real salsa requires a real connection
The Cuban style requires connection. Dancing without it looks ridiculous. Like pretending to talk to someone on this phone.
One of the things I love most about Paso is that we don’t create choreographic robots. We may make some aesthetic tweaks, but styling is very personal and should rarely, if ever, be taught.
Sure we do some wild things, but if you pound the fundamentals you will become a better dancer.
Teaching ladies to lead and men to follow is one of those things that may be absurd in the world of spins, glitter mesh shirts, and polyester Salsa-bots, but it’s one of the top ways to improve your feel and sense of connection.
Why?
“Does it feel like that when I do it to her?!”
It probably does gentlemen. Good or bad. And unless you have felt it firsthand you have no clue as to how cool or crappy your movements feel. And that super-star-wars-jedi-galactic pattern? It may not make her feel out of this world.
“What is he doing? I didn’t lead him into that?!”
Probably not. And nothing feels worse than a lady who spins, jerks, or goes into some corny hairspray routine without a lead’s deliberate signal. Except of course a big clumsy guy doing the same thing! Ladies, you will learn what it means to slow down and intuit your partner, rather than anticipate.
Tango and Connection
The Argentine Tango embodies most of our philosophy about partner connection in dance. It’s actually quite simple, the leads are deliberate and the follows don’t breath without signal. Everything centers around interpretation of music, intuition, and movement. This is real dance, and everything Salsa should be, but isn’t.
A friend of mine -Tango dancer- once said to me, “It’s about feeling. Our follows could follow a Salsa lead but in general, Salsa follows are not very intuitive and would have trouble with a Tango lead. ”
I completely agree. Real Salsa requires a real connection. That’s why we reverse roles and that’s why we teach and learn the Cuban style of Salsa where leads lead and follows actually follow.
And…the men don’t wear high heeled shoes with open-back mesh shirts! Sorry, I had to.
Related posts:
- is cuban salsa just a lead’s dance?
- damage avoidance
- salsa magic on YouTube
- why is salsa a slave to form and not function?
great comments. i go back to this one almost everyday.
i’m kind of bummed about the mesh shirt, though. i think i could rock that look. oh well, there’s always the sweater vest with matching kangol turned backwards…
Dude. You went there. The kangol caps seem to be quite the thing. And since we’re doing a fashion review, the sweaters are pretty lame too, unless you’re Carlton from Fresh Prince of Bel-air.
I think Benson (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078569/) rocked a sweater vest as well!
Unfortunately, the all-too-deliberate attempt to look like one another never stops at fashion. It has the tendency to creep into other areas, like your dance.
Hi! I was in your class yesterday and couln’t agree with you more. I have learnt Tango and love it for the very reasons you stated. I tired attending a salsa class last year but left when they tried to teach set routines.I think I am going to like your school’s style of teaching! Thanks.
Hi Sophiya!
Welcome to Paso!
I myself am a huge Tango fan as you can imagine.
A quickly taught and moderately complex movement routine can be good as a coordination exercise and perhaps give the student some ideas of different ways to move your body, but that’s about it.
And I think that if you are going to teach a set routine you have to be very careful and think about the following guidelines:
1. Make it VERY clear to your dancers that you should never execute a routine verbatim on the dance floor. Mildly put, it looks silly. The routine should be used in a ‘pick a part’ manner.
2. The time spent on a routine should be very short and in no way the central focus of the class.
3. You have to encourage students to improvise on literally EVERYTHING. Otherwise, they will do what you tell them to do -and only that.
We truly believe that by creating a dance floor robot, you have created a dancer that cannot think or dance for themselves. In essence, you have failed as an instructor and cheated your student out of a solid dance education.
So bring some of those solid following principles you learned in Tango to Paso. They will be of good use!!!