Salsa Josie

Bodies, words, and dancing ... these are a few of my favourite things  I was inspired to write this by a video that was shared online and you can see here . In it,  Anya Katsevman talks about focusing your dancing somewhere even more fundamental than your feet – inside your own body. She tells us to "dance from the inside out." She talks about how the words dance teachers use can only go so far in explaining what you need to do. Really, you need to know how your body feels and how it works. This resonated deeply with me.    I learnt salsa initially in Japan and my Japanese was pretty limited. This means that for a long time, salsa was non-linguistic for me. Maybe that’s part of what I loved about it. The rest of my life is all about words. As a language teacher and linguistics researcher, I am a very word-focused person. But salsa was something that was being explained to me in words I didn’t understand on any level, so I learnt it through feeling. I didn’t start te...

As I always say, there is nothing basic about the basic step. It is the basis of good dancing, but it can take years to refine and perfect. There are many elements to consider, but here are the main five:    1.          Weight change A step is a change of weight. Knowing this is even more important than knowing the timing. Almost everyone goes through a stage of pressing their feet to the floor and not changing weight, and some people add all kinds of extra weight changes because they are “dancing”.  Change your weight in the same way you do when you are walking, taking your body with you, and you have nailed step 1!    2.          Timing  In on1 dancing, this means changing weight (aka stepping) on 1,2,3 and 5,6,7 in an eight-beat count. At first, you need to focus on starting on the correct beat in the music, which is 1, and waiting on the 4 and 8. The sooner you can confident...

While cooling off outside a recent salsa event, someone who started dancing a few months ago remarked on how much they have learnt about themselves in the process of learning to dance. I said, "That never ends". It doesn't. At the end of the same event, someone who has been dancing and teaching for many more years than I have told me, "Don't doubt yourself". And that right there was my latest lesson for the dance floor and for life.  A vicious circle Dancing in my local scene and with familiar people means I am very relaxed most of the time. When I am relaxed, I am confident. I don't doubt myself. Even if things go wrong, I am relaxed and confident enough to laugh it off. When I dance elsewhere with people who are less familiar and perhaps intimidate me with their skill and experience, I am less relaxed, less confident, and I start to doubt myself. These dances will never be good dances for that very reason. It is quite a vicious circle.  Dancing at Sals...

TL;DR dance more.  You know that feeling when you are fully in the grip of salsa addiction? You think about it all the time. You’re always planning your next salsa night. Wild horses wouldn’t get in the way of the next salsa hit. I want to get that back. I have not lost my love for salsa, but now it is very much a love of teaching and seeing other people enjoy it. These are not small things. In fact, these are very beautiful things, and I will write about them separately. However, those sublime moments of purely selfish salsa love are becoming a rarity, and I want more of them. I’ve been dancing for nearly two decades and I know that there are many peaks and troughs in a salsa life. The good thing is, you’re not always chasing the dragon of your first few weeks of salsa. There are many more exciting and harder-earned peaks later down the line. There are also troughs: times when you realise how much there is to learn; times when you lose confidence; times when life gets in the way, ...

I am very happy to have had a busy November and December teaching in the Cabana de Salsa AKA the shed. From students who have been learning for a couple of years looking to improve technique to people wanting a crash course in salsa before a trip to Latin America, I've had the pleasure to work with old friends and some lovely new people.  When I am teaching a lot of salsa, I find that a theme can emerge. The recurring theme this month has been  slowing down . There are a few reasons why this is so difficult:  It's exposing! Fast dancing can hide all manner of sins. When you are going slow, there is nowhere to hide. Every unconnected body movement and bit of sloppy technique is visible. Moving quickly requires good fitness, but moving slowly requires detail and precision  It's tiring! When I dance basic step to long, slow track, and I really focus on filling the music, it is as mentally and physically tiring as three chaotic minutes of fast dancing. It's more com...

For me, the Holy Grail of dancing is not fancy moves and styling; it's musicality. The simplest and subtlest moves, breaks, drifts, pops and shimmies become little moments of dance ecstasy when danced in response to the music. They are great alone and even better with a partner!  Easier said than done. When you dance salsa, there is a lot going on. You need to time your moves, focus on technique, lead or follow, and be aware of the dance floor. That's a lot to think about. Do you have to think about musicality as well?!  Add to all that the complexity of salsa music. Unless you were born in a Latin American country or into a household of salsa lovers, your first musical language is not salsa. It is, if you were born in the UK in the last sixty or so years, probably pop or rock of some sort. You absorbed solid 4/4 timing from before you were born. You bounced to it as a baby. You jumped up and down to it in school discos. You tap the steering wheel to it as you drive. You still...