THIS IS THE SECOND ENTRY IN A SERIES CALLED, “SALSA MEMORIES” – LOOKING BACK AT MY EARLY SALSA DAYS…
It was first published November 24, 2006.

“Salsa High”

Salsa dancing reawakens in us an ancient yearning to move with freedom and in deep flow with another human being. This magical sense of connection happens so seldom in our lives, that discovering the mere possibility of it in something as seemingly simple as a dance is a profound surprise. At least it felt that way to me.

I was sent indirectly to Salsa by Anna Fuerstenberg, the director of my one-woman show called, Crossroads. Our plans to lengthen the show and to tour widely led her to caution me about what was coming; “We need a lot more choreography in this, Barbara. You’ve gotta learn how to dance.”

I am a singer. I write songs. I’ve been performing on stage since I was seven. I can move. But dance? No, I don’t really dance. Still, with the glove thrown down by a tough director, I felt compelled to at least try it out. She suggested Tango (one of the songs in my show is a tango). But I chose Salsa as a less rigid, smoother type of dance. And by a stroke of good timing, a close friend also had a yen to learn the Salsa. She did the research and found the studio. And so on one warm early-fall evening, we walked into the glowing mirrored dance studio named, Studio Via Salsa to take our first class.

Magical Studio Via Salsa
Hong Quy, who owns and runs the studio, (now closed, unfortunately) is a compact ball of explosive elegance with a molten heart. Strong in both mind and body, she repeats the “basic Salsa steps” (which she must have done several thousand times before) with an ardor and passion that surprises me and makes me feel personally responsible for my lack of agility. (I must work harder.)

Her main goal in these early sessions seems to be to convince the ten or so of us that we can and will learn how to make this complicated dance happen – with style.

Hong Quy’s male counterpart is Anthony Kennedy. Lithe and graceful with a smooth, masculine energy, he radiates a sensuous Latin perfume in his liquid movement as he demonstrates the steps with Hong Quy. Whereas Hong Quy’s style is crisp and spare, Anthony is all waves – deep ripples of motion. They make a classy duo dancing in front of we neophytes who – (if I can speak for the others, based on the feeling in the room) – are beginning to sense the seduction of Salsa.

The pleasure of the first few classes, along with Hong Quy’s assurance that we can do this, leaves me optimistic about the process. In fact, I feel giddy at the end of these classes and leave laughing. I tell my friend “I can’t believe I am saying it, but this is great!”

Two Become One
It may be that these two instructors have a special gift – I have heard from other dancers that Studio Via Salsa is a particularly well-liked operation. But I sense my lightness of spirit also has something to do with the feeling of being in close dance-motion with another person. (At the earliest of classes, we began to dance with partners.)

As a performer, I have for the most part, been on stage alone over the years: solo, save for a single pianist or simply by myself on stage talking with or singing to an audience. I enjoy the intimate and somewhat dangerous demands of a solo performer -“communicate something compelling or leave the stage.”

So this challenge to dance in sync with another person is new for me. And even when we are tripping over one another’s feet, there is still a glimmer of what it might be like to move as one to the rhythmic, almost trance-like, pulsing Latin sound. I realize that I am hooked.

Saturday Night Fever
A couple of weeks go by and then Hong Quy invites us to attend a Saturday night soirée. This is an evening of dance that is open to all levels of classes. It starts at 8PM and the dancing can go on until 2AM. I am a bit concerned about inflicting my early-stage dancing ability on unsuspecting male partners. But my friend wants to go, so I agree.

The lights are down low when we enter. The music is loud, hypnotic. Several couples on the floor are a blaze of motion. I watch as one team flashes by – the man giving subtle gestures that cause the woman to twirl and dip and bow. It’s a humbling spectacle.

The Salsa dance is directed by the man. He has the job of getting the woman into position to make various intricate moves; ‘turn left here; now we are going to go sideways together; now your back will be to me; now your arms must go into the air and you must bow,’ and so on. But no words are spoken. This is all done through gestures, body pressure and the all-important, eye contact.

Women must learn to read the man’s signals and respond, almost intuitively, to what is coming next. I am not at that stage. I’m still watching my feet and wondering if they will go backwards or forwards when I command them.Several game men ask me to dance. And I am grateful – because I see that this Saturday evening soirée is a bit like what I remember from the high school dance. The women, who outnumber the men, wait patiently to be asked to the floor. (I notice that few women make the bold move to ask a man.) And so it is a waiting game.

Hong Quy and Anthony are busy keeping people on the dance floor. I can see the careful calculation in their eyes as each of them scans the room to see who has not danced and who should be asked next. I suspect that Anthony has the tougher job; if he is to dance with all the single women, he will have to be a whirling dervish for the balance of the night.

While I sit and observe, I wonder how these people came to Salsa dancing. One woman tells me that she lost her husband while still quite young. She was looking for new things to do. A man with whom I dance says he is going through a divorce. He wanted to find social occasions that were not just “bars and clubs.” I believe the younger women are looking for men – they dance with their eyes to the mirror. “How do I look doing this? And who is watching me?”

As the evening goes by, more women are dancing with women. It is quite accepted – and we women new to the dance learn a lot from moving around the floor together. I enjoy the evening, even though I know I must have looked very awkward. People are kind and insist that we come to the next soirée.

Enter the Flow
Two more weeks pass and I decide to take several private lessons at the studio to boost my technique and to get a few more pointers on solo dancing – which is also a beautiful part of Salsa – and something that I will be doing onstage in my solo show.
The first lesson is both fun and humbling. I still lose balance – but my footwork is improving. The second lesson, however, is a revelation.

Anthony, a light-spirited, but demanding teacher, saves a few minutes at the end of the one-hour session to simply dance. “Don’t be a student now – dance!” he commands. He chooses music that has a bluesy feel to it and we begin to move around the floor with a kind of ease that I find both exhilarating and scary. I don’t dare breathe. Something is happening that feels like…“flow.”

No false steps. No looking at feet. We are, for perhaps three or four minutes – joined in some kind of transcendental exercise. It is as though thought became motion. I’m speechless when the song ends. “So this is what it could be like,” I say to myself.

Sweet Surrender
As the weeks go by, my emotion during group classes is one of exuberance. I feel high. But at one point, during a rare calm moment, I realize that there is a strong element of selfishness in thinking only of my own pleasure while dancing. Because I am learning that at its most generous, dancing is a process of surrendering the self to the duo. And in so doing, we become much more than the sum of two people locked in complex motion.

We all share a deep yearning to connect profoundly with others. To feel another heart beat against our heart; to feel the rush of breath as we move together in fluid ease. At its best, dance can do this for us. Salsa does it for me.

——-

The second article in the series called, “Salsa Memories,” is here: Sex, Pleasure, Love, & Jealousy