The often-requested men’s styling for salsa dancing has arrived! Once you have a solid basis for your cross body leads, the next step is to be able to do variations of it. In this salsa video, we teach ways to spice up your salsa by adding style to your cross body leads. Anthony will teach you how to do a monkey move and a hook step into a cross body lead, and at the end how to add a shimmy. For the ladies, see the sister video with ladies’ styling, taught by Julie.
I am very happy to have found out that interest in learning to dance on2 (NY/PR) timing has started becoming very popular on addicted2salsa.com. To help everyone become more familiar with the clave and the VERY important conga slap, I have edited the original salsa clave track I created in Garageband for Episode 25 : Finding the Salsa Beat and modified it for an easier learning experience. This should help everyone make it part of their daily schedule to play the track at least 3 times a day while they do some other task. Doing this will allow your brain to sink-in that conga beat and rhythm subconsciously - so that it starts becoming easily recognizable by your ears.
At first, I recommend forgetting about the clave when listening to the soundtrack. Focus on the ‘tu-ku (small pause) PA!’ (conga) sound first. The ‘tu-ku’ sound happens on the 8-AND and 4-AND counts. That ‘PA’ sound are your 2’s and 6’s when dancing on2.
I have loaded the waveform of the track and added some cue markers for you to understand what is happening in the beat. You can do the same with any audio editing program, for example, the free Audacity. Please remember that this is not a perfect graph of the waveform, but it is very accurate if you focus your attention on the peak points. (No noise reduction or normalizing was done).
For all of the guys out there wondering what goes through the minds of salseras (or women in general), I sat down with some fellow lady dancers and discussed behaviors that guys should avoid at the club. In any dance culture, there is a certain unspoken etiquette. For those who are new to salsa dancing, these tips may come in handy so that you don’t give the wrong vibe.
1. We don’t endorse the use of force.
Ask the lady to dance with you, don’t tell her she is going to dance with you. Grabbing her wrist and urging, “Come on. Just one song” does not fly. If she declines, the best reaction is to acknowledge her choice and walk away. No verbal persuasion, cajoling or physical dragging should be utilized – especially when her boyfriend is around. If she gives the bathroom excuse, do not wait for her outside the bathroom- that is just plain creepy.
2. Ask her twice, she’ll turn to ice.
You can ask twice in one night, but not one right after the other. When a song has ended, it is best not to ask her to dance right away. Even if you both seemed to have fun, give it some time and leave her wanting more… that is much better than risking her wanting to push you away.
3. Yakkity Yak? We won’t come back.
Leave the chatting to Cathy! Keep talking to a minimum- exchanging names and where you are from at the beginning of the song is fine, but what the ladies don’tlike is when guys sacrifice the dance itself, and end up doing basic step the whole song while chatting. This comes across as hitting on us.
In this episode of Addicted2Salsa, we go back to the basics to help you learn how to do a 180° Cross-Body Lead with a Turn (*a few others call this the ‘Coca-Cola’ move). This move is a lot simpler than it may appear. We first start off refreshing you what a Cross-Body Lead with a Turn looks like and from there add-on the extra dance steps required to do a half-revolution. Getting the 180 degree cross body lead will help build the salsa framework for you to execute the 360 cross body lead – which will show you in a future episode. If you have any questions, feel free to post them at http://facebook.com/addicted2salsa .
Imagine yourself in that salsa club for the first time: the music is loud, upbeat and with great energy and everyone is dressed in a fashionable way. As you walk in, you approach the dance floor. Here is when you are truly introduced to the world of salsa. You stare at the dancers as you see dancing, executing all these amazing turns; how they dance with passion, the sexiness, and then again, the turns! The never-ending, fun turn!!
Sound like your experience? It was definitely mine, so right away I knew I had to learn how to dance.
Once I started dancing, the better I saw myself dancing, the more I noticed that some girls did not enjoy dancing with me or they’d just flat out say no every time I asked them to dance. Why? After all I was doing all the turns and dips, the sexy patterns, the fun stuff – you know, the works.
It was after some time that I truly learned what makes a guy a great dancer:
“ When you dance salsa, you don’t make the girl do the turns, you guide her”.
This observation alone is very general, but it opens the door to help you understand dancing in a new way. Leading is the key to being a great dancer. Let’s dive in to see how you can improve the way you play your role on the dance floor as a leader.
A new study by the University of Rochester reveals the strong role that the color red plays in influencing our perception of the opposite sex, primarily men. While it has been known that red is attributed to specific behaviors in people, this study empirically tested the theory to provide conclusive evidence of the fact. The color red affects men at a primitive level:
“..the women shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than the exact same women shown with other colors. When wearing red, the woman was also more likely to score an invitation to the prom and to be treated to a more expensive outing.”
The often-requested men’s styling for salsa dancing has arrived! Once you have a solid basis for your cross body leads, the next step is to be able to do variations of it. In this salsa video, we teach ways to spice up your salsa by adding style to your cross body leads. Anthony will teach you how to do a monkey move and a hook step into a cross body lead, and at the end how to add a shimmy. For the ladies, see the sister video with ladies’ styling, taught by Julie.
Bloch is carried here as well,...
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