Qualities of beginner (and non-) salsa dancers

August 4, 2005

Beginners come in many flavors. Some are seemingly naturals while others seem hopeless. Sometimes the really good beginners can accumulate bad habits while seemingly hopeless could improve and become really good.

Some of the features of beginners are shown in the figure shown below.


Even before starting in partner work, people with very poor ears or feet really stick out. I have seen one person who was incapable of taking basic steps with the rest of the class as the teacher was yelling, "1, 2, 3 & 5, 6, 7." I think the same person came to one or two more class but was always out of sync. This is the only example of "deaf" student I have seen thus far. Most people can hear spoken numbers and do basic steps fairly quickly. More tricky is to be able to hear and distinguish the beats in any salsa song - "1" is the easiest. It took me about 3 weeks (and 5-6 lessons).

Of course, being able to hear the beats when concentrating on listening only is not the same as hearing the beats consistently as you are dancing. Because beginners are often unsure with any type of changes to basic steps, they often resort to "shuffling" their feet. Some people seem to hop rather than walk even though they are perfectly capable of walking. Most people eventually become comfortable enough to become walkers.

With arms and hands, people oscillate between one bad extreme to another bad extreme. So even people who seem to have perfect hands and arms in the beginning can develop bad habits because of poor dance partners. Arms should be relaxed, not too stiff or too flabby. Hands should be hooked to make it easy to keep connection between the leader and the follower. Use of thumbs (severe form is referred to by some as the Vulvan Death Grip) is strongly recommended against.

There are other body parts important to dancing of course. For example, eyes are very important. Many beginners have tendencies to focus on their feet. I never had this problem (or got out of the habit very easily) so I don't know why this happens (perhaps to make sure that they are stepping correctly??? because they can't tell between their left and right feet without looking at it??? maybe they're looking at their partner's feet except many people are looking down even when practicing without a partner). In my opinion, the best place to look is to look at and engage your dance partner's eyes (although I realize that ballroom dancers do not do this).