  Roughly.  I just counted it, and I wasn't doing a great job, so lets just put a +/- 10 on that.  Now I don't know if that means it has 188 measures, or if it has 376 measures.  I don't know if a count is an eighth note, or a sixteenth note, or a quarter note, or maybe even a half note.  I used to know.  There are some things I've been told that I don't believe...one day I'm going to get my hands on some sheet music and find out whether or not I'm an idiot.

Anyway.

So.  118 eight-counts.  I have about 10 moves.  Some of them only last for 4 counts, or to put it more simply, half an eight-count.

Why are we talking about this?  Because in salsa, the guys come up with the moves.  And one of those moves I only want to use once.  Its called the Philly Favorite.  In the abstract it is an awesome fucking move, but overuse in the late 2000s reduced its impact.  For the past year I haven't been able to do it because I had forgotten how;  it involves a lot of hip-touching and if you saw the way a Seattle girl reacts to having her hips grabbed you'd think I'd just slapped their ass.  However.  This morning...I don't know if I was dreaming or awake, but I at least half-dreamt that I was salsa dancing, and that I was doing this move.  The realization surprised me and I quickly woke up and replayed everything in my head a few times until I had it.  When you break it down, its actually not special at all:

• right turn with both hands
• double hair caress
• cross body lead with inside turn lead from both hips
• keep your left hand on her hip and follow it around as you cross the dance line
• slide your hand to her back, and start her on another cross body lead behind you
• catch her hip with your right hand to spin her into another inside turn
• i usually end it by either catching her in closed position, or by pretending that whatever it was that happened instead of the move i was trying to do was, in fact, on purpose

That's it--just a right turn, hair caress and two cross body leads.  You only think its awesome because of what the arms are doing.  It takes up four eight counts.

So That's one move.  Now I only have 114 left to figure out.

[edit]
You know, I could actually construct a graph where the Nodes are positions (left 2 left) and the Edges are the salsa moves.  Then you could actually just use breadth-first search (or its variant, breast-first search) to generate new patterns that you normally dont do because you always do certain moves out of habit.


[edit]
Just started watching my old salsa videos.  There are a bit of a mind fuck because they are all "on1" and my brain can't stand watching it, however, also, I was really fucking good, man.  I want to be good again.