(continued from previous post...)
By the way, even those mirror image figures like Crossovers are not entirely arbitrary, as far as the starting foot is concerned. Look at any syllabus, and the first Crossover is the one forward on the man's LF. That's generally agreed upon. However, rather than presenting the figure as one rock and one chasse to each side, the other schools will always begin in closed position with a half-basic. A half-basic is not a Crossover. It's a half-basic. Worse still, many of them will tack an underarm turn on the end. That's not a basic figure, that's choreography. And it's ultimately a disservice to the students who study the syllabus. At the very least, it should be seen as a basic disadvantage to this method.
To avoid all that, rather than inserting an entire half-basic in front of most of the figures, we cut the fat and inserted only one single step, and then labeled it a "prep step", to indicate that it is not officially part of the figure. We could have eliminated the prep and started directly with the man's LF rock step, similar to the ISTD Int'l syllabus, which would have remedied the perceptions some people have of the figures seeming "reversed". But this solution has problems of its own. In particular, the prep frequently aids in illustrating the transition from the previous figure. In this way, the prep concept serves a similar purpose to adding a half-basic in front, but with less clutter and a more clearly defined entry point.
At any rate, the purpose of this long-winded essay, in addition to giving you some insight into the thought process behind our methodology, is to point out that there is no best or perfect way to compose a syllabus. Each choice along the way has advantages and disadvantages. Our choices may occasionally appear to be swimming against the current. But it's not right or wrong -- It's just a choice, based on a philosophy. Early on in the development we made a decision that one of the ways we wanted to set this syllabus apart from any other is to take a more component-based approach, rather than serving up pre-packaged sequences. This underlying philosophy has had quite a ripple effect, impacting even some of the smallest and seemingly unrelated details. The starting point of the Cha Cha figures is one of them.
Just remember, in the end we're all teaching the same thing. When you really study this stuff, you'll realize that the Cha Cha figures described here are not "backwards" or "reversed" at all. We're not telling our viewers to start their Cha Cha in a different way. At most, we're simply asking them to *look* at it in a different way, with the hope that doing so will give them a better understanding of how the smaller pieces of the puzzle fit together.
Regards,
Jonathan
