I wanted to learn how to salsa dance from basic salsa dance steps to salsa mambo on 2. What I really wanted at first was how to dance with a woman without feeling intimidated. You know the feeling when you’re standing by the sides and just watching all the salseros dancing away.
As I started learning more and more, I thought I was ready to start hitting the dance floor with full confidence. However, it was a rude awakening to see there was more training needed.
Actually, I was ready to go but if you want to start dancing with very experienced dancers you must up your game. It was not the most important factor at first. My comfort level asking women dance kept growing and growing.
Suddenly it dawned this dawned on me. Many of the women I saw dancing were not as experienced as I thought. Well they weren’t trained on salsa mambo and didn’t learn it properly. I was taking classes for three months and I could hold my own with many.
Not only did I want to learn how to salsa dance, I also wanted to learn how to bachata dance and how to merengue dance. My salsa is looking good so I could start moving on.
The problem was the club I was learning how to dance Latin was not a place where salseros go to practice their art form. Although they do go there to have a good time, it’s not really a salsa club, and you could say it’s more of a Latin dance club.
The deejay plays all types of Spanish speaking music and although he plays salsa, he doesn’t play it much. More merengue, cumbia and bachata, which is all a good mix but we’re salseros and we want to get our groove on.
As soon as the deejay plays salsa we quickly take a girl and hit the dance floor. Time is of the essence because he will only play a few salsa songs.
I realized if you really want to learn how to dance salsa, you must be bold and have humility. You must be willing to put yourself out there in front of others and make your moves with imperfections and all.
Some of us don’t want to look bad in front of others, I understand this but it’s not as bad as you may think. Excuse me, it could be bad for some and disastrous for others but it’s the only way to learn.
So take a deep breath and grab someone who you see is good and grad that person to dance with you.
However, before you do this you should be learning salsa dance steps and be trying to advance in the art of salsa. You just can’t be getting by in class and not putting full efforts. You must decide is this something I really want to learn.
You should be watching a salsa dance video, online mambo lessons and continue to advance on your salsa steps. When you are accomplishing this then you’re ready to ask for more help. It took a lot of hard work for these salseros to learn their craft and they’re not going to waste their efforts to help someone who is not putting good efforts.
You will learn in class but to excel you need to find a partner or make a couple of friends who will be your got to people to practice your salsa. All the teaching material is wonderful but don’t make the mistake some made, they didn’t take full advantage of the people around them.
It takes some humility to ask for help and to be willing to show your errors to others. People will watch as you practice and there may be some skilled salseros who will be sitting at the tables watching. You must be bold to be willing to take a woman and lead her on the dance floor and make you moves.
Yeah, it could be tough for some but just like anything else in life, the hard work will pay off at the end. Learning how to dance salsa for many, well, the payoff has been greater than imagined.