A few years ago I lived in Florida, in an area with a significant Latin subculture. My roommates enrolled in salsa lessons and for months ushered all female visitors to our house into the kitchen, where they would be required to become makeshift dance partners with my salsa-enthusiast roommates. Just to reiterate: This is salsa dance, not the tomato-based product that frequently accompanies corn chips, although I may have consumed chips and salsa once or twice while observing the dancing.
(If you’re squeamish or a registered Republican from central Florida, you might want to stop reading at the nearest exit or consider taking a detour to one of my more family-friendly posts.)
A bunch of us full-time Christians started dancing. Regularly. Socially. In mixed company. We sometimes even set up after-hours mini-lessons within the friendly confines of professional Christendom’s world headquarters. This sort of thing could have gotten people fired.
Those of us who participated, however – and there were, believe it or not, more males than females – recognized social dancing as a gripping metaphor for a broader context of relationships between men and women. I was recently reminded of this by a comment on a friend’s blog.
I began taking salsa lessons in North Africa a few weeks ago. (Again, this salsa has no relation to its culinary counterpart.) Fortunately, when I lived in Florida, I caught a few salsa moves, along with their Spanish names. Knowing the Spanish names of moves is très important in salsa, especially when you’re taking salsa lessons in French and happen not to be fluent in French.
Layers of metaphors could be mined from my experiences in trying to learn salsa in French. It’s almost too hard to know where to start. There’s “trying to keep moving in the right direction while not exactly understanding the instructions” and “generally being a step or two behind”. Then there’s the reality of wanting to lead, but desperately needing the grace of people who know more than me to show me how that works.
There are also moments of poignant instruction: “When you take a partner, I’ve noticed that you wait for her to come to you, rather than making her feel confident and going to her.” Sorta hard to miss the implications of that one.
At times I yearn to trade the dance for corn chips. So far, all I’ve swallowed is my pride.
5 comments:
I've been thinking on much the same lines as you, taking salsa. It's hard because everything in modern society teaches us to be egalitarian, but partner dancing, certainly salsa, is not. And it doesn't work if you try for that. Of course, this is imbedded in patriarchal attitudes in years past, but honestly I have no idea how partner dancing could work otherwise, unless you removed the idea of the feminine and the masculine entirely.
I'm reminded of a comment C.S. Lewis made, one of the few times I've disagreed with him, when he argued against Priestesses in the Anglican Church. He said it would be eminently reasonable and logical to allow it. But it wouldn't be so much like a ball (dance). Seriously, that was the some total of his arguement.
I think he's right though- on the other way. Life isn't like a ball. And I wouldn't want either of them to change. Okay, I would. I'd rather that in dancing it was less incumbent on me to lead. (Though we don't have the going to the partner bit that you seem to have- in our lessons we just rotate around in a circle. Not sure if I completely understood what you were saying there actually.) As you say, it's really hard to know what to do and where to go when you know hardly anything, but it's up to you (the male) to know all the moves- and so much easier for the women, if they just allow themselves to be lead. At least that's what the instructor and all the women in my class say. They can advance to Intermediate after just one class series, because they have to know so much less to dance beautifully.
But I recognize logically that salsa's more fun the way it's structured.
And know way I can figure out how some of them do that thing with their hips. Seriously- it's like a freak of nature, something science can never grasp, unless you use chaos theory or something equally complex.
So who else is doing this? I thought it was just you and Beq. And what style you learning? We're doing LA style. And speaking of those terms, have you learned the coumbie yet (sp)? That's the only strange term I can think of. The rest of the time the instructor uses phrases like "make a window".
Funny, isn't it, that we've both started doing the same dance around the same time? I'll continue through this through another beginner series, and then maybe a couple intermediate series- but in a couple weeks I'm also going to try to jump into some Finnish folk dancing, which I saw at the Kalevela Festival and it looked like a lot of fun.
Thanks for that. Lots to think about here.
Our salsa lessons are also done sort of in the format of an ensemble dance – we’re in a circle and have to move to the next partner when the instructor says dame (Spanish word, two syllables, roughly means “give me” - or at least that's what I think). I’ve been to lessons for three weeks now, and two different instructors have taught. They’ve each focused on slightly different styles. I missed the lesson last week, and this week we had the instructor who was there the first time I went, which was three weeks prior. We didn’t warm up or review, so I quickly found myself trying to remember my names of Spanish moves, the style of this instructor and the entire French language, and all the while ladies were coming to me on dame, and my inadequately-multi-tasking brain got a little flummoxed in trying to figure out how to accept new partners properly.
Oh, it sounds like we're doing the same thing, re: the circle. But we just stand there, while the woman rotates through. (Sucks though if there aren't an equal number of partners- makes it real hard for the majority group to learn.)
That's hard, with two different instructors, in two different styles. Much more difficult to get one down well.
"And no way I can figure out how some of them do that thing with their hips."
Actually, it probably has something to do with the way women's hips evolved/were designed to handles the rigors of childbirth. The results may be chaotic/mysterious/complex, but the causes aren't.
guess i'm not republican enough to get squeamish? i think it's great when guys get into dancing... girls learn a lot about being led & guys learn the importance of leading (though it IS hard work & a step of faith for guys -- & arguably for us girls, too -- it's a beautiful picture when it works out!)
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