Salsa Class

Lloyd from Dance Cubana began the class with a demonstration, with his partner, of a Cuban Salsa. He didn’t promise we would all be dancing like that at the end of the 1-hour class but some were hopeful.
We started with the basic step, the best place to start, Lloyd with the men on one side of the room Oola with the ladies facing them. After emphasing the need to transfer our weight as we stepped forward or back Lloyd spent a good time with us until we were nearly all foot perfect, then he put some music on. Having mastered that we progressed to the ‘Cucaracha’ at which point we partnered up. Obviously there were more ladies than men but there was no shortage of ladies to take the lead. Then into a circle, after completing a short sequence we all moved on to the next partner, a good idea, if your partner wasn’t very good you could leave her behind for the next person. Then into the ‘break to open’ a move where each dancer steps to the side in the opposite direction or that’s how it should be. To music, which proved to be quite fast, the two moves were linked and everyone appeared to have master it. These moves where done holding hands, the next move was to go into ‘closed position’ cuddling up to whoever you were with, finally all three moves were linked together and practiced to very rhythmic music. At the end of the hour, feeling hot, but smiling, dancing does that to you, we thanked Lloyd and Oola very much for their patience, to end the afternoon they demonstrated a very complicated and beautiful dance the Kizomba, maybe something to try next time!