Burrito West Blog

It's kind of funny that we ended up at the Snowball Classic DanceSport BC competition last night. Right before I was at our Cuban Salsa class (Peter skipped, being sickly). I find our salsa classes so infuriating, they actually make me kind of angry. I really have been spoiled by our regular studio - they have given a lot of thought to HOW to teach dance, whereas the salsa classes just tend to show you a move and are like "do this". Uh huh. Could we get more specific on the "this" you're referring to? I mean, seriously. This current salsa class seems to be teaching the leads a few moves and the followers nothing. I just get two hours to blindly follow my partners. Dudes, I could do that at a salsa club, I don't need to pay for it.

To contrast - at our regular studio, they have things called "school figures" which are particular dance steps that they test you on and you have to be able to dance them alone, with no partner. This means you have to actually know the step (including how much to rotate). As a follower, it's easy sometimes to not think about it and just.... follow. There was one tango figure which had three rotations/direction changes in it - that school figure took forever for me to learn because I wasn't used to thinking about how much I rotate (I rotate however much my partner rotates me). But our studio makes sure I know it. I can't pass to the next level without showing I know the school figures. Meanwhile, in the salsa class, I couldn't show you any of the steps if my life depended on it, because I'm not being taught them!! I want to be taught them, but that's just not how the class is run. I tend to leave the class very frustrated and annoyed.

So the moral of the story is, if you're thinking of learning to dance - seriously find a good studio and instructors that don't just know how to dance but know how to TEACH dance.... because those are totally different things.

We'll survive the salsa - only one more class to go, then we'll get to dance for real in Cuba. Oh, did I mention we're going to Cuba at the end of February? My first time anywhere tropical!!