44. HURRY UP AND DANCE

Welcome to Episode 44 of the Salsa Kings LIVE podcast

What are you waiting for? Hurry up and dance! So many dancers are so obsessed with taking in as much information as possible as quickly as possible, due to social pressure. Many younger dancers will be harsher on themselves when a classmate, peer, or someone they admire has picked something up much quicker. The pressure can overcome a lot of dancers. This isn’t something you can force or rush. This is an art, not something you can cram for. If your goal is perfection over letting the feelings of the dance, then your dancing will suffer. Studying and learning is important, but there is a difference between making it easier for it to come to you and trying to brute force everything.

This isn’t about choreography or set routines. This is about being able to express your art more efficiently. It is about connecting to the music and feeling it. You need to relax yourself and let yourself be moved by the music. This will come to some more easily than others, partially due to talent or practice. Women are generally considered to be more attuned to the music, for example. However, this doesn’t mean it can’t be done. You just have to learn to stop forcing it.

Andres’ compares it to lifting weights. When lifting weights, it’s all about pushing and forcing, making the weights move from your might. With stretching, as well as dancing, it’s about your ability to bend, move, breathe, and generate flexibility. Being able to stretch your mind and allow the music to move through you is what you are going to need to make the dancing work.  

Simplicity can help. Maybe someone’s dancing isn’t particularly advanced, but it’s more important that they feel the music. Technique can come later. That is just a matter of practice and getting your body to move. Feeling the music is a mindset that you have to allow yourself to get into.

It’s admirable to focus on technique and self-betterment, but the most important thing is to allow yourself to feel the music, to remember why you’re dancing in the first place. You want to be someone expressing your art, not a robot repeating technical techniques. By focusing on dancing as an art, you’ll be able to get a feel for techniques and where they hit the best.

“The idea of opening your heart to express yourself is really what we’re looking to do here. This is what attracts and feels good for you as you’re dancing. Don’t get me wrong, obviously an amazing turn pattern, the way things flow, that’s more of the technique aspect of it, but again, that’s generally the easier part of it. Now, there’s artists on the other side that perhaps the techniques may be a little bit harder for them, but that just comes with focus.”