Is Your Salsa Progress Stuck?

Do you ever wonder why your local intermediate/advanced classes are full of people who are clearly neither?

Have you been taking the same classes, dancing 2-4 or more times a week but don’t feel any significant improvement?

Do you wonder what separates the really good dancers from everyone else?

You’re not alone.

And if you’re asking yourself these questions, you are probably also wondering what you need to do and where you need to go to take your dancing above the level of the classes you are doing at the moment.

Why Is This Even A Problem?

Many teachers assume the vast majority of people in their classes just want to “learn a few moves and have fun”, and don’t have the will or motivation to do the work to get really good.

This may even be true for most recreational social dancers…although I’ve yet to meet the person who deep down really DOESN’T want to be even the smallest smidge better than they are right now.

So most beginner and improver Salsa classes are designed to get people onto the dance floor as quickly as possible.

So they teach the minimum amount of content people need to be functional – keep their timing and do a few simple turns.

After this initial stage, most people see “more moves” as the pathway to being a good dancer and race through the levels as quickly as the teachers will let them.

Why More Moves Is Not The Answer

Unfortunately most group classes put people’s focus on the things that serve them the least:

Throwing more moves at them before they have their basics working properly.

Stepping and counting rather than teaching how to move and respond to the music.

Looooooong routines no one remembers.

No one is really leading or following because everyone knows what’s coming next.

Bigger Repertoire & Fast Music Require Sharper Skills

The net result is that many club dancers are trying to execute intermediate and advanced turn patterns with beginner level technique and connection.

Simply because their technique was not refined and embedded correctly in the first few weeks of dancing – or developed further.

You’ll never be able to master the trickier, faster turn patterns if you do not have the footwork, speed and dexterity.

And you’ll have next to chance of bringing all this stuff onto the dance floor – which is the whole point after all.

If you were paying a driving instructor for lessons and 3, 5, or 10 years later you still couldn’t navigate a roundabout or park the car, you’d probably have asked for your money back.

Skills Need Drills

Like driving there are quantifiable skills in Salsa.

Frame and connection.

Footwork and body movement.

Weight transfer.

Movement dynamics and basic musicality

Turning and spinning.

There is more than one way to do most things, and the more options you have, the more nuance and style you can bring to your dancing.

Are You Mistaking Familiarity For Skill?

If you dance with someone a lot, you get used to the way they move and the way they feel.

You also get used to their repertoire.

This works both ways:

Followers get used to a guy’s typical turn patterns and combinations to a point where she knows what he is going to do next before he does.

This often results in the guy just going along with the follower as she launches herself into moves he hasn’t actually led, rather than trying new variations.

Leads will often remember which moves work with which followers and only lead what they know is a safe bet.

Social Salsa Dancing is An Art Form

It’s a collaboration.

A meeting of minds, bodies and music.

Creative self-expression in the moment.

It shouldn’t be a memory test,

Or a fight

Or an exercise in domination and submission.

Or a competition.

The problem many dancers face – contrary to popular belief – isn’t too little practice.

It’s spending too much time practicing the wrong things on autopilot during social dancing.

You see the social dance floor is not the best place to improve your technique.

Put simply you’ve learnt compensations and coping mechanisms which have become ingrained as habits – and these are actively preventing you from being able to master the faster turns, complicated combinations and execute them to fast music at will.

What Makes An Advanced Dancer?

Being an advanced lead in Salsa is not only about the amount or difficulty of the “moves” you can pull out on the dance floor.

For followers it’s not just being able to follow any lead. It’s about speed, responsiveness, and your ability to co-create to the music in real time.

It’s not about being able to do difficult routines in class.

And it’s not about how long you’ve been dancing either – I’ve seen people become incredible dancers in less than 2 years.

I’ve seen others who have been dancing over 10 years and not improved much beyond the basics.

It’s about how you feel as a dance partner – how smooth, fluid and effortless you make everything look.

It’s about your musical interpretation and creativity.

Sometimes You Have To Go Backwards To Go Forwards…

It’s happened to me a few times in my Salsa journey.

I realised things weren’t working – some vital details were missing from my original Salsa learning curve. And I knew I wasn’t going to find the answers in club based group classes. They were just too random.

If you struggle with double and triple spins,  you are not likely to see much improvement if the teacher only drops them into class routines once in a while.

This isn’t about sending you back to beginner classes – or drilling you with stuff you already know.

It’s about taking your key skills to a new level – your turns, spins, connection, footwork, weight transfer.

Giving you more speed, balance, control and finesse so you can dance with more complexity and flair.

Fix Your Foundations is designed for dancers who have been in the scene for a while but feel they are lacking the pieces of the puzzle they need to progress.

Your Salsa journey is important to me, and you don’t need to be just another face in the crowd.

I’ve re-written the script on Salsa class format to allow more people to beneftit from more personalised coaching with all the depth, detail and “pro tips” which many teachers know but rarely share.

Technique Work Can Be Fun

Many people assume that this means doing boring repetitive stuff.

Or going through the motions with stuff that teachers throw in from time to time that is quite hard and no one can really see the point of.

Sometimes the enjoyment comes from the fact that there is a challenge involved – enough to put most people off.

Get The Tools You Need To Improve

Many dancers come to me because they want to improve faster.

This is easy in private lessons as I can meet each student exactly where they are and build everything they need into the programme.

However it’s a bit different for those who want to join my group ecosystem.

My beginners learn a lot of footwork as well as in depth connection, spin and turn techniques, body movement and musicality.

This is assumed pre-requisite knowledge for all other classes where we build on these solid foundations.

This means that anyone who took their beginner classes elsewhere will usually have quite a wake up call if they come straight into my improver or intermediate classes.

And it presents me with a dilemma because I then have to delay the progress of my existing students to teach what the newcomers need to catch up.

Fast Track Your Progress

This course is designed to provide a fast track in for those who want to join my studio at Improver or Intermediate level. It will bring your technical foundations quickly up to speed.

And for those who don’t, it will fill in a lot of the knowledge gaps and make more things possible in your regular classes and social dances.