“so paso, what’s your point?”
For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived, and dishonest–but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forbears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought. -John F. Kennedy
In case you were wondering, our “big point” is to make real Cuban dance a real possibility for anyone who wants it. We don’t care where you came from, how much skill you have, or even if you have money or not!
But we want to change so much about the way people perceive dance and dance instruction in the U.S. and we’ve taken the hammer to quite a few commonly held misconceptions-women don’t lead, it’s impossible for non-black Cubans to dance as rhythmically as Cubans etc. It felt good to know that we have actually made real changes out here in the Triangle. Here are some of them:
Effect #1: Awareness
When we first came to the Triangle, no one really had a clue as to what Cuban style was about. Most people thought that Cuban style and Rueda-group Salsa-were the same thing. I think some instructors were and continue to reduce dance to a series of rote movements while forgetting about culture, philosophy and development of real creative personal expression for the student.
There are some very good instructors out here but somewhere down the line, a big picture is being left out. Sometimes I think instructors may believe in dancing to express and interpret the music, but have to give young students what they want -turns. Eventually, instructors have to go against the business norm, and teach what they believe in. You may think you’ll lose money but in the end you will have a stronger foundation and people will respect your stance. You’ll probably even earn more money.
To me it felt like that some Salsa students out here in the Triangle think that Salsa exists in a vacuum. And that knowledge of the antecedents of Salsa-Afro dances-and a deep understanding of music and expression really don’t matter that much if your spins are tight and your styling looks good. The music doesn’t really change, so why should I change my dance or my beliefs? Total 70′s time capsule.
It’s been a little under two years and what began as a vision is evolving into a movement with the help of musicians and bands like Tambor Vivo and GarDel playing real Cuban music. People are beginning to wake up to the beauty of real Cuban dance. To be honest, it’s non-dancers that are being made aware faster than the “dancers”! This is what we hoped for. I have always said that the future of this dance is totally dependent on how many fresh minds we can reach.
In less than two years Paso went from a vision to the only dance school with its own studio and very distinct and individual culture.
Effect #2: Added color to black and white.
Go to any nightclub night and you will find very little Paso presence on average. But go to any live event and the majority of dancers there will always be Paso, dancing Cuban style and the distinction between the two is very clear. When we first came here the scene looked like it was mass manufactured, and everyone looked suspiciously similar on the dance floor. I think we added a little bit of color to the scene, in the form of you, our dancers.
Effect #3: Set the bar higher for Latin dance schools.
We wanted to take a holistic approach (thanks for this one Rich) to dance and give students the complete picture: music, expression, supportive atmosphere, and possibility to become great. We are by no means finished and every day we are perfecting this formula. But we have had some exciting breakthroughs and have made some innovations that we hope other instructors will mimic.
Last night one of our new students came dropped by to visit class with her Spanish teacher who just happened to be Cuban. He was so exicited about what was going on at Paso, and in his excitement as he heard us playing Clave for the class said to her: “make sure they teach you Clave, that’s the most important!!!”.
But little did he know she already knew Clave because all new paso students, in their first hour of dancing learn to dance on Clave.
Related posts:
- what’s going on at paso?
- Paso Leads From the Front
- should instructors teach steps before clave and music?
- Salsa fundamentalists
