I’ve been going for salsa classes on every Thursday at 5:00 pm in my apartment building. It is an interesting dance form to learn and as I haven’t learnt it before, it is a new challenge for me. These classes are usually 90 minutes long and can take up a lot of energy since we do many different steps in a class. From last class, we polished our steps and made sure we knew the difference between dancing with intention and/or just following the teacher. The teacher I have, Mr. Kasun is a well trained salsa teacher who has done various shows and tours across the world. I asked him last class about improvements and he told me to dance with intention and more force and when I did that last Thursday, he immediately told me that now I am on the right track. I am beyond thrilled to be picking up a dance form, I have never learned before and it is extremely exiting to watch back the videos and time-lapses to see my progress. Here is a short time-lapse :
He also taught us about technique and how we control movement. By controlling movement he meant, sharper and finer moves. Salsa is all about that, it is about enjoying the dance but also having rhythm and speed. To be able to do that, you need sharp and fast moves which is why he started teaching us moves on slow songs but then we went from slow beats to faster beats such as 4 beats to 8 beats to 16 beats which increasingly got harder. This is where balance comes in as well because at the end of the day, you need to focus and have balance so that you can succeed at faster moves without losing position. Here is a short video of what that looked like:
The CAS learning outcomes involved in this CAS Activity experience are as follows. LO1- I identified that I need to dance with intention and more force and improved on it. I also worked on my balance through yoga so that I could do more justice to the moves. This also Includes LO2. I have been going for these classes for 3 weeks now which means 3 classes. Therefore, I believe that I have shown commitment to learning this dance as well as improving on my mistakes.[LO4].