Hyperreal

Hey Salseros, sorry for this late post on my fourth week of my Salsa experience…

This week wasn’t very different from last week. The only big difference was the location…

We were in a different location from normal – a make-shift dance studio, rather than a bar. This is good and bad. It has mirrors. This is a bad thing. It doesn’t have an audience. This is a good thing. The key positive differences were it was roomier and so it was easier to work in a circle without pillars getting in the way; the music wasn’t up so loud and so we could hear the teacher better; it was easier to talk and mix with people as we weren’t all sitting at our own tables. The one real negative was there was no stage so when the teacher was leading from the front it was sometimes hard to see her feet – though the mirror helped.

We’re back there again next week, but I expect we’ll be back to the bar for the last two weeks of the course.

Although the class was meant to start at 8, with the change of location and a new beginner’s class on before ours, we didn’t get started until about half 8. It was good though that when we arrived the teacher invited us in to help out at the end of the previous class. With all of three or four week’s greater experience, we felt so advanced compared to the novices. We got to show off our Merengue experience as if we were pros!

As I said the class was much the same as last week. Only Salsa. I guess we’ve done enough basic Merengue and Bachata to introduce us to the concepts we need to take into Salsa. We danced in a circle, but we didn’t do any dame moves, and moved on girls outside of the dancing, anti-clockwise.

Most of the class was revising and then building on what we’d done last week. So we did the Ronde version of some of the moves again, where the guy turns (CW only so-far) and switches to a R-L hold behind his back. Last week we did a wee walk-around thing where you lead the girl from her hand on your L shoulder, walking 1,2,3,-,5,6,7- in a CW circle and then turning her CW in front of you to bring her into a closed position ideal for an Exhibela or a Dile que no.

This week we did a similar move but this time we did a R shoulder walk around which ended with the girl wrapping in, into a comb-type position where you’re meant to (mock-)kiss her on the cheek and the unwrap away CW. From that we did a low handed enchufe which ended up with you leading the girl on her shoulder to duck under your arm to bring her round into the position you’d normally be at the end of the enchufe, but you’re holding her right hand with your right behind her back, instead of the normal L-R in-front hold. A normal-ish dile que no gets you back to the normal open position though.

As we walked the women around behind us, the teacher gave them three different styles to add to their walking – one was a up-down thing I think she called son, next was a hip-rolling thing, and the third was similar, though she said the Spanish word she called it meant “undressing”. This was actually the one I liked the best!

Up until now the teacher has mostly taken the role of the man during class and has been able to give lots of feedback to the girls she dances with. This week she had wanted to be a woman, and as the numbers were fairly even (I think there was only one woman having to lead during the class) she got to do this. And so as she moved the women round we one-by-one got to dance with the teacher! (Scary!)

I was maybe fortunate to be half way round the circle when she started doing this, so I had time to perfect the moves before she reached me. I was pleasantly surprised when she praised my dancing, telling me I was the only guy in the class she’d danced with yet who had got the move and the footwork correct. She then corrected herself as there was one other guy who’d got it right. It turned out that he had done some “2-step jive” before. So even with the limited footwork of jive dancing, we seem to have an advantage over the rest! She did tell me though I needed to be more assertive in my lead for the walk-around to make sure I really was dragging the girl behind me. But that was easy to fix. I’d have been lost if she had started to tell me I was on the wrong foot!

At the end of the class she showed us what we’d be doing next week – basically a bunch of related turn and spin moves based on one she called the Sombrero. Looked very like all the travelling returns and related moves in MJ.

Last thing was the “Teacher’s Track”, just more footwork and turns and the like, similar to what we’d done in the warm-up. Not bad fun, but there was the problem of not being able to see her feet a lot of the time, and the eternal problem of just when you’ve got what she’s doing, she’s on to something else! Because she didn’t have formal memorable names for some of this stuff and occasionally threw in things we hadn’t done it was hard to follow what she wanted us to do when she wanted us to do it. Actually, this was also a problem during class. Because we weren’t always following a fixed routine, we had to listen out to the moves she was calling and be ready for anything. Sometime difficult if you’ve already committed to a different move and she calls the move late.

And that was it!

Again, I really enjoyed this class, but wasn’t quite sure what I got out of it. I guess though when I compare myself to the beginners who were in before us, I really do know quite a bit. I am no-where near being confident to dance a whole track myself though.

As yet the teacher hasn’t talked about freestyle skills, and the music seems to just be a nice background for some people… Although I can find the “1,2,3,-,5,6,7,-” rhythm in the music, I’m not confident in it, and I’m reluctant to try any real Salsa dancing until we’re given a little more instruction in these matters.

Only three more classes to go…

Thanks for reading and commenting. See you next week!