Leader: The simple answer to how to relate to the music is just to step on the beat. Any of the beats. If you do this, you will be fine.

Leader and Follower: The sophisticated answer to how to relate to the music is that you want your body to sing with the music. Literally, if you find it hard to sing with your voice to the music (perhaps not well :-) then you will find it hard to sing with your body. The first step is not learning how to dance with your body to the music, it's learning how to have an opinion about the music.

Follower: At the beginning, don't worry about it. Just try to be connected and step when he steps. Later on, inside of his lead, there will be some freedom. And often times, followers think that they show their understanding of the music through embellishments. Really, the more profound connection with the music happens through the quality of the step they take.

Here is the Itzhak Perlman video we talked about: Itzhak Perlman Master Class