First Salsa Lesson

I went sal­sa danc­ing with a friend for the first time last night. We went to Modä and took advan­tage of the the offered lessons we dis­cov­ered through clevelandsalsa.com. I think this is some­thing I could become addict­ed to, see­ing as I woke up this morn­ing with the sal­sa beat still churn­ing through me.

At first we could­n’t get in when we showed up at nine. The doors were locked, but when the opened the guy told us that Modä runs on Puer­to Rican time. I’m sure my bud­dy Jesús would know exact­ly what he meant. Any­way, for ten bucks [the cov­er price plus a fiv­er for the lessons, I believe] I had a knee-bend­ing, hip-shak­ing, rhythm like a fat man’s heart­beat of an evening. Okay, my rhythm isn’t quite that bad, but it takes awhile for it to sink past 18 years of hick upbring­ing. There were two instruc­tors, who split us into two groups, we end­ed up with the lady, who’s name I can­not remem­ber at the moment. [I’d recent­ly con­sumed a rather potent con­coc­tion of ketel one, club soda and lime]

The sal­sa step is a basic sev­en-step that bog­gled my mind, just like it had in the 20 minute les­son I’d had in col­lege, until I though of it as a 6.5 step 123&456. Then it got a bit eas­i­er. I got even eas­i­er once we actu­al­ly paired up. I dance bet­ter with a girl in my arms. I won­der why? Any­way, we learned two soft-turns and the basic step in the first hour and then the real sal­sa music start­ed, the live band came out and er, we went out on the dance floor. I got into it after awhile, although I was still con­cen­trat­ing very much on get­ting the steps right. So much so that a Rican guy came down and helped us out a bit.

Many thanks go to my old anthro prof Greg Downey for teach­ing me a bit about the cul­ture of the sal­sa club. I knew at some point we were going to get advice and some­one was going to cut in. Which is great! The peo­ple there real­ly want every­one to be able to sal­sa well. Even though I was told I was danc­ing like a limp string and need­ed to learn the slangy com­fort of sal­sa danc­ing, my instruc­tor gave me some encour­age­ment, say­ing “I did­n’t need more lessons” [yeah right :)].

If danc­ing is sym­bol­ic sex then sal­sa is sweaty sum­mer back-claw­ing ani­mal­is­tic sex. Total­ly intense. My gimp knee felt like it was being ham­mered on, but only when I was­n’t danc­ing. That sal­sa beat, man, it takes you some­where else. For sure.

Update: I for­got to men­tion, one of the cou­ples there gave my friend and I their phone num­ber and told us to call them. I’m con­vinced they are swingers. Their sin­gle friend was a cutie though.

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