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...

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...

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...