For the most part, people come to dance class to get better. Some of you may say, “I just come for fun” but this is not entirely true. You don’t need to train in a studio to have fun with dance. The scene is full of people who are not actively training. The difference between you and them, is that casual wasn’t good enough for you. You wanted to understand, improve, and take your dance to the next level. Not only that, but you came to Paso, where principles of dance are first and Salsa is second.

If you take classes at Paso, you are probably an aggressive improver. No one else survives our culture but gung-ho people who really want to learn how to dance, not just how to do routine Salsa.

Ask yourself what change/improvement will help make dance more fulfilling for you?

Make it super specific. General is no good. “I want to become a better follow.” What does this mean in tangible terms? This is a goal that you will tire of because it can’t be gauged. Make it concrete:

“I am going to become better at following complicated moves with direction changes.”

“I am going to become better at dancing with my body while following my lead and staying on track.”

“I will improve my movement and make it more aligned.”

Figure out a game plan with ‘why? why? why?’. “I can’t dance on beat.” Why? “My feet move too fast.” Why? “Because I can’t derive the beat from the music” Why? “Because I am focusing on my steps.” Why? “Because I just don’t know them well enough”. EUREKA! You just drilled your way to a concrete issue that you have the power to change.

There will be days when dance won’t be fun. But if you keep pushing yourself to improve, it will always be fullfilling.

**If you haven’t completed the first set of exercises on becoming aware of change in music, don’t try this one.

So once we are able to tune into the music and hear the changes, let’s talk about doing something with those changes! Ideally, we would like to respond to the changes in music with our bodies. The ability to both interpret and respond to the music will take your dance to that next level. These aren’t simply turn patterns, this is grown up stuff for big boys and girls.

Exercise 1 - Changing steps to the music

Play a Salsa or Timba song that you find particularly inspiring. Perform a forward and back step with correct timing. Listen carefully. As soon as you sense a change in the music, big or small, change your step pattern to a side to side step. As soon as you sense the next change, go back to your forward and back step. Stay on beat!  Do this for the entire song, back and forth, using those two step patterns or any kind of body movement. It really doesn’t matter, as long as you respond to the music with your body.

This is a simple exercise that only prepares your anatomy to respond to change. This doesn’t take into an account the feeling, texture, mood or essence of the song, or even your feelings. It’s just a mechanical start.

Play around with this simple exercise for about 30 minutes and I promise you will begin to look at dance a different way. You will begin feeling the music at a deeper level and both you and others will notice it. If you are a non-Paso reader and you have become a “Salsa-bot” this is the first step in giving you human organs.

Next post I will talk about bringing emotion into the equation.

Trick question. To be perfectly honest, I think that any habit in dance is a bad habit. And when I say ‘habit’, I mean doing things that you are not even aware of -decisions made outside of your sphere of awareness.

If dance is a dialog between your inner reality and your body, think of habit dance as an uninvited guest who simply shows up and stares while refusing to join in or leave when told. A pest on its own program.

Find your habits. Whether it be a facial expression, step pattern, moving your shoulders, or even doing a little kick on your basic step, nothing that is outside of your awareness is good. Thinking about your body is not awareness -it’s analyzing. Be aware of your body, not your thoughts.

Take back control. Becoming super aware of your body will turn you into a dancing machine. Just being aware of your habits opens up a whole new world of movement choices!

My advice to leads, follows and dancers in general is this: do whatever you feel on the dance floor, but please be aware that you are doing it. We can then avoid becoming another boring and robotic dancer.

Musicality -your sensitivity to music- is probably the most overlooked aspect of Salsa. It can also be one of the MOST difficult areas to improve.

I’m going to walk you through some basic techniques to improve your musicality. I am going to outline one technique per post, and I would like you guys to just take a few minutes and give it a try.

What happens when a dancer has weak musicality? It appears like they are dancing ‘over the music’ , completely ignoring it. Listen to a song, any song, any genre. Notice that music CHANGES. If the music is changing and the body is not, we call it disconnected. Note, that you may feel inner changes but lack the ability to express it, we call this being ‘clogged’.  In Cuban style, we tend to have insane musicality.

1. Become aware of the changes in music. Play a song, and listen. Don’t dance, don’t move. Listen and note the major changes in the music. Don’t try to be precise, don’t try to time it.  Just sense each time a change occurs. Note some basic qualities. Is it smooth? syncopated? brassy? melodic? Focus on the basics, don’t get too complicated.

2. Listen again. Become aware of how each change makes you feel. Now listen to the music again, and get a sense of how you feel after each change. Excited? Relaxed? Sensual? Perhaps aggressive and free or maybe euphoric and care-free? Maybe you don’t feel anything and you need to change the song!

3. You can’t spell emotion without ‘motion’. Emotion is movement. Whether it’s eye movement, standing up to yell, opening your mouth to scream or clenching your jaw when you are angry, you CANNOT express emotion without some physical movement no matter how minute. Listen to a new song and when you are excited, let your body movements express it. If you are sensual, express it. DO NOT DO STEP PATTERNS OF ANY KIND!! This is crucial. Practice free and abstract movement no matter how silly you think it is.

In a few more days I will go into more detail. Start with this. Guys, there are so many people in Salsa -including advanced Salsa bots- BS’ing their way through the music. Sometimes it’s a lack of respect for the music. Sometimes because they have never been taught. I have surveyed musicality courses in the Salsa world and they tend to be a total joke focusing immediately on building a body movement routine around breaks in the music. We want to give you guys what we never had. In fact, the only good explanation I have heard on musicality is from modern dance instructors in movement exploration classes.

We are hoping to change this while making the complicated, simple.

Foreground or background, which captures your attention?

So there we were.

Our dance team just finished a very tight performance on the “river stage” during the 3 day Eno festival right here in Durham. We had 10 minutes left and it starts pouring rain!

What did we do?

What do you think Paso trained dancers would do with ten minutes left and rain falling from the sky…?

We called people from the audience (including other Paso dancers) onto the stage to learn how to dance, that’s what we did! And half-way through the song, everyone from Paso was dancing with someone! All of this under a canopy of rain, right next to the Eno river.

It’s times like these that make me very aware of the importance of getting out into the community. Every time that Paso dancers go out and dance, people are very quick to approach us and share their heartfelt appreciation. I have also realized that no matter where we go, there are always people who come specifically to watch us dance. These are people who have never stepped foot into a studio. People who appreciate and are touched by the physical expression of real human experience.

We stress an ‘inside-out’ approach to dance expression for a reason. People don’t feel steps or tricks. They may be entertained but will become bored. People feel emotion expressed through dance.

I am realizing bit by bit, that you should never be complacent. Always look toward your inside and express yourself from there no matter how you feel. You never know who is watching and what you will inspire in them.

When I teach other people to express themselves through dance, the most important thing I can do for them as a teacher is to remove the barriers that are stopping them from taking what they feel inside and expressing it outside.

And when it comes to barriers, a weak sense of rhythm is what usually prevents the new and even more advanced dancer from expressing themselves through complex body movements, and sometimes even turn patterns. But everyone has a built in rhythm keeper -your hips.

The fastest way to improve your rhythm in Salsa is to go ‘below the belt’ and make sure you are transferring your  weight properly. Let your body keep the rhythm for you.

1. Check yourself.

If you can stop yourself at any time during lower body movement and find that your weight is primarily on one leg with the other slightly bent, that’s a great start! If not, than your rhythm keeper needs tweaking.

2. Begin shifting your weight on every step.

With very few exceptions, every single step should mark a shift of weight from one leg to another. Count. During one set of forward and back steps is your weight shifting 8 times? Count how many times your hips move. If it’s just six, you are missing the shift that happens in the middle before you change directions.

3. Wait until after your weight has shifted completely before you pick the opposite foot off the ground!

This is a biggie with many many consequences including the tendency to dance way faster than the music.

Once you begin shifting the weight from one leg to the other, don’t lift the foot that’s about to step until AFTER the weight shift finishes completely. You must be patient and wait. Very few people do this, and it results in a very fast and stiff walk.

You would be suprised at how people with no rhythm, magically are able to stay on beat once they change how their lower body moves. At a basic level, it’s all in the hips.

A couple of days ago posed a very good question to me, “Isn’t Cuban Salsa just a lead’s dance?”

I agree and disagree. Many couple dances from Tango and Swing to Shag, rely on the lead for 100% direction. If you mean directed by the lead, than yes, it is a lead’s dance.

But I also think Cuban Salsa is a couple’s dance in one of it’s purest forms! The follow completely relies on her partner for direction, and the lead relies on his partner to take his direction and create a vivid and living story.

To all of the ladies in the Salsa world,  if you want to follow just follow. If you want to style on your own time, then learn to lead! Most of our ladies do. If you can’t manage either, then just dance solo and express.

Leads, it’s a must that you give your partner some room/time for genuine self-expression.  But, as a follow, if you don’t get open time, it sure ain’t up to you to create it. And those sexy styling moves aren’t so sexy if we do them at the wrong time!

Don’t get me wrong, with great intuition a follow can become very aggressive with her styling AND follow an advanced lead. The other styles of Salsa tend to teach memorized “openings”  for the follow to insert styling. Problem is, not everyone will know your same openings. Would you really want them to?

And what do you do when you are dancing with a lead who is completely “out of your box?”.

On the other hand ladies, what do you do when you come across a lead who expects you to know these false “openings” or movements and you have no clue as to what the hell he’s doing because he isn’t leading?

So now that I’ve had my matcha tea I can actually think. At Brightleaf Square the other night, one of our new dancers brought up a very good point.

She asked, “It must be very difficult for you to break down everything that you do and teach it to other people?”  ”Actually, it’s pretty much impossible.”, I replied. 

You see it’s not really our job to teach you to do what we do. We exercise and prepare your bodies and minds for self-expression. We work your alignment, weight transfer, rhythm, partner mechanics and even give you some new material, but it’s not the focus. We chisel here and there so that excess material doesn’t prevent you from presenting your personal work of art. We don’t truly create, we sculpt.

When you follow the north star, you don’t expect to end up in outer space, just somewhere north.

In the same token, we are pointing you in the right direction. Rhythm and coordination drills, exercises, visualizations, paradigm shifts, blah blah, are strictly for conditioning. Just a finger pointing. And actually the finger points back to you in the end. 

In boxing you don’t memorize a long combination and try it out on someone in the ring. You’ll get knocked out fast because you couldn’t respond to change. So you drill short combos, you condition, and you let reflexes and nature take over. This is the same in dance. 

Magic bullet..? Don't be ridiculous.

Some of you are looking for a magic bullet and we can’t give you that. But we can give you a way to get to yourself. Priceless.

Just the other day I received this email from a new and eager hardcore wanting to check the dimensions of his floor space markers! This guy is damn serious about getting his dance tight.

Only at Paso. Where students drive co-workers nuts by tapping out the Clave, dance blind between chairs in the kitchen, and use bottles of aspirin as percussion eggs. Fundamentals fundamentals fundamentals.

But wow, your instructors must be real psychos.

I absolutely love events like these.

Live music, zero pretentions, just dancing under the open sky. This is what social dancing is all about.

There were so many smiling faces and the whole place was loaded with positive energy. I just want to give a shout out to the dancers and live bands for bringing us these good times!

You know, years ago one of the things that really turned us off about American style Salsa(NY/LA/Ballroom) culture was the distinct feeling that it was separated from “living reality”.

Whether it was a club night, event, class, workshop etc, it always seemed like the whole deal was just so out of touch with raw Afro-Cubanismo and it made me feel out of touch, and that wasn’t cool.

Let’s take the club nights for instance. We would enter the nightclub and be instantly swept away to a magical world of look-alike flamboyant dresses, dance shoes, well-rehearsed hairspray routines, and oodles of faux romance. Everyone was gliding about the dance floor, executing practically the same moves in roughly the same order, with the same texture. Men gazed into their partner’s eyes dreamily, and the women responded, almost in unison it seemed, with “sexy” body rolls and hair tosses. It was as if we stepped into Willy Wonka’s Salsa factory. Hilarious.

And in Willy’s Wonka’s world no one questions the status quo. Like, why does Salsa have to be danced in a nightclub 99% of the time, when it came from the streets? No one asks why the hell do we Salsa performers perform so much for each other at events, when it’s the people OUT THERE that need to be made aware of its beauty?  Or the stiff dress codes despite the fact that last time I checked, gangbangers and thugs don’t dance to Salsa music. Control your audience with music, not pretentious dress codes.

These kinds of closed practices will definitely maintain the dream state but will result in a very stale and inbred dance culture. The Salsa community needs new people, fresh ideas and though painful, a constant critical examination of itself.

And to make this happen, we have to let in some fresh air so to speak. Instructors should research a little learning theory, figure out better methods of instruction, and create students that think for themselves. We need to make this dance MORE accessible to the people, not less by prancing around and stroking each other’s egos in the nightclubs. We all need to realize that if this dance is ever going to reach epic proportions it will be on the backs of everyday people.

Instructors, make it your goal to MAKE experts, not be the expert. Create and encourage openness and creativity to awaken from this silly dream.

Unless of course you want Salsa to end up like disco and hustle?

I was browsing through some old video clips this morning and I found this old video clip from about 2 years ago way back when we were teaching Salsa out of our kitchen! Now those were some memories!



Meet Larry and Karla. Newlyweds with an upcoming first dance and only a few weeks to do it. We worked with them privately for about four lessons, concentrating on the fundamentals while throwing in turns here and there.

Watching the video a few times through I realized something. They forgot pretty much most of the turns we taught them which was more or less expected.

“Oh my!! But teacher, what do I do if I don’t have any more turn patterns left?”

“My beloved student, the real dancing doesn’t begin until after you’ve run out of turn patterns.”

Luckily we took the limited amount of time they had (four lessons) and we focused on teaching them to express themselves, like real dancers do. Because on the battlefield, the best made plans are laid to waste. So don’t worry about forgetting tricks on the dance floor.

Worry about forgetting yourself on the dance floor.

***Please be aware that this rant does not refer to the authentic Dominican style where dancers actually do break it down quite nicely.

Reason 5. The artificial and intense effort to appear both sensual and seductive.

Saturday June 13th, George’s Garage. The Bachata begins to play. Oh here it comes. Suddenly my eyes are greeted by what appears to be a scene out of some corny latin soap opera. Instantly everyone falls in love on the dance floor staring deep into their partner’s eyes though they probably just met. As the song progresses one might notice the escalation of cheesy moves, with each couple actively trying to appear more “sensual” than the next. Wow. And during this boring attempt at a dance floor orgy, the music plays, unnoticed.

Reason 4. The out of context ‘micro-humping™’.

You’ve seen it. Man and woman in a tight embrace, executing short little pelvic thrusts to the most obvious beats of the song while ignoring everything else. Just typing this is making me laugh. Seriously, guys, if you are trying to express libido on the dance floor, short-thrusting and micro-humping is probably not the best way to go about it. Ladies?

Reason 3. The repetitive nature of today’s kids bop Bachata music.

I do like music from old school Bachata artists like Antony Santos. But most contemporary Bachata is too simple and repetitive, sounding more like a Latin version of New Kids on the Block than anything Caribbean.

Reason 2. The deliberate side-to-side hip motion.

Even my ballroom friends know that hip motion comes from the knees! There is something about that intentional side-to-side hip movement that just screams, “im really trying hard to move my hips”. And raising that leg high up to the side like that? Is there a fire hydrant I failed to notice?
Reason 1. The dips at the end.

This is where my stomach really turns. Once the song is complete and both dancers have played out their hilarious script, almost every lead in the room is compelled to dip his partner while gazing ever-so-softly into her eyes. It’s amazing how genuine raw emotion can be executed with such precise timing by almost everyone in the room. It’s as if they…practiced it.

So there you have it. But don’t take my rants too seriously. I respect anyone who takes the time to learn dance of ANY form. But it doens’t mean I can’t get a laugh…or two.

Slick moves? Nice spins? Afro-Cuban body movement?

No, my friends. All of the above help make you a better dancer but I think the best social dancers are those that are most intuitive to their partners movements. When you are dancing socially, with people you don’t know, intuition will be your most valuable asset.

The Intuitive Lead

An intuitive lead can lead a novice follow through things she never imagined were possible. When you can lead a follow smoothly through a movement while leaving her completely surprised at what just happened, you are on the right track.

An intuitive lead handles his partner as if she were blindfolded.

The Intuitive Follow

An intuitive follow can follow anything. Period. When unexpected moves come her way, she doesn’t get stiff, jerk or flop around like a fish out of water, she takes it all in stride. She dances while assuming nothing of her lead. Her mind is a white canvas, blank and open to all possibilities.

For ladies, intuition starts and ends with a fresh and open mind.

How We Improve Intuition

Ladies, one of the best ways to improve your intuition is to dance with your eyes closed. Focus on feeling, and throw away the visual clutter.

For leads, a blind follow’s body will give you crucial feedback on how your lead feels to her minus the visual bias. A good follow up exercise is to close YOUR eyes and dance in an enclosed space. This will train you to use only the amount of force necessary and give you maximum precision.

So how intuitive are you as a dancer?

(Nadia Grachevo, Prima Ballerina), Bolshoi Ballet, Moscow, 1997

Last Sunday we had the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the Bolshoi Ballet perform Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Needless to say, it was breathtaking and the level of dance was entirely unreal.

These guys are the best in the world. No doubt about it. There is no notch higher than Bolshoi.

So there we were, high in the mezzanine watching as one of the ballerinas took a quick but very pronounced fall to the ground. And of course her fall was accompanied by the cliche gasp from the audience. She got up faster than she fell, put the biggest and brightest smile on her face and continued on. Amazing.

My heart really went out to her. I could only imagine the kind of rigorous discipline -Russian style- it takes to make these dancers. But can you imagine the scolding that awaited her? Ouch.

But then it hit me. If she screwed up her dance, why can’t I screw up mine? Common sense to some, but enlightenment to me.

Why don’t we embrace mistakes as a necessary ingredient of greatness in all aspects of life?

I took a lot from the Bolshoi Ballet that afternoon, but most importantly I took with me the image of that shining star flat on her behind followed by the unshakable spirit that pulled her right back up.

Next time you screw something up just remember the old Japanese proverb:

Even monkeys fall from trees.

Yeah. Pretty much.

**Disclaimer: This article is not intended to frame myself as a master instructor. I too have had my share of sucky teaching!

A little over 10 years ago I had my first ‘formal’ Salsa lesson. And needless to say, it sucked. It was one of those fusion NY/LA style classes, and I won’t even get started on the cheesy material taught or how ridiculous and stiff I looked doing it. The material taught is unimportant, it was the complete lack of logical method.

In the years since then, we have had the chance to train with many different instructors in several different forms of dance from Swing to Ballet and watched probably 100+ instructional DVDs, and 90% of it stunk!

Wordy explanations, missing fundamentals, lack of real class structure, and lots of metadiscourse -discussion about a discussion- plague much of what passes for dance instruction.

At the University of California, most of my instructors were OK. My military instructors were definitely loud and clear. Why is there such a lack of quality when it comes to dance teachers? Here are some reasons, feel free to chime in:

Part-time syndrome.
I think a lot of dance instructors teach a class once a week for some extra spending change. So in turn, they plan little, have low expectations of students, and are not currently studying dance or music themselves. They come to class after a long day at work and feed their hungry students half-baked instruction, disappearing into the night afterward.

Aesthetics before fundamentals.
It seems to me that dance teachers are chasing a ‘look’ without understanding what is going on under the hood of their students.  We quickly realized that you cannot paint an untreated canvas nor can you “teach” a student perfection. You train heavy fundamentals -rhythm, alignment, etc- and then give them the knowledge they need to create their own pretty picture. At the base of every problem is a fundamental culprit. Instructors take note.

Lack of knowledge and curse of knowledge.
Can you teach your material verbally without lifting a finger, visually without saying a word, and kinesthetically from a follow’s point of view? Can you teach it while standing on your head and reciting the fifth amendment? You don’t have to answer that.  But seriously, if you don’t know your s*#t inside and out, don’t bother trying to teach it to someone who is dance clueless.

No regard for the word ’simple’.
Keeping the instruction as simple as humanly possible should be at the center of your approach. Most instructors I have taken classes with failed to break down what they were teaching into its most essential elements. By the time they were finished talking, I had no clue as to what the heck they were talking about. The few teachers that I considered very good, were masters of simplicity. They could take a concept, boil it down to its essential elements, teach it to you and have you doing it so fast your jaw would drop. They were master simplifiers.

Though every instructor has fell victim to all of the above, those that put people first and really care about what they do will make the changes necessary to become great.

My sister Ashley is a school teacher responsible for making RECORD breaking improvements with the test scores of inner city kids in Las Vegas. She is a master educator and simplifier.

What do her and all great teachers of any discipline have in common? They are absolutely obsessed with making people better.

So what do you think?

Burger. Fries. And a side of Salsa.

Though the differences between the American and Cuban styles of Salsa are easy to see, it’s the philosophical differences that I find most interesting. I recently came across a very well-written and exhaustive New York On2 Salsa website that spells it all out with crystal clarity.

Here are some excerpts taken from “Guidelines for Mambo DJs” on SalsaNewYork.com, written by “Doc Salsa” Steve Shaw:

“3. Let The Song End Completely - The musicians composed a specific ending to the song, and we dancers choreograph our movements to be timed to that ending.  We may even do a certain turn, shine or dip right at the end of the song.”

Cuban Salsa says: It’s fine to let the song play out completely. But focusing on timed choreography is just lame and robotic. Challenge yourself a bit and dance out of the box.


“8.  Songs Not Too Long -  The majority of songs should not be too long, usually 4 - 6 minutes, and only very rarely the longer 8 - 10 minute ones.  Our dance is pretty intense & complicated, so after 5 - 6 minutes we need a break;  we’re getting tired and probably running out of turn patterns.”

Cuban Salsa says: Focus on dance, not on turn patterns. Although we probably have more turn patterns than any other dance, they are not the focus and we do just fine without them. Finished after 5-6 minutes!? In the Cuban style, this barely amounts to foreplay!


“9.  Play Mostly Familiar Songs -  Most songs which the DJ plays should be known to the dancers, well known classics, because we plan how we dance based on our familiarity with the songs.  We may do certain turn patterns, shines, styling or dips at specific points in a song, or sing or hum along with the song almost as if we’re serenading our partner, so we want to hear mostly songs we know .  An occasional new song is fine, though it should be chosen carefully to be suitable for our dance.”

Cuban Salsa says: Surprise me. Force me to go in myself and dance in the moment. We get bored very quickly of the same songs because the challenge of the unfamiliar keeps us on our toes! Every dance should be an opportunity to reinvent yourself as a dancer in a fresh and unexpected way. Relish change.

“14.  Skip The Band  -  Most On 2 mambo dancers are dancing to the music.  If the music fits our way of dancing, as described above, we’re happy.  [....removed for sake of brevity] So who needs a band?  From a dancer’s point of view, a good DJ can beat a band almost anytime, because a good DJ can choose from hundreds of fantastic dance songs recorded by the world’s best musicians.  But a band is always limited by its musical ability, its relatively small repertoire, its tendency to play songs longer than 5 - 6 minutes, and its limited ability to change songs based on the dancer’s preferences hour by hour.”

Cuban Salsa says: Live music is always preferred. Would you like your favorite ballet or play backed up by an Mp3 player or an orchestra? Give us the orchestra, plain and simple. Live dance and live music go hand-in-hand.

In all fairness, not all American style dancers feel this way. But, whenever I attend a live event, the absence of most of the ‘Salsa community’ is all too obvious. Is this a trend?

Preferences are all fine and dandy. But the Cuban dance philosophy says it’s far more important to focus on expanding your dance to fit the music, rather than narrowing your musical selection to fit your dance.

Be expressive, be creative and most importantly, be alive.

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.

Remember that your falls must become rises and your rises must become falls. Enjoy your ride.

If you do, you take away my happiness.

If you take away east, you take away west. Down can’t exist without up. They are of equal importance and their existence is mutually dependent.

If you wipe away my anger and hurt, you steal my smile and you take my joy.

I struggle with many things. The struggle is never comfortable. But more and more I recognize that happiness is east and struggle is west. They are both directions and neither is more important.

Nowadays, when I encounter certain struggles in life I try to remember that they are completely necessary and without them I wouldn’t know a happy moment if it hit me in the face. Seek happiness, but remember your struggles are on the other side of that same gold coin. Treat them like brothers.

While driving by the fair in Durham last night, I could hear people screaming on rides. I asked myself, “could they experience that same joy if they never experienced hurt or sadness?”

Feeling the music is one thing, having two-way dialogue is another.

When you are dancing your body becomes an instrument in some ways.

You, in turn, become part of the music you are listening to, an instrument in the orchestra itself. And when they get together, instruments talk amongst each other.

Next time you play a song, try to be aware of how your body is replying to the music. The music is talking to you, try and notice how and if you are talking back throughout the entire song. 

When the horn section is screaming at you, does your body scream back?

When the Timbales provokes a fight, do you walk away and ignore them? 

When a MASTER improvisational pianist like Tirso Duarte uses the ivory to compel you emotionally, do you keep it bottled up or do you express?

And listen to this on-the-spot Piano Tumbao from Tirso himself, courtesy of Timba.com. When you hear things like this, as a dancer, what do you say back with?

Treat the next song you hear as if you were communicating with someone face-to-face.