Shake what your mama gave you!

Salsa is a dance for Salsa music created by Spanish-speaking people from the Caribbean. The name "Salsa" is the Spanish word for sauce, connoting (in American Spanish) a spicy flavor and trust me it is a spicy dance. Yet of all the partner dances, it is probably the easiest to get into. It is a street dance after all!

Three years ago, I got into it because a friend asked me to join her and her co-workers and I have always been interested in partner dancing. We started the beginner lessons at a downtown Vancouver studio called The Urban Beat Dance Co. The dance company offered from leve 1 (beginner) to level 4. We paid $85 for 8 lessons back then. It was a really reasonable priced activity!

Before the class I made sure I was wearing comfortable shoes and clothes. No special salsa clothes were needed for beginner dancers. Just as long as you can move in them. Jeans (not too tight!) and t-shirt were good enough.

I showed up to the first class with 60 or so other men and women in the studio. I thought to myself "Oh no, I can't believe I just wasted my $85 on learning dancing in a sardine can." The instructors ensured us right away that they were professionals and not too worry about the class size. The ladies were asked to form a large circle and the guys were asked to form another circle outside of ours. The instructors taught us the steps in the middle of the circles. The inner/ladies' circles turned in clockwise direction about every 5 minutes. We had opportunities to dance with about 7 to 8 different guys by the end of the lesson. In some cases, I was really glad I wasn't stuck with that guy smelled like an ash tray or the sweat bucket guy for no more than 5 minutes.

The basic basic salsa steps were pretty simple. All the steps were variations of the basics and were repeated throughout the class. But I didn't feel the repeativeness. The 1 hour class flew by! I wished we did less dancing by the beat of the instructors counting and more dancing to the music. But having a solid foot work foundation was very important, more music came as I went on to level 2 and 3. I also switched instructor for level 3. I thought that was a great way to open my eyes to new moves and styles.

If you love very rhythmic music and love to shake, salsa was very easy to get into!