These days, as I set up for our art workshops, I put on a Salsa playlist & practice a few basic steps.
The experience of learning to juggle, to build a competence in something I started practicing only a few months ago, has been extremely empowering. Encouraged by this process, I asked myself: what else do I really want to learn?
Learning to play guitar was one such goal. Another was perhaps more ambitious: I wanted to learn to dance. I’ve always thought of myself as someone with “two left feet.” When I’d go to parties or weddings, I’d jump around in a group but I always felt nervous to bust a move on my own. Dancing with my girlfriend, who taught Latin dancing for a spell in her twenties, I do my best but generally feel awkward as she leads me around a group of much better, more more practiced dancers.
So LEARNING TO DANCE it is! Like with juggling I figured I would start by setting my timer to 18 minutes, putting on some music, and just kinda try to do it until the time ran out. My first attempts were pretty silly perhaps–I’d pick pop music like Carly Rae Jepsen, and try to move my feet to the beat. The first few times, I was worn out and even sweaty after only 18 minutes. Eventually, I got better, more confident.
But just prancing around a carpet wasn’t really the goal. I started to look for instruction. I looked up “Latin dancing tutorials” on YouTube and the first videos that came up were about salsa. I started practicing the basic steps–simple enough, as you move your feet forward and then backward, shifting your weight more than you execute anything acrobatic, pausing on every 4th beat.
But what truly inspired me was the music. I’ve loved jazz for years–Ken Burns’ documentary provided me with a primer on a uniquely American artform–and classic salsa especially (Tito Puente, Celia Cruz) seemed to combine the grandeur of swing with marvelous, energetic rhythm.
I was hooked. Less than a month in, I can’t say I’m any better at salsa dancing than I was at juggling when I started a few months ago. Dancing adds the fascinating wrinkle that, like acting, it is something that lends itself to being practiced with someone, an act of engagement with another gyrating body and electric consciousness.
Will there be dancing workshops coming to Do Art Productions? Probably not anytime soon. Just last week I attempted a basic spin move and was quickly stymied, trying with little success to match the movement to the rhythm. But then, given what progress I’ve made with 6 months of juggling practice, it may be sooner than I think!
