The Most Important Tip for a Salsa Beginner

When first learning Salsa, it's easy to make a few assumptions about learning this wonderful dance. Being a bit more experienced, I now wish my teacher or someone else had pulled me aside and said, "This is the most important tip for a Salsa beginner." Do it this way and you'll have no problems learning. So, just in case no-one has already told you what it is, I am going to.

I'll just give you a bit of background first. I'm a musician and I simply went about learning to dance the way I learnt to play the guitar. That is; learn the scales, learn the chords, practice them as much as possible (unless you're a bit lazy or pressed for time) and then play songs. That should work for Salsa dancing. Right?

Wrong!

It's just not the same with dancing. Salsa dancing, for that matter nearly all dancing, is partner work, and a man has to learn how to lead as well as dance. (Women need to learn how to follow.) Added to that, a combination is not just the fingers but the whole body (with the parts usually working independently). Finally, unless you have a partner who is learning salsa with you, and you can practice at home, nearly all your learning and practice is in public, whereas a guitar can be played alone and can also be played any time.

Salsa dancing is very different to other learning.

Also, I guarantee you that you are unlikely to remember all the combinations you learn at lessons. There are just too many. For one, they are stylistically your teachers, so some will simply not feel right for your physicality. Secondly, only the girls in the lesson will be able to follow you at first because they know what's coming (and they unconsciously lead you as part of their learning strategy). Try these combinations out of the lesson context and you soon realize how challenging it is to reproduce a whole combination with a partner who hasn't done the lesson.

In a nutshell, you are never going to remember it all - so don't beat yourself up about it and come up with a good learning strategy instead.

With that said, here is the most important tip for a salsa beginner.

Start with a very basic combination of your own of say, five or six steps/moves you know you can lead well. For example, forward and back, open out step, followed by a cross body lead, a right hand turn for the lady, a right hand turn for yourself (low hand), a cross body spin for the lady, and a Cuban turn. Tell anyone you dance with that you are a beginner, and practice leading these really well, concentrating on staying in time (but having fun of course).

Each lesson, grab one or two of the new moves you just learned that you found the easiest, and add them to your 5/6 steps, but don't add another one until that one is solidly in your repertoire. If you want to add two per week, you will need to salsa at least 2 times a week - one to learn the combination/move and another night to dance it over and over again until you know it by heart.

There you have it - the most important tip for a salsa beginner!

Just think....if you do it this way, you will add 52 moves in only 6 months, and that is pretty impressive by anyone's standards!

Have fun and watch out for my next article at Salsa Beginners [http://www.salsabeginners.net] on discovering the easy way to remember combinations!

John Sammers has been working with people as a therapist, communications trainer and a coach for many years. Some of the work he does helps people rid themselves of painful memories and some of the work is to help people develop themselves and their skills. He is also a keen musician, guitar teacher and salsa dancer. John's history is in education and music. After 20 years as a musician and 10 years or so of teaching he retrained as a life coach (now incorporating NLP and Law of Attraction). He then continued his professional development to become a certified Master Practitioner of NLP & Hypnotherapy. John's personal interests are in writing and recording music, Latin dance, Tai Chi and all aspects of the guitar. He writes on a number of areas of interest.


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