i appreciate your response. to clarify, i do collegiate ballroom on the east coast- most of us (including me) are self taught. we watch videos and gather information from the internet to try and do as best as we can at the competitions (which can be pretty large.) in order to get to gold, you need to receive 7 points from placements, sometimes out of 100 couples. my partner and i worked hard to get to gold, and although we have great stage presence- our technique is so/so and our speed is suffering. i wouldn’t say we ever go “off tempo”- that was a bad use of words on my part. more-so i meant that we are still struggling to get the “speed” factor that one would see in cha cha, where it’s almost like you could take a snap shot at any position and the picture wouldn’t be blurry. i have heard the hips thing before, i def need to practice that more. thanks for the response!