Becoming a Salsero

As we all know, life is like a roller coaster.

There are highs and there are lows with moments of tranquility and amazing thrills in between.

Learning to dance salsa is just like that. There are highs and there are lows with moments of tranquility and amazing thrills in between.

Sometimes we think the stars are within our reach. At other times we feel like we will never learn to dance properly. What we often forget though is that all this time, during both the highs and the lows, we are making progress.

I'll be the first to admit that it often does not feel that way. The main reason for that is that change is often a very gradual process. It take place so slowly that we do not even notice it.

Let's look at it from another point of view first.
If you were to walk 100 meters on day 1 and the next day you would add 3 more meters you would not even notice the difference. Oh, for all of you not using the metric system, a meter is about 3 yards.

Now if you keep this up for a month you will have almost doubled the distance that you have walked on the first day. To you it will not feel like it has taken any more effort but you still walked twice as far. And unless you were walking along the same stretch of road all the time you probably will not even notice that you now walk further.

Dancing is no different. Sometimes we feel like we are not making any progress at all. We might have gone without learning anything new for a month. Or maybe we did learn things but we just can not seem to get them down at all.

But how we perceive things can be completely different from how they really are. Even though we feel that we have not learned anything we will have improved. Unconsciously, we will have been working on perfecting moves that we already know.

When we learn to dance we will soon enough learn to do a cross body lead, inside turn. After having danced for a while we can do this without thinking. However, that does not stop us from improving that simple move.

Consciously we stop paying attention to it. But several months down the line we will all of a sudden realize that we have 'found time' in the move and we start adding styling. Obviously there is no more time than there was the first time we danced it. We have just been perfecting the move over the last couple of months because we have done it so often.

This happens all the time. Even during our most frustrating moments we will be working on things that we already know. The moves we dance without having to give them any thought at all.

So enjoy the highs, enjoy the tranquility and enjoy the thrills as you would anyway. But also start enjoying the lows knowing that even though it may not feel that way, you are improving.