“President!” Emily exclaimed, soon followed by “Vice prez!” from Greg's side of the bed. We were settled on my bed in the hotel room again for a few rounds of cards, no surprise since it had turned into tradition over the past few weeks. What was unusual, however, was Brandon's voice after a round of President to ask if we could learn how to Salsa after the next round. A sort of random request, that I assume had something to do with the combination of our stories from Friday night and knowing about all the salsa classes I took last year in Guanajuato.
Julia found some random Latin music on her ipod, which we proceeded to not really use since its difficult to start learning Salsa to music, as the beat doesn't have any flexibility and when you're learning something like a turn, its good to slow it down for a minute so that you are really able to grasp how to do it.
We began in a straight line, learning how to do the basic step, Emily sitting out because she hates dancing. Moving our feet in the standard fashion, we all counted eights to dance to, creating our own rhythm and our own sort of music, if you could call it that, our feet forming the beat. Brandon, focusing on the counts, struggled to keep still on four and eight, wanting to keep on moving, but before long he got it, just in time for us to try it with each other, which just made it more confusing. Greg paired with Julia while I paired with Brandon as I gave tips to my friends as I remembered little things that would help them in their quest for the knowledge of salsa.
As the comfort level increased we moved onto turns, and by now Emily decided it was time for her to join, Maybe salsa dancing isn't so awful. And so Julia took a break and we got Emily comfortable with the step. What followed was the attempts of everyone to learn the basic turn in Salsa, but before long, while everyone was practicing it without partners, we finally got the hang of it, and then we tried to put it together with partners. Julia took up practicing with Brandon and I let them try it out for a little bit before complicating it farther. The hardest part seemed to be for the guy to keep up the basic step as the girl stopped to do the turn.
After listening to Greg and Brandon direct Emily and Julia to turn verbally for a while, I taught them how to cue the turn with their arms. They found this to be quite an improvement to their dancing as there was no need to direct the other through words, and for some reason, this was quite an achievement for them. After trying to convince the group to loosen up their shoulders while they danced, we decided to call it a night.
This morning, a couple of people asked if our room was the one directly above ours. “What was all the stomping all about?” “Oh. That. Just a bit of impromptu salsa lessons.”
1 comments:
Hahaha...Now I want to teach everyone the basic salsa steps.
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