Dip Butterfly

The dip butterfly is a social-salsa partner figure in which the two-hand 'butterfly' hold resolves into a brief, supported dip — a beat of grounded stillness set against the turning, traveling motion of a turn pattern. Holding both of the follower's hands, the leader settles his weight, lowers his own frame, and supports her as she leans her torso back and down into a short held shape before the couple recovers upright. The figure is built on the 'butterfly' itself: a two-hand orientation, catalogued among the hand positions that organize salsa turn patterns, in which the leader keeps both of the follower's hands and crosses the connection to frame her upper body.^[1]

Execution

In the dip variant the leader never releases into a spin. He grounds his base, drops his level, and offers a frame stable enough for the follower to trust her weight to as she arcs back and down; because both hands stay connected, he carries the load and returns her to vertical rather than leaving her to muscle herself up. The descent is led and recovered within a single measure so it lands with the music instead of arriving as an abrupt drop, and throughout it the partners keep their mirror-image footwork — as the leader breaks back on his left, the follower breaks back on her right. Two-hand-hold patterns of this kind belong to the foundational-to-intermediate vocabulary taught to developing social dancers, introduced once the basic step and a secure double-hand connection are in place.^[3]

Relation to the butterfly spin and naming

The dip and the spin are two resolutions of the same hold. In the butterfly spin the leader changes the hand connection and travels behind the follower as she turns, converting the crossed grip into rotation;^[2] the dip butterfly instead turns that same grip into a vertical descent, trading travel and turn for a held, grounded shape. The shared vocabulary is Anglophone in origin: because the terms come from English-speaking studio salsa, most scenes name both the hold and the figures drawn from it with the English word — butterfly spin, dip butterfly — rather than with a distinct local term.