“I just have a quick question. The other day I went to a salsa class and the instructor said we shouldn’t use our thumbs when holding onto the woman’s hands. For me I find it easier to create and control the tension if I use my thumbs especially when it comes to dancing with women who lack tension in their arms. I tried not using my thumbs and it feels little awkward. What do you recommend?”

Well Mark here is my answer:

When you close your thumb or palm over the follower’s hands, the follower immediately relaxes their arms and, even subconsciously, thinks that because you have them they don’t need to do anything. The result is a follower with Spaghetti arms who won’t follow quickly and accurately your lead. So you may think that you have more control because you are holding on but in actuality the follower will not respond properly to your lead.

Instead, if you open your thumb and palms and curl your finger tips and try to have your partner create the same tension with only your fingertips, you will force your partner to create resistance in her frame to keep from letting go. The more often your partner lets you go the more she will strengthen her fingertips and create more resistance. So you may feel like it is out of control at first because you are losing your connection but eventually your partner will firm up her fingertips and frame and then you will have a partner who will follow you quickly and accurately.

In other words, it is worth the initial growing pains to get the right tension and frame so that you can move on to become a great intermediate and then advanced leader.

So followers and leaders, make sure you never use thumbs and palms and instead curl your fingertips slightly and pull a little to create consistent tension and resistance.

Hope that helps – happy practicing!

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1) Create tension in your frame – When you instructor keeps reminding you to keep your arms 90 degrees, open the thumbs and only use you fingertips in a light pull, they are reminding you to create tension in your frame. This is because salsa is not a choreographed dance. You never know what the next move is and the leader has to communicate what the upcoming move is with the tension in their fingers. To assist in the communication process, keep your arms at a 90 degree angle with your elbows flush along the sides of you bodies. Don’t stretch your arms. This weakens your tension. Both leaders and followers should not clamp their thumbs down on your partners hands because, again, this weakens tension. Your only hold should come from your fingertips curling and pulling gently against your partners fingertips.

2) Don’t look down – Looking down is a bad move for many reasons. The first is it shows your self consciousness which affects lead and follow. Your partern can sense when you aren’t confident and they become less confident about your lead or follow. Also looking down as a leader doesn’t allow you to see around you and you can end up hurting yourself, your partner and couples around you. Same with followers who look down. You can end up traveling too far or into another couple.

3) Listen to salsa music outside the classroom – Many students worry that they don’t understand the salsa beat. This is because they only listen to salsa music for 1 hour a week in a classroom where you are busy learning new moves and it is difficult to concentrate on several things at once. Instead, take the time to listen to salsa music in your Ipod or in your car and tap out what you think is the beat 1-2-3, 5-6-7. Slowly you will start to distinguish the one of the music and be able to understand the beat. This will then translate to better, more musical dancing in the classroom and on the dance floor.

There are many more tips to discuss. I will try to provide some more over the next few days!

The post Salsa Tips to Keep In Mind appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

“Top 5 Ways to Speed Up Your Salsa Dancing Skills

What Level are You On?

Whether you are a beginning, intermediate, or advanced salsa dancer, there are certain tips and tools that will always come in handy when you want to dance at your best. It is one of the greatest things about salsa dancing. We are ALL ALWAYS learning, so that means that even the best dancers that you look up to will never know all there is to know about dancing. If we knew everything there was to know it would quite frankly get boring. Constantly challenging ourselves, as dancers, with new styles, moves and tricks is what keeps us dancing. So with that said there are certain important tips that will never die. I have been dancing socially for about 10 years now. When I feel myself getting rusty, I revert back to the ‘ol basics.

Top 5 Salsa Dancing Tips
1. COUNT 123,4,567,8, that is right…it may sound easy, but even now when I dance with experienced dancers I find myself wondering…”What beat are they dancing on?” Count silently in your head, especially when you are just starting out. I kid you not, I was counting out loud on the dance floor for the first 3 years. Not only did it help me to stay on the beat, but if your partner is observant enough, they might actually hear you and follow your lead.

2. Make salsa tension a top priority. Doesn’t matter if you are the leader or the follower. The connection between the two dancers is what makes salsa what it is. Remember the four points of contact in the closed position. The hands, the leaders hand on the followers shoulder blade, the followers hand on the front of the leaders shoulder, and the leaders and followers elbows that line up when in closed position. Remember to meet your partners tension and adjust to each individual.

3. Watch other dancers. Whether it is the class instructor you are watching, dancers in the salsa clubs, or salsa videos. Watch different styles of dancers and pick the styles you want to adapt to your own. There is no right or wrong style of salsa dancing. The more you make the style your own, the more interesting you dancing style will become. So take a little something from everyone, keep what you like and forget what you don’t.

4. Practice the basic step. This should go without saying, but it really does make the biggest difference. Practice in your kitchen, practice when you are walking around your house. The more you engrain the basic step into your muscle memory, the easier all of the other turns and patterns will become. Build a solid foundation with the basic step. It will never fail you.

5.Last, but certainly not least, listen to salsa music. You are what you eat, so to speak. If you listen to salsa music all the time, you will get more and more familiar with how the rhythm of the music progresses, and how your dancing will speed up and slow down with the music. Dancers connection to the music is really what make them amazing dancers. It is not about showing all your flashy moves, it is about letting the music move you.

The most important thing is to enjoy yourself. This may seem like a give in, but it is what salsa dancing is all about. It is natural to get nervous when you are first starting out. But we all started somewhere, so just communicate with the person you are dancing with and just remember that they were right where you are at some point in their dancing lives.”

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I started off by asking Super Mario what is the most important piece of advice he can offer a person learning how to dance? Here is his response…

SM – “The most important piece of advice that I could give anyone learning how to dance, well…..HAVE FUN. Learn stuff, but have fun while learning. I have been dancing for almost 10 years now, only salsa with no prior dance background. And for me, dancing with someone today is as much fun as it was the first day I took a salsa class. And knowing that when I am having fun my partner is also enjoying themselves and they walk away with smiles all around.”

The thing that I like and respect about Mario is that what he says is the truth – he really is having a blast every time he gets on the dance floor and he treats every person he dances with as if they are the best, most fun dancer he has danced with so you feel great walking off the dance floor.

I also asked Mario what are the most important actions that students can take to see improvement? Here is his response:

SM – “Hmmm…..I used to try and remember all my material when I was learning, and then one day someone showed me how I looked like when I was dancing. I didn’t like it at all. So I worked on fixing all the areas of my dancing that didn’t look good on tape. Try filming yourself dancing and you can be your biggest critic. So every now and then film yourself social dancing and then correct what you don’t like.

Dance with everyone, from beginners to advanced dancers. If you can lead something, you will be able to lead it on a beginner or advanced dancer. If your lead is weak, the beginner would not be able to follow it, so you might have to lead it differently. What you learn from this is how to lead everyone. The same move but with different tensions.

Listen to music and learn to dance all styles…..it only opens one’s mind.”

I will post more Super Mario tips over the next few weeks. In the meantime check out his website with online classes at: www.salsaclass.tv

Happy dancing!

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Flex writes:

“Let’s try to compile a list of simple basic things that followers should do automatically, but all too often don’t:

1. Wait for a lead.

2. In the absence of a lead – i.e. when the leader does not signal and initiate some change of direction or momentum – do your basic over 8 beats (many moves particularly in X-body rely on the follower executing her basic: if On1, back then forward, forward then back. Sooooo many followers don’t do this simple thing!).

3. Maintain your frame – connect to the lead with responsive arm pressure. Otherwise he can’t guide you with precision.

4. In open hold, follow the hand that is being led, with your frame. i.e. orient your frame towards it

5. When they’re below shoulder height and your hands are on his, keep the connecting hands slightly angled up at the wrist (so that, using the connection pressure, he can guide you backwards with that hand as well as forwards)

6. Keep your hands available – waist height when loose, if not in a styling moment – so that he knows exactly where to find a hand.

7. Take the offered hand, returning any pressure.

8. If the lead drapes your hand on or round his body, leave it there until he removes it one way or another – this helps him to find that hand again immediately, as he can feel exactly where it is even if he’s turning.

9. If he tosses or flicks your hand / arm up, for pity’s sake continue the movement gracefully up and around. He’s expecting you to do that, not to make your arm go stiff after moving three inches!

10. Distinguish between hand flicks where the lead wants that hand back again (the majority) from those where he is throwing away that hand in order to take the other. The beat on which this occurs is usually critical to that distinction.

11. Do not take the initiative to let go the leader’s hand, even if you worry that what he is attempting to do may result in a knot. (This assumes that the leader knows what he’s doing – if you decide not to trust him, the dance may as well end there and then).

12. Do not hold on to the leader’s hand so that he cannot drop yours easily. The initiative to take or drop a hand is his.

13. If the leader initiates a turn or spin, keep turning or spinning until he acts to stop you. Many moves over the full eight beats rely heavily on this principle and become joyfully easy if only the follower understands it. If she doesn’t, they either require a heavy mechanical lead or result in one of those moments where she knows she’s hesitated and got something wrong – but may blame it unfairly on his leading!

14. Unless otherwise engineered specifically by the lead, keep some bend in your connected elbow so that there is always some flexibility for you to step backwards as well as forwards.

15. Recognise the signals to go into a shine and learn some of the conventions to signal when you’d like to come out of it. Have a few steps you can shine with, rather than freezing in horror.

16. Recognise a block and have your bodyroll etc. ready to occupy that space of four beats until the block’s lifted.

17. If he’s doing something amazing in front of you but not leading you to do anything at the same time, don’t stand there frozen in open-mouthed wonder! Do something cute and sexy.

18. In the absence of any tactile lead, use visual cues. If he’s positioning for a cross-body lead, no contact, then do a cross body. If you’re doing X-body style and he starts walking round you, don’t turn (just do your back-and-forward, forward-and-back 8-beat basic). If it’s Cuban and he walks round you, do turn.

19. If the leader’s behind you and one or both of your hands are loose on the pause beat, make them available to him (use the seagull position if both hands, half seagull position if one hand, and if he doesn’t take them on the next beat withdraw them quickly as he may be coming round you and doesn’t want to go round a wide circle to avoid your extended hands).

20. When he starts to lead your arms overhead, take the tension/pressure off as soon as he takes the tension off (don’t fight a head-comb, and when spinning or turning keep those overhead arms soft so he can do touch-and-gos or neck wraps or hand drapes or hand flicks etc without you getting into a stiff-arm wrestle)

21. Pay attention to your leader as well as to his lead. Look at him when he’s looking at you. And smile! The least you can both do is be each other’s for five minutes on the dance floor.”

This is really a great list for followers to work on. Ladies, most complaints that men have centre around these issue so choose 1 tip a week and work on it!

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