Hyperreal

Had my third Salsa class tonight…

I’ll keep this brief though…

From starting with a group of four people, I ended up going on my own tonight… Felt a bit lonely…

It took ages for the class to start as the teacher was fixing up her register…

When it did, it was a 100% Salsa class. No Bachata, no Merengue. Just Salsa.

We started with a Ceroc-Essentials-style warm up… Stepping forward and back and stepping back and opening up to left and right… Stepping side to side… The only difference was we were stepping Salsa steps, in Salsa time.

We started with a wee revision of some of the moves we already had learnt, in the usual format, but soon the teacher came down and formed us into a Rueda, so we we could put Dames onto the end of out Dile que nos. We’d done this last week though… So what did we do new this week? Not much…

We did the Exhibela Ronde that I mentioned last week. It just involved the guy turning CW and switch hands behind his back as the girl turns and steps back in. From this R-L hold a dile que no could be done to transfer back to L-L. The other similar move was the enchufe doble y quedate which involved another ronde-style turn instead of a reversed enchufe, to bring the girl into to the closed position.

I learnt today that the dile que no is one of these ever-so-famous cross-body leads we keep hearing about! Woo! Or, really, is that it???

We spent a lot of time just practicing these extra moves, and all the moves we already had been taught. According to my wee card, all we have to learn is El ocho, unless it’s simply the hip movements we did the other week which she described as ochos, as there is some sort of figure eight drawn… There must be more too it than that.

Hardest thing is the footwork… Getting it right, being on the correct foot. Oh, and keeping up when we’re dancing to music and the teacher is calling the moves just a fraction too late for me!

(Can I just say that the difficulties I complained about when I first started Ceroc about in-experienced followers also carry forward to Salsa? When I danced a bit during the Rueda with the sort-of-taxi-dancer, things just went smoother, though that may just be because she was anticipating… Don’t know, but I hope not.)

At the end of the night, we had another stupid “teacher’s track”, that we “danced” along to, more Merengue-style than anything else, and that was it!

Although there was music after, not very many people were dancing… The “taxi” dancers, and one couple who came together, in which the guy looks like he’s already quite good and he’s just there to keep his girlfriend company…

Next week is supposed to be a revision week – I’d rather get on and learn stuff.

Oh well…

Just one other thing to say… Want to thank jivecat and others who read and commented on my previous Salsa posts… This week’s has been a bit boring, but maybe there’ll be more next week. Thanks!