SalsaSelfie.com 🇨🇺

This is not a staged or prepared DEMO DANCE but just a clip from a Practica Training Session. The Lead and Follow have trained once a week for several years but the dance resemble true social dancing anyway. We strongly believe that our training should focus on realistic social dancing based on leading and following.

We sometimes train partner figures that are unlikely to work in social dancing unless the Follower knows the figure. “Unrealistic” figures can be modified a little to make them easier to lead. Sometimes unrealistic figure can be made to work in social dancing if the Leader has trained them a lot.

I will use this “Practica” Demo Dance as an example of what a realistic social dance could also look like. I am not suggesting that this is anything but one of the ways I dance. I hope that other dancers develop their own look and feel, and that we can inspire one another.

Moments of pure dancing

Most Dance Schools and workshops teach dancing based on moves, one move at a time. The moves are often disconnected from the bigger picture. It is much harder to teach a good flow, a fragment of real dancing. I aim at creating long sequences of basic figures, as if the dance is one long improvised move.

I want my basic dancing, the baseline, to be simple, easy and solid. The foundation of the dance is all important for anything advanced. Just doing moves and figures will never create a dance. The dancing comes first so to speak. When you dance you can add moves and figures.

Same video at YouTube

What to avoid

Make your own list.

1. No show or playing for the Gallery
2. No Rumba Rape Enactment
3. No juvenile Nudo Clutter
4. No acrobatic stunts
5. No Gimmick
6. etc.

To note in this Demo

1. The Follow only steps forward
2. Guapea used to change positions
3. Only mutual handholds
4. The Follow walks as by her own free will
5. One long flow with no stop-ups
6. We try to dance on top of the music

Self-Feedback

1. The Follow sometimes lifts her feet too high. But this is deliberate training because she often drags her feet. I am also sometimes guilty of “Casino Skating” and should lift my feet higher!
2. The Follow should use the inner foot for navigation when walking on the perimeter of the circle. The inner foot turns a little inward step by step. The outer foot steps normal and will fall “in line” by the action of the inner foot.
3. The Follow missed the Entrada Step on “1” in the first Adiós. But remembered it going into the second round.

I hope to publish many more Social Demo Dances with annotations based on my Practica Training Dances. I am fortunate that I can video record many of my training sessions. I have a lot of experience in self-feedback and self-analysis. It is an important element in my learning process.

My danceblog, “SalsaSelfie.com”, is all about sharing my learning process.

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