Salsa dance steps aren't as hard to learn as you might think. Read on to find out how to get good at Salsa dancing by practicing all the right moves.
And yes, it does take quite a bit of practice to get it right, and to become familiar enough with those steps that you won't be distracted by more complicated moves. So it's important to give proper attention to the basics.
As you surely already know, Salsa is a Latin dance, just like Tango and Mambo. In fact, the steps are very similar for all those dances, so if you know one or both of these, you're already way ahead of the game. If not... you'll simply have to do a bit of catching up.
The Basics
Here's the basic pattern for Salsa dance steps: essentially, you take six steps over 8 beats of music, sort of in a "quick quick slow, quick quick slow" kind of pattern. You can step either forwards and backwards, or from side to side.
There's a bit of a debate as to which step should be skipped, the first or the fourth...
The alternative pattern would be something like "pause quick quick quick pause quick quick quick." It ends up a lot like the previous one except that you're one beat off when compared to the other version.
You might find followers of both approaches on the same dance floor... Of course, there's a lot of sexy hip movement as well, which makes this a terrific core strengthening exercise, or, put a different way, if you've got a strong "core," you'll naturally be better at this.
Either way... the basics are not hard to learn at all. I actually learned my first basic Salsa steps from a Salsa aerobics video and a basic salsa dancing instructional video. Then I went to a concert, and was able to keep up pretty well.
But of course, to get actually good at dancing Salsa you have to go beyond the very basic Salsa Dance Steps.
Beyond the Basics
So how can you learn the more advanced Salsa dance steps?
As much fun as it is to get into the advanced stuff, don't rush things. Personally, I believe that it's important to be really solid with the basics, so practice them a lot with some cool Salsa music, which is a kind of fusion of various Afro-Caribbean and Latin musical styles, and which is both fast and energetic. How fast? About 180 beats per minute, which makes it ideal for aerobic exercise as well as for a high-energy party.
You may want to check out some music from the major salsa artists include Tito Puente, Marc Anthony (yep, the one all over the tabloids right now), Hector Lavoe, Celia Cruz, Jerry Rivera. Then practice your Salsa dance steps....
Get Started Now
If you're interested in dancing and specifically in dancing Salsa, here's how to get started. First, focus on getting really comfortable with your basic Salsa dance steps so you can graduate to the advanced moves with confidence:
Go get yourself some basic instructional videos along with some music by Tito, Marc, Celia and others, and dance away, until you can practically do the salsa dance steps on auto-pilot.
Ready to get started? Grab my FREE Dancing Success eBook for lots of great tips on what it takes to get good at dancing Salsa and other Latin dances (and even the Waltz).
And click the link for more info on Salsa Dancing.
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