18. RESPECTING ROOTS

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Welcome to Episode 18 of the Salsa Kings LIVE podcast

Tonight’s episode of Salsa Kings Live is about Respecting Roots. Not even in salsa, but in all things, Andres considers it of the utmost importance to be able know, understand, and show respect to the origins of the things you love and that have made you what you are. While things will inevitably change and grow, it is important to know the origins.

Andres describes a ‘teenager’ phase a lot of dancers go through, where in the desire for the new and the exciting, we will challenge or reject the old. It is important and natural to challenge and figure out what about dancing works for us. However, it becomes harder to take in information and these ‘teenagers’ may needlessly reject the old.

In anything, not only dance, your knowledge of dance is uniquely yours. However, you are also a product of your teachers and life experiences, as were their teachers and so on and so forth. Even experiences outside of dance are what will influence you in dance and in the rest of your life.

This is why Andres finds respecting roots important. You need to know what you came from. You exist in your current form because of these experiences. Accepting these does not mean you cannot challenge these ideas or diverge from them. It is simply an acknowledgment that the existence of these and other evolutions of dance and life means that you are able to learn from it.

While challenging, it’s important to also be able to take from the positive of these experiences. Even if we don’t adhere completely to tradition, it is still important to respect the elements from which we’ve come. Even negative aspects of our roots can become important learning experiences.

And that is the most important idea here. We all want to learn to become better dancers, and the more you respect your roots, the more you understand what does and doesn’t work for you, the better a dancer you will be.