So, for a variety of reasons, my friend Nate and I have picked up the hobby of learning how to salsa dance this past semester. It's been a lot of fun, and a great release. It's been awesome for about a million reasons.
We started out just learning salsa in my kitchen, watching YouTube videos and practicing a few times a week. My roommates loved the free entertainment, and Nate hated the audience ;) (agreed) but for some reason we still made it work and would get together a few times a week to dance and learn. It's been a blast, and I think those "home-style" lessons are by far my favorite.
From there we decided to sign up for some private lessons, so that we could really get some technique down. After a Groupon attempt, I emailed a man that I have heard called "The Salsa King of Columbus" to inquire about lessons. No, he's not a culinary king of tomatoes and jalepenos, but he IS the guy who you might say is primarily responsible for bringing the up-and-coming salsa scene into existence here in Columbus. I had taken a few group classes from him before with some friends, and knew he'd be fun. When I asked him for a deal, my did he give us one!
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| Windi, who helps teach our lessons, Carlos Rubio (our instructor) and...random sign-in lady |
After our first lesson, Carlos sat us down to tell us "what he was going to do for us." I was waiting for some kind of sales pitch, but all he did was keep on laying down the free stuff! First he told us that the lesson we'd just had was a freebie, and wouldn't count towards our ten. Then, he said he wanted to do more.
"Every Monday night I teach and Intermediate/Advanced Salsa Class," he told us. "You guys can already count and qualify as intermediate dancers (yeaaa-ah!) so, I tell you what, for the next two months? Free. You guys can come to them for free." Okay, sweet. Usually they are $10 a person, per class. That would be awesome!
"Besides that? Every Thursday night I teach some cool-moves Bachata classes. For you guys--for the next two months--free." Say-wha? Also usually 10 bucks a-piece per class. Sweet! Okay.
Then, he goes on to tell us about this special salsa weekend conference/workshop type thing they were having. I'd already seen advertisements, and tickets for the full weekend were $65 a person. Not going to happen on this budget. "But for you guys--free!!" No strings attached.
I kept waiting for the "all this for only ___ much more!" but there was none. We just got all that stuff for the price we'd ALREADY agreed to pay for just our 10 lessons. Nate was pretty dubious and kept wondering why it was so cheap, but we weren't going to argue. I've since decided that it was a way to help Carlos build up his class, fill it out some, and so that he can use us for some free-advertising in class to encourage private-lessons. Hey--I'm cool with that.
It has been fantastic. Every Monday night for about the past month and a half Nate and I have skipped out a little early from FHE and carpooled out to the group class. We also take our private lessons once a week, and when our lesson has happened to fall on a Thursday, we have hit up the Bachata class as well. One of my reasons for wanting to take a dance class was to get out into the community more and to meet people--my only real opportunities for meeting people these days are at church and...at church--and I wanted to do it as means of appreciating Columbus more and to feel a part of this city. Also for a chance at missionary work. The people who attend the Monday night classes pretty much attend everything else Carlos hosts as well (including Wednesday night dances, Thursday classes, and Saturday night dances) so they've become like our little salsa pals and family. I love it.
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| Our St.Patricks Day Salsa Intermediate/Advanced class. In the back: Carlos & Rachel, Nate & I (what the face?!), um, man who's name I can't remember, HP, Windi, Robinson, and Jay. Front: Brandi, woman I don't know, Renae, and...Joe? aka man I don't know. ;) |
The people are obviously of varying ages, and come from mixed backgrounds. I love it. It is just what I hoped for in helping accomplish my goal, and it's been fun getting to know these different people and feeling like they are my own little salsa community of friends. We are all learning together, and I'm slowly learning more about them all as people outside of salsa. For instance, Windi is in love with David Tennant of Dr. Who, and so we share the love of The Doctor. ;) She brings it up most of our lessons now. :)
On top of that, Nate and I still get together once or twice a week to practice on our own (are we crazy?! I'm thinking so) and go over what we've learned as well as what we taught ourselves. Mostly it's just a blast, and partially an excuse to get together; dancing and being silly in our kitchens or living rooms and laughing at ourselves for even doing this in the first place. It's socializing with a purpose, according to Nate (he had the goal to learn to salsa, and he never has time to socialize, so he's kind of killing two birds with one stone, he says). It has also given me something to look forward to, and to take the edge off all my exam-work. So it's been a motivator and actually quite helpful for me as well. We've found it's so much easier to dance with each other than with other people, having become accustomed to "reading" the other person well, but I don't mind. We are certainly making progress, and it's been a great time each time we get together. Plus, we are slowly getting better at leading and reading other dancers as well, so this won't all have been in dancin' vain. ;)
I don't really have any pictures from any of our little weekly escapades, but I did "borrow" some pictures they posted on one of the facebook pages from the big Salsa Weekend we attended in March. Basically they had some different salsa dance groups come in from Boston, Philly, Cleveland and Cincinnati, with the Boston group being the big show. They taught workshops in salsa, bachata, cha-cha, and then some salsa styling (making you look legit, or in their mind sexy--yeah...I maybe felt a little awkward during that one). It was fun. Then that night there was a dance and they did some performances at it. They were gooood--the men, especially.
Usually dance focuses on drawing your eyes towards the women, but in this dancin' the men were just top notch, and they were who I watched. It probably didn't hurt that one of our instructors was incredibly attractive.
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| Attractive teacher-man |
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| Pretty sure this is a crazy cha-cha sequence, as you can obviously see. |
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| Our instructors for the weekend, from Boston y Control, teaching us a crazy salsa combo. Carlos and Windi always tell me I look like this girl (Leah). |
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| Me, trying not to smirk. I hate getting my picture taken when I'm supposed to just look natural. :) |
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| Nate showing off that he got the hold correct. |
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| Nate and I looking slightly awkward as we try out the combo. :) I'm sure we look much better than this normally, and in time. |
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| The men learning their "shine" moves, as part of lil' shine-dance-off competition between the men and women. Oooh those men were good! Nate rocked it. |
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| Us learning...something! |
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| Aaand, this was the only photo of me dancing that evening at the dance. |
So, salsa is the 'thang for now! Baila, mis amigos!
2 comments:
Glad you had fun learning how salsa dance! If we lived closer, I might have tried to convince Aaron to do it with me
I have always wanted to learn to do this too! I love that you guys made it happen!
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