SALSA’S BIG LIE

There is a big lie going on on the salsa scene. The big lie is that people believe when they move their bodies, their feet and their hands they’re dancing, writes Elder Sanchez. Elder Sanchez - Save Our Salsa, Drink Before you Dance. I think it’s our mistake - I mean all of us as teachers – because we’ve taught people in Europe to dance using their feet and hands first before we’ve taught people how move their bodies.

We’ve created movers not dancers who dance rhythmically to music. I’ve got nothing against New York style, but it requires a lot of big moves and takes a lot of space. People watch performers dancing on stage and they think these are the best dancers and they want to copy them. But it’s not possible to reproduce this style on the social dance floor. You can’t dance in the same way on the social dance floor. What performers do on a stage is rehearsed 100 times to get it right – you can’t do that in social dancing and you can’t use the space amount of space. The result is social dancers in Europe want big dance floors – but they aren’t listening to the music when they dance. They move to the music, make moves they know to the music – but moving to music is not the same as dancing to music. This makes social dancing too technical, too mechanical. This problem has created the problem of poor bar takings.

People think they’ve got to learn everything 120 per cent and not make mistakes so they’ve got to be sober 120 per cent. These technical moves can’t be reproduced if you drink. So nobody drinks, everybody drinks tap water and you need vast spaces to perform moves. This isn’t salsa. Salsa is a social dance. It’s about having fun. It’s not about shows and competition. Salsa as a social dance for fun is not the same as salsa as performance or in a competition. These are totally different things.

Elder Sanchez, Founder and Managing Director Salsoteca Dance School - Posted Thursday 11 May 2006