the cuban salsa blog

Last night I had the privilege of attending a workshop taught by Alicia Pons, here on her 5^th visit to the Triangle.

A renowned Milonguera, she is known for all sorts of cool Tango things like her display of feminine elegance, precise footwork and the list goes on and on…

But for me, it’s her incredible PASSION for the dance that makes her a world-class instructor, a term that is used far too often and far too casually.

She outlined five basic principles of connection. These were meant for Tango, but they can and should be applied to any dance.

In dance, true progress comes from re-examination of the self. Not from patterns, tricks, techniques etc. Anyone can do these, and everyone does these.

Any good dance instructor should, first and foremost, lead students on a journey of self-examination.

Examine what you do over and over again, and never settle in or become too comfortable with your dance or the philosophy that underlies it.

1. Connect with yourself.

Be aware, plain and simple. Be aware that your are breathing. Far too often we forget that we actually exist while we are dancing. We become so focused on the next step that our own movement becomes lost and end up looking like choreographed machines.

2. Connect with the music.

LISTEN before you do anything. Resist the urge to just grab your partner and go through the motions. Music leads, always.

Sometimes, I think we fall back on a mental routine that tells us to activate some pattern simply because a certain type of music is playing.

3. Connect with your partner.

In the words of Alicia Pons, “The embrace is handmade”.

Of course it is! It’s woven from the thread of partner and music.

I think every dance should be handmade. I am in love with this idea.

If for nothing else, out of respect for your partner, tailor the dance to them and the music.  And if you view dance as a gift, is it really appropriate to give every partner the same gift?

4. Connect with the floor.

Cut the string, relax the shoulders, and break the egg.  Allow your energy to travel into the floor and avoid sustaining it all in the shoulders in one big ball of tension.

I was corrected on this one. It’s easy to do, so watch out.

5. Connect with other couples on the dance floor.

She didn’t touch on this one too much, probably due to time constraints. But, it goes without saying that you probably won’t be the only one on the social dance floor.

I think you should always exercise special awareness. Be aware of where you are in relation to everyone else.

I urge our readers to ponder the above points. Take a second to examine yourself, if your priority is growth and fulfillment as a dancer.

I understand that some “dancers” may view the above as total bullocks. These are usually the men out there who boot up and sequentially execute their dance routines like a Windows PC.

If you think this kind of computerized dancing is cool, remember that it’s usually the men who love to wrap their arms around technology and cool gadgets.

Women on the other hand …

I will leave you with my favorite Alicia Pons quote.

“Men, sometimes the embrace feels so good, it’s more than enough.”

If memory serves me right, there was not a single expression of disagreement from any of the ladies in attendance.

The follow’s game is a psychological one…

Here are 4 simple guidelines that we believe every follow should ponder on before getting out on the dance floor.

1. Keep your head out of the game.

Easier said than done, right?

Figuring out your lead is not your responsibility. Once you truly accept this, your dance will change. You will become flexible.

If your body does not understand the lead, compensating with logic and using your “head”  is bad business. You can’t think your way through a dance, and although many of you have tried, you probably learned by now that it doesn’t work.

2. Don’t stick to your style.

When social dancing, let go of your ideas and preconceptions about what Salsa is and isn’t. If you dance Cuban and your lead is NY, congratulations, you just became a NY follow, and vice versa.

“Now what if I don’t know X style of dance, and my lead is trying all these moves that I don’t understand?”

Choices:

A. Learn to dance like your lead so that you can “follow” him.

B. Try your best to guess what the lead is trying to do.

C. Do only what you physically felt compelled to do.

Choice A is just plain backwards, learn for the love of the style. Choice B is what most follows do and the results are usually horrid. A follow hopping around through her own moves is just not cute.

The answer most beneficial to following is C.

3. Avoid commitment.

Think twice before taking that big step, literally.

This is the only technical advice that is applicable in most situations. Do not commit yourself to any one direction with large steps. It’s kind of hard to take them back.

I see it all the time.

New follows taking step sizes well over the length of their foot and going everywhere but where their lead intended. It looks awkward and goofy. Salsa is a spot dance, save the large steps for accents.

It’s much easier to recover from a small misstep than a big one. Taking smaller steps is the fastest way to improve several aspects of your follow.

Keep the length of your steps somewhere around the length of your foot and avoid radical deviations. Minimize your commitment ladies, and always keep your options open.

The alchemy of attitude will allow you to turn even the worst situations into solid gold.

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” – Voltaire, La Bégueule

A guest post by Joe

We’ve all been there.

Happy at the end of a long day or week.  Maybe it was Murphy’s touch. Like the Midas touch, only instead of turning to gold, everything you touch becomes something brown and smelly.

One day I made a couple of bad decisions that proved Murphy’s Law.  At the end of that day I was debating going to CSF class or happy hour…

Despite temptation I went to CSF class and I messed up my lead on X turn pattern and my follow did not know what to do.  Perhaps it was because I was cleaning up mistakes all day, but what happened next was not what I usually do.   As a new lead in this position, I usually hit the reset button and start over in either closed or open position.

But this time we kept going, what mistake?

That’s when it clicked. The reason we take apart and explore turn patterns in class is so I can easily flow into something else if a mistake occurs.

I saw another example of this at a salsa social a few weeks ago when a follow lost control of her spin and spun a lot further away from her lead then she intended to, the lead adjusted his steps and caught her and they went on like it was exactly what they intended to do.

What made a real impression on me is that we don’t have to be perfect.  We always try to do it right in class (and it ALWAYS comes out perfect) but outside of class, if it doesn’t come out right, what mistake?  Only you and your partner may know what you intended to do.

Something will always go wrong, but that is not the test of how good you are at anything!

The real test is what happens next. Do you panic?  Do you start over?  Or, do you take a different approach, by saying “what mistake?”

I just have to remind myself that some of the things that I am most thankful for being in my life are the ones that I discovered by accident, what mistake?

Tango Confidential, Marcy Goldman

This weekend I had a chance to hit up the Salsa and Swing dance down at the Elk’s lodge in Raleigh hosted by MAD academy. There was a beginner Salsa lesson before the actual social, and whenever  possible, we join in on the lessons in order to refresh our “beginner’s mind” and hopefully walk away with some new perspective.

During the lesson, girls and guys face each other in two long lines, with the guys rotating to the next partner every few minutes or so.

Feeling so many different embraces instantly reminded me that you can feel pretty much everything about your partner simply by their embrace. It speaks volumes. Without even dancing, and before even taking a step, keep in mind that everything about you is transmitted in this closed position.

What does your closed embrace say to your partner?

“I’m nervous as hell, and that’s why im pushing down so hard.”

“I really don’t want to get close so I am creating a huge awkward bow between us.”

“Damn you are hot, so I am going to scoot in as close as possible.”

“I’m off in space somewhere and that’s why my arms are so limp.”

“I am a little nervous the words ‘position’ and ‘woman’ so that’s why I am squeezing your right hand so hard.”

Think about this next time you start your dance in the closed embrace. What do you want to say to your partner through the manner in which you hold them?

Leads: “I’m relaxed, and I know what I am doing. You can go ahead and relax too.”

Follows: “I am in a state of relaxed alertness. Whatever you throw at me, I am ready and willing to follow.”

The best things in dance go unsaid and are completely invisible to the eye. But make sure you are fully aware of all the little whispers going on between you and your partner’s body.

If you’ve ever taken classes with us, you know we love drills. Clave/rhythm drills, balance drills, body movements drills etc. If it’s a skill needed to effectively lead a partner or interpret music, we’ll be doing it!

We’ve taken a peek into more than our share of Latin dance classes and for some odd reason, drills that target a specific area of importance, such as rhythm, are often overlooked if not completely forgotten about.

If you have ever played any sport, you know that drills are done before anything else. You might throw bricks in football, strike pads in Thai boxing, or work the barre in ballet.

Even million dollar athletes utilize the same drills that high school students use to improve their performance and keep their fundamentals solid.

Athletes with seven figure salaries don’t waste their time doing these archaic drills for no good reason. Strong fundamentals = strong dancer. If you have a weak sense of Clave or partner connection, how on earth are you going dance with a partner and interpret music that is based on Clave? You may go through the motions, but do you really understand how the heartbeat works?

No matter how many turns, spins, or patterns you practice, they will not replace simple, focused drills that allow you to put 100% of your effort into improving one single area.

Catching a brick is a lot less fun than catching a football. And your hands better work correctly, or it’s going to hurt bad.

There is no better teacher than the drill. And no better dancer, than one with fundamentals solid enough to catch a brick.

**Follows: It is imperative that you feel the exact speed, and type of turn through your lead’s arm. In the Cuban style of Salsa, the arm in the air is not a visual signal to let you know a turn is coming. It is a line of communication and all details are contained in your lead’s fingertip pressure. You have to listen with your body.

A guest post by Joe

In class we spend a lot of time working on connection and how to lead and how to follow. The fundamentals.

Eduardo and Stephanie have devoted several blog entries to connection and our roles.  And as a lead I have a lot of things I need to do.

Sometimes it seems overwhelming.

I need to react to the music, keep tempo, keep my follow safe, remember the turn pattern that I am about to lead, and not bore her just to name a few things.

A follow with intuition that recognizes when something is not quite right and can recognize what we leads are telling her through physical connection is just…super.

All of the above hit home for me recently during a dance at Cuban Revolution.

At one point in the dance I had a lot of space available on the floor and wanted to start a turn pattern, as soon as I started to prep her, I noticed another lead hop into the space right behind her that I was about to lead her into.

If we kept on going my follow would have had a hard collision with another lead, and she couldn’t see it coming.  Since screaming “look out” didn’t seem appropriate my instincts said to lighten up the prep and not to move my arm much.

Without missing anything she recognized not to step back very far and when I continued to lead she continued to do the turn pattern.

She understood something was wrong, and what I “said” to her, when all that was going through my conscious mind was look out, and OH NO! Here comes a chain reaction of collisions on the dance floor.

Follows, we leads appreciate you and what you do.

In my case, a light prep and my arm not moving much told my follow, “Warning! Danger! There is something behind you, don’t move back very far.”

When considering that one simple gesture said so much I recognized the importance of connection at that point more than ever.

Return to the beginner's mind.

A guest post by Jill Powell

Back in the summer of 2007 I had my first salsa class.

The bug bit hard and in addition to going to class and practicing with friends outside of class, I spent nearly all my free time pursuing social dancing opportunities. Live shows, festivals, every “Latin night” in a 30 mile radius, even trips to other cities in search of more chances to dance.

Just like with anything new, there is a peaceful lack of history.

Men in the room were just “leads,” and I was simply a “follow.” I saw a sea of nameless dancers and would always graciously accept the numerous invitations to dance the night away without passing any judgment.

Then I learned a little more.
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