Quick Guide to Being a Better Dancer

We all want to get better and the good thing is we can! But if you’re like me, you may have lost sight as to how to do this. Well we sat down and came up with a quick guide to help coax you from being a wallflower and give you a nudge in the right direction. Enjoy!

• #7 Practice Polygamy:

  “But that’s illegal” yes i know, i’m kidding. Just dance with a bunch of people. Being a wallflower will only weaken your own abilities. Go and ask a lady to dance if they refuse then move onto the next lady. There is no shame in a pity dance, especially if you dance the socks off her.

• #6 Practice a new style:

  Yes get a new teacher. That doesn’t mean you have to drop your old teacher just go out and learn from someone else. Some may say a Jack of all trades is Master of none, but if you want to be universally appealing get out and learn all you can. No sense in sticking yourself in a box with no ventilation. So if you do LA Style, try N.Y. style. If you do N.Y. Style try Cuban Style. Or do cumbia or puerto rican style, texas style, london style, etc.

• #5 Learn about salsa:

  Check out the history books. Get Rosetta Stone and learn some Spanish. Eat Cuban food…okay well that probably won’t really help but it is delicious! Put salsa music on your iPod and acclimate yourself. You’ll find yourself singing along (if incomprehensibly) with the popular ones.

• #4 Do you lead? Do you follow? Can you do both?!?!

  Yes and yes….and yes. Learn what your counterpart is doing. Your training will skyrocket if you push away your “pride” and reverse roles. The more you know about how your partner dances then the better able you will be to lead them. I know our Puritanistic gender roles may get trampled on but to heck with them. They wore buckles on their hats, for pete’s sake. What do they know?! When you get into it, you will revel in the fact that a dance with the same basic can be so different on one side versus the other. Many people misinterpret equality as being the same. But here in salsa you will find that equality is not sameness but harmony. You find equality by making two halves a whole. A yin yang has two interlapping parts: one black, one white, one representing male and one female. The beauty is how they fit together not how they are the same in every possible way. BORING!!!

• #3 Relive your college days and experiment, especially for the ladies…sorry.

  Dance bachata, merengue, cha-cha, samba, even reggaetone. Its not salsa but it is latin dance and it can help cultivate your abilities in salsa. Read our post about social latin dances.

• #2 Good Salseros borrow, Great Salseros steal

  Check out the competition. Who is scoring all the chicks, (i mean strong independent ladies)? A great dancer can will have a spring of salsa knowledge, so study them. There will be times when they do a move so fantastic as to confuse the hell out of you but don’t lose your focus. You are not there to master their moves, that’s the easy stuff. You want to learn what it is they are doing that makes them so smooth. How do they hold themselves? What accents do they hit when they do shines? How do they interact with the lady? What are they wearing? What kind of shoes do they dance in? How do they make a basic move look so damn good?!?! Forget about quantifying your salsa, bring quality into the picture. Nobody cares how many moves you do. Can you make even the basic look good?

• #1 Connect with your salsero brethren

  Ok so you’re better than most at the club, so what? Don’t sit in your tower telling them to eat cake, with your nose upturned. Go out and dance with the beginners, make friends, give a friend a tip. Help out your fellow leaders. However, bear in mind the dance floor is not for you to teach on. Go off to the side of the floor and talk to your friend and partner, casually. It’s not a workshop.

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