Dancing etiquette and dancing to the music

August 1, 2006

LDA 3.3 week 3

The class started with about 30-40 minutes of lecture delivered by Susana with some interjections from Mario.

Some of the things said included…

Be cordial when asking for a dance (or when accepting or refusing a dance – men do not have much choice in this matter of course when he’s asked).

Be attentive to your partner (i.e. don’t spend all of dance facing away from your partner).

Enjoy or at least pretend to enjoy the dance regardless of your dance partner’s abilities.

Finish the dance once you accept the dance (the only exception is to avoid risk of injury).

Listen to more Salsa music, more the better. Recognize variety of sounds (e.g. Cuban, Columbian, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, New York, etc).

Listen to all instruments in music. Ask musicians about music. Maybe learn to play instruments. Mike Bello's CDs were recommended also.

Don’t try to fit everything you learned in a year into a single dance.

There’s no shame in repeating moves. Your partner won’t know anyway (or if not care or remember).

Fit the dance to the music – Start the dance gradually in intro. Build complexity as music becomes more complex. Be aware of breaks in the music. Lead the most complex moves when the music is appropriate (generally most complex). Do shines or footwork for very complex percussion section or unusual segment. Learn to slow down after a bout of complexity when music demands it.

Some vignettes...

Mario does not like English Salsa songs (e.g. "Thinking of You" and "Lady" were named) because he finds them too one-dimensional (and generally entirely melody driven). Mario does not like Africando for the same reason. Susana pointed out artists such as Willie Colon and Joe Cuba as playing music with more depth.

Susana’s favorite place she visited for Salsa – Singapore! She loved it there and recommended all women to give it a try. Susana’s least favorite place – Switzerland! Everyone dances completely bonkers there seemingly not caring about injuries – it’s all spins all the time! I hadn’t quite realized that this was a general problem in Switzerland.

Mario’s favorite social dance venue? It used to be SOS – fabulous music, fabulous dance floor, fabulous people to dance with, but their sound system is problematic. He couldn’t name a venue he especially liked – he even pointed out that Bar Salsa is not satisfactory because of it being too crowded. He also mentioned that they stayed there only after getting the management to replace the floor and take over as DJ (and he might have mentioned replacing of the AC as well). He thought continental Europe had much nicer venues.

Practicing what was being said in the lecture involved dramatically reducing complexity of moves, especially in the beginning and towards the end. Listening for breaks in the music and reacting to them were also emphasized.

LDA is becoming a great place to figure out (or at least trying to guess) who’s who in the forums. I think I figured out identities of some of the contributors and know of one other (but without knowing the forum handle). For better or worse, I think most of them know or suspect who I am too.

Quote of the day - "Fingertips have extra nerve endings."