u/FlunkyGraphics

Hey everyone, just wondering — when did Bachata actually start being fun for you?

I've been dancing for about 9 months now, and honestly at a pretty high volume. I go to class 4x a week and hit socials 3x a week on top of that. I'm doing online courses, practicing isolations, body waves, hip movement, all of it, at home too.

And yet... I still can't pull anything off at socials. I'm nowhere near being able to dance through a full song. It's way more stumbling than dancing, and honestly it just feels awful. I know Bachata takes a long time to learn, but I feel like I'm running out of steam here. It's genuinely draining putting this much time and money into a hobby that brings zero joy and mostly just stresses me out.

So — what do you think? Should I quit? Or grit my teeth, push through another few months (or years), maybe get private lessons? I can't shake the feeling that I'm just not very talented at this and that I need way longer than most people. At the same time, I have this feeling that I would love dancing if I could actually do it — but at my current level it's just not enjoyable at all. Maybe that feeling is misleading me though, and I'll just sink even more time in only to realize years from now it was all for nothing.

I know 9 months isn't long in Bachata terms. But investing this much time, almost daily, for 9 months straight into something that isn't just "not fun" but actively draining — that starts to feel unbearably long.

Ran three black-box fingerprint tests on stealth/ox-alpha (OpenRouter + OpenCode) vs public GLM-5.3 on z.ai.

1. Tokenizer: I sent 6 texts (EN/DE/CN/code/emoji) and compared prompt_tokens. Ox Alpha = GLM-5.3 exactly +75 on every text. Same tokenizer, constant 75-token hidden system prompt. Kimi/Qwen/MiMo/MiniMax all diverge. Counts identical on both Ox routes.

2. Error strings: Invalid reasoning_effort on Ox Alpha (OpenCode passes params through) returns:

"[1210] This model always engages in thinking and cannot be disabled; please use low, high, or max", so the same as the GLM 5.3 error message

3. Temp-0 outputs: Greedy, same prompts → same markdown quirks, same German-decimal LaTeX (`0{,}375`), near word-for-word matches on factual answers. Qwen/MiMo/Kimi format these completely differently.

Conclusion: I'm quite sure than Ox Alpha is a GLM model. Not sure if it's a vision variant of GLM 5.3 (GLM 5.3V) or a completely new version like GLM 5.5 but I guess it's unlikely that Z.AI drops 5.5 so early but idk.

What are your thoughts?

Hey, maybe this is a weird question. But I don't really understand what's the purpose of dance school for follows.

Usually what I experience in beginner to intermediate classes that classes consist 100% of learning new figures. I have been in 3 dance schools so far and this is just how it is. Only in the advanced class we actually focus on technique and musicality.

As a leader, learning new moves may help you a bit, especially in the beginning. But what is the purpose for follows? In the lower-level classes, my experience is that the followers really try to remember the combos and do the stuff on their own. Sometimes the followers even looked at the follower next to her instead of me.

I've met a few follows on socials that told me that they never went to dance school or just a few times. And my experience is that they are usually not worse than the follows that attend a lot of classes. I really can't tell a skill a skill gap here.

What makes a good follow in my opinion?
- a great vibe while dancing (smiling, eye contact, having fun, playfulness,...)
- adding something to dance I don't lead (styling, footwork, interpretation of the music,...)
- good body movement in general (proper basics, waves and body rolls in every direction,...)
- proper following without backleading

None of this is taught in dance school usually. I know there are specific lady style classes and classes where they actually teach to be a good follower, but in my experience, followers usually don't benefit from dance school at all.

Of cause some followers go to dance school just for fun and this is absolutely fine. Not everyone wants to attend socials at all. I know many follows that attend classes for many months without planning to go to social and this is absolutely fine. But if the teacher says "free dance", I can tell that they struggle a lot more than almost every follow I know from socials.

Hey,

I'm quite frustrated. I started with Bachata about 8 months ago. I'm very dedicated, I go to dance school 4 times a week and go to socials 3 times a week. I also practice my fundamentals like hip movement and all sorts of waves and body rolls at home. I also put a lot of effort in musicality. I did an online course about musicality and sometimes analyze some songs to improve my dancing.
I would classify myself as a solid beginner. I worked on my basics like frame, basic step, leading through body instead of hands and so on. If I know the song well and the follow is advanced, the dances are quite great cause advanced follows can compensate a weak lead quite well. With beginner follows, sometimes mistakes happen because my lead isn't ideal yet but I try to keep it simple there. Dances usually are bad when everything compounds: crowded dance floor, beginner follow, unknown song,... then its get's tough. But that's totally my fault.

The problem is: Very few follows enjoy dancing with me. I get rejected quite often by follows who say yes to another lead 3 s after I asked. Sometimes I get rejected 3 times in a row. Also when I'm looking to ask someone, many follows look away and pretend they don't see me to avoid getting asked by me. Also during the dance and especially after the dance I notice quite often that the follows didn't have a great time. It's quite rare that I feel like a follow enjoys dancing with me.

What do you think could be the reason? I do take care of my hygiene, I try to lead soft, I try to have a reasonable amount of eye contact, I don't force anything, I don't teach on the dance floor. Also I don't dance overly sensual/creepy or so. I feel like I don't make the typical mistakes you find when watching videos from follows explaining what they don't like about leads.

The only thing which causes a bit of friction is that my dance school teaches BachaZouk / modern Bachata Sensual. Many follows on socials mainly dance Bachata Moderna and can't do waves, body rolls or any Zouk movements. But I don't try anything difficult or dangerous when I dance with follows I don't know well. Usually I stick with beginner techniques and sometimes intermediate things when it's a follow from my dance school. I don't do anything advanced because I know that follows don't like it when beginners try advanced figures when they can't even do the basics right.

Have I forgotten something? Do you think follows just don't like beginner leads? Or is there something I miss?

Hey,

this is one of my main problems in Bachata at the moment: Leaders, if you learn something new in dance school and you like it, what do you do to be able to lead it actually on socials?

The thing is, when we learn something new in dance school, after doing it a few times I'm very comfortable with doing it in dance school. But doing it on socials doesn't work that easy cause the follower is not prepared for it so it requires actually good leading from my side. That's the problem, where can I practice? I don't have a practice partner and probably won't find one.

With beginner figures, it usually works instantly on socials without any problems. With the more intermediate ones, it does not. And the intermediate figures are exactly what I'm aiming for. Quite difficult and fun but usually not dangerous as some advanced ones when done right.

One of the things I try to learn at the moment is a side or forward wave in shadow position into 1,5 DJ turns into a half cambre into either a wave or a half rotisserie (depending on the music). We have practiced many figures very close to that in dance school but I can't lead it perfectly cause i have problems with the hand switch after the first DJ turn and the transition into the half cambre.

Also there are many other things I've learned that never made it to my social vocabulary. It is so frustrating cause I put so much effort into learning those figures, thinking of how I combine them to match the music better and so on but it feels worthless.

Followers: Do you think it's a bad idea to practice on socials? What do you think when a leader is trying things he is not 100% capable of doing yet and the figures fails? Since my style of leading is very very soft, pretty much nothing will happen other then loosing the basic step for a second. Is it uncomfortable for you or is it fine? Is it rude to ask after dance if I can try the figure slowly again to practice?

I've heard that followers want leaders to only do things he is 100% comfortable with. But how should I progress when I'm only allowed to do things I can already perfectly do.

Hey,

I've started dancing Bachata about 8 months ago. Every single time I read threads on reddit, many people say that you should focus on your basics, you don't need flashy moves, work on the fundamentals first, don't impress, followers enjoy very simple dances with good fundamentals.

To be honest, this makes Bachata very boring for me. I would definitely agree that fundamentals are very important and basics like your basic step, basic turn and very simple things add up to basically everything you do. But do I really need to have a perfect base to build more complex techniques on it?

Currently, I take classes 4 times a week. 1x beginner level, 1x intermediate (the level is quite low there, I would also consider it to be a beginner class) and 2x advanced level (probably more intermediate by international standards). I do social dancing about 3 times a week. Is there anything wrong with that? Am I rushing anything?

I feel like it's quite nice to learn more intermediate techniques like DJ turns, tilted turns, Rotisseries and other Sensual/BachaZouk things early in order to get used to the movement pattern. Basically practicing everything including basics at the same time.

I'm not trying to impress anyone with complicated figures but I really enjoy more intermediate stuff so much and it just feels great to lead those things. I would consider myself somewhere between beginner and intermediate so I do take classes above my level at the moment. Do you think this will slow down my process? I will not skip beginner classes for a while cause I get very good feedback from the instructors there.

Hey!

I'm really curious how good the average dancer at your socials is, in your experience. For me, I was pretty shocked the first time I went to one. There were zero beginner leads and almost zero beginner follows. Very, very few people I'd consider intermediate. Most of them were actually really good. At the time, I was in an intermediate bachata course, and everyone at the social was far more experienced than the people from my dance school.

Is this normal? Later I joined an advanced course, and that's when I actually started meeting people who went to socials. In the intermediate course, almost nobody was going.

It gets better from social to social, and the gap between me and the average level there keeps shrinking. But right now it feels like it'll take years just to be average.

On one hand, I'm learning incredibly fast, because basically every follow I ask is absolutely top-notch. On the other hand, I feel a little guilty even asking, because I'm not a good dancer yet and I'm afraid of being annoying. In general, I have this feeling that I'm completely redundant in the bachata scene right now, since there are good leads everywhere you look.

I would love to hear your experiences :)