How to get good at Salsa Dancing fast!

If you are interested in improving you salsa dancing skills very quickly and in a short space of time as possible, read on. There are many types of salsa dancers, there are dancers who just want to jobby to de-stress after a long days work, there are people who enjoy dancing and meeting new people, there are competitive dancers who dance professionally.

Whatever the reason, the vast majority of people are interested in improving the salsa dancing ability, and moving up through their salsa class level, and generally becoming more profecient at social dancing in general, pulling off better moves, being more in time with the music, choosing appropriate moves and patterns to match the music.

Attend as many salsa dancing classes as possible

Now, there is no reason for not doing this, salsa classes in large groups tend to be cheap, you don’t need to have a partner and you can just turn up by yourself and dance away. It’s a great way to get feedback from an expert and dance with a lot of different people very quickly. You will receive feedback from the teacher which could shave weeks or months off your learning curve.

Stick around for Salsa Dancing after class aka “Social dancing”

I’ve been to many salsa classes, and have always been amazed at how students scarper from classes as soon as the class is over. Classes are like virtual reality, as the lead your partner knows exactly what move you’re going to do so it’s never a good test of your lead. You don’t tend to practice with the music so you never test your timing, and dances are ususally short and you change partners in record time.

Now this may seem like a contradiction as I’ve just rated salsa dancing in the paragraph above, classes are good! But classes alone will not make you a good salsa dancer. The real experience and bueaty of salsa dancing comes from practiceing what you have learnt in class with music and with other people who weren’t in the same class as you in order to really test your skills (this is paticularly true for leads as it allows you to see if you are leading correctly, and the follower isn’t simply moving because she is anticipating your move).

I spent months and months just doing salsa classes, and it never really got me anyway, after doing perhaps 30+ classes I felt like there was a lot I didn’t learn, and wasn’t comfortable with dancing in front of other people without direction. It’s only when I started to take the leap of faith and ask people for dances that I started to pick up on the real essence of salsa dancing. I started of with 1 or 2 social dances, and slowly built up my confidence and tenancity and now probably dance with 10+ people on a given night.

Try something new, exciting and daring every day

This is something I picked up from doing martial arts, really it was probably stopped me from stagnating in salsa dancing. Quite simply, if you’re not trying something new, exciting or daring each time you go to salsa dance you are stagnating, that is to say you are not expanding your salsa dancing skill. If you stagnate for long enough you will get bored and will no longer have any motivation to carry on.

You must ensure that you keep things interesting for yourself by learning new techniques and moves, improving your timing, dancing with more partners etc. This not only ensure you get to learn salsa dancing much quicker and advance your learning every day. But it also ensures that you do not stagnate and waste your time. After all what is the point in just doing something that you already know you can do?