The Salsa Diaries – Monday Night is Salsa Night!

At some point during 2011 my friend Leanne and I decided to go and try out a Salsa class. We wanted to try something new, meet new people and get ourselves out of the house.

My cousin had been to Salsa Yarm’s Monday night class at Sassaris and suggested we go along. We were slightly worried that we wouldn’t know anyone (true) that we’d get everything wrong (definitely true in my case) or that we wouldn’t like dancing with strangers (sort of true but it’s only strange the first time!).

But everyone was so friendly, we picked up the basics quite quickly, and we’ve been going ever since.

The teachers, Chris and Sue, are both experienced professionals, not to mention lovely people and there’s a core group who come regularly with newbies and others who come when they can.

I should say at this point that whereas Leanne had previous dancing experience, ballet from four-nine was about it for me, unless you count bar dancing (I worked at Chicago Rock) in my miss-spent youth.

Coordination is not my strong suit, and those who know me will tell you that ‘a sense of direction’ is a bit of an alien concept to me.

And yet after the initial lesson, where I pretty much used the wrong foot, went in the wrong direction and missed the signals every single time, I began to trust my instincts, as well as my partners, and learnt to follow (sort of).

I still have some trust issues, and panic if the leader wants me to do something I don’t understand/haven’t learnt. Plus there are certain things I always do wrong. ‘Flaring’ being the main one.

But overall it looks harder than it is. We are shown a routine and think ‘Oh God, no chance!’ and then we learn it and realise we can do it!

Salsa is great fun, good exercise and full of cool words - My favourite being that ‘cucaracha’, a basic side step, means cockroach in Spanish. You get a sense of achievement when you do something well and you can track your improvement simply by dancing with better dancers.

Leanne and I have developed a nice habit of going to Salsa and then going somewhere for tea, usually one of the handful of places which are still open at 10.30 on a Monday and, more often than not, we order the same things!

We’ve also started socialising outside of Salsa with a couple of new friends who we would never have met without the class.

And tonight we are off to Fellowship Hall in Yarm for a ‘Salsa Social’- usually a mix of styles such as Salsa, Kizomba and in this ‘Bachatango’!
I’ve never tried ‘Bachatango’ so I’ll let you know how I do.

In the meantime, if you want to try Salsa, Salsa Yarm has classes on various nights dotted around Teesside. See the website: www.salsayarm.com for details, find your nearest class and go for it!