The leading role swaps ahead as we reach the reflecting. Have you absorbed enough?" Meng Dan asked.
"I have, I think. I'll not step on your toes, at least."
Amusingly, this is backwards. A good rule of thumb for ballroom dance is:
if either partner gets their toes stepped on, it's the following partner's fault. Anything else that goes wrong is the leading partner's fault.
This is a direct consequence of
how partner dances with an explicit leading and following role
work (at the casual/social level, not competitive). The following partner basically only has two jobs: (1) keep time, and (2) go where they're
pushedled.
* If they get their toes under the lead's feet (or vice versa), either they're not going where they're led, or they're doing it on the wrong foot, and both are their fault. If the
couple gets off time or flubs a maneuver or runs into a wall or another dancing couple or or or or...then the leading partner screwed up- led the wrong direction or chose the wrong moves or set the wrong pace or whatever.
So really, if Ling Qi didn't step on his toes already when in the following role, she's certainly not going to do so in the leading role when Meng Dan knows the dance well. "I'll not run you into the wall, at least." would be a likelier risk. "I'll not crash you into
your least favorite relative/your boss/your schoolyard rival/another dancer, at least." could be funny too, depending on who else is dancing near them.
Edit: Note that this has little relevance to really advanced competitive or show dance and is not reliably true at the extreme novice level either where both partners are just plain clueless, but while LQ is unfamiliar with
this dance, she doesn't seem unfamiliar with lead&follow partner dances
in general, so it's still a decent rule of thumb.
*
I swear, if somebody tries to bring up the old saw about "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did backwards in heels" I will slap them. Not much- not none, but not much- of their dancing was "conventional" lead&follow partner dance rather than choreographed routines (and while the old saw is at least broadly true, those routines were almost entirely written by Fred, for which he deserves more credit), and both of them were extremely skilled and far beyond such beginner mistakes as stepping on toes; they're really not a relevant comparison.
