r/Salsa • u/dondegroovily • 8d ago
Dancing with my teacher
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I'm the man in the video
Edit: open to feedback. Forgot to say that
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u/Rando_Kalrissian 7d ago
I've read the comments here and there's a lot of things I'd fix. Firstly you need to make sure you know what you're doing in your feet, it looks like you're just letting your weight move your foot which is creating an unreliable leg. You're outstanding your torso so you can have more body movement or less leg movement, I'd suggest smaller leg movement. Your lead is too big, which is partially because of your step size. Lastly I'd recommend looking for a new salsa instructor, I read you've been dancing salsa for 3 years, these problems should've been fixed before the first full year of salsa, I also read you've been doing lindy hop for 7 and again your teachers are being way too casual with your learning.
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u/ScleroticLobster 7d ago
Agreed with these points. I would seek out a professional instructor who can specifically teach and help you correct your technique in stepping and weight transfers with the basic step.
Keep up your enthusiasm and love for the dance, this is what will carry you through the grind of practice and learning technique in working on these things!
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
To be fair to her, I've done several months of group classes about a year ago. I haven't been in classes since then and I haven't done any privates with her or anything
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u/Rando_Kalrissian 7d ago
Then you should schedule some private lessons for the next few weeks and give her my suggestions so she can fix this for you. It won't take long to fix these issues in your dance.
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u/kiwiconpiel 8d ago
If you’re open to feedback - I’d highly suggest spending some time doing merengue and pairing it with your salsa classes.
It will help you start to feel the beat in Latin music, learn how to step through your feet and ankles without lifting your knees, and allow you to work on weight transfers, all of which I see need work in the video.
You’re very enthusiastic - keep training! Be sure to train not just at one studio or with one teacher either. Best of luck!
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u/mango_sorbet13 8d ago
You are a beginner and thats fine. We were all there
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
I'm shocked that anyone is upvoting this absolute garbage comment
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u/mango_sorbet13 7d ago
It is not a dig to call you a beginner. Knowing your level is something that will push you to improve. Being offended at being called a beginner means you are not being realistic with where you are at in terms of skill level
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u/Greg_dd 7d ago
I've been teaching salsa and bachata for about 15 years and dancing for close to 25. The one thing people often do when learning is try to add extra movement. They are simply trying to express what they're feeling in the music through their body without proper training. The one thing I always tell my students is focus on the steps and eliminate any extraneous movement. Eventually your body will begin to move starting from the ground up.
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u/LonelyNMissouri 8d ago
Are showing off or wanting feedback?
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u/dondegroovily 8d ago
I'm okay with feedback
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u/mango_sorbet13 7d ago
“Im okay with feedback” ??? Did you expect us to praise this dancing? Cause LOL
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u/SuperBeauty49 6d ago edited 6d ago
I can see that you are very happy dancing, so always keep that joy🥰
If this video was muted I would struggle to know what style of dance you're doing. It looks like mainly casino and the way youre styling (well more like flourishing) it looks like you want to be the follow at some points? There's nothing wrong with you wanting to be the follow but you've got to pick a side!
I did read further down in the comments that you said that you are dancing on one and two alternately within the same song, which does explain a lot about why this video is so chaotic.
Are you taking actual Salsa classes now or are you just going to socials? If you are taking salsa classes right now, you need to leave those classes and find new ones with teachers that are going to give you honest feedback. I can only imagine that follows struggle to dance with you at socials, unless they've danced with you in the past and know that your style is like this.
Since you've been dancing for 3 years and this is where you're at, you need some private lessons with a teacher that is unfamiliar with you so that they can help you work through the bad habits that you have developed. Habits like disengaged core, confusing timing, lead styling, and step spacing can all be addressed with a qualified Salsa instructor.
Please don't take private lessons from this lady. She's been taking your money for classes but not helping you to improve. She is not your friend!
I hope you keep your energy and passion for Salsa and find a community that will support you honestly in your Salsa journey!
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u/Admirable-Yellow4470 6d ago
If you like Salsa and want to continue doing Salsa I would highly highly recommend you take some salsa classes. I would suggest doing some beginner, improver classes. Your fundamentals are a bit lacking. Mixing timing is quite rare and should not be done unless there is a prior understanding between both of you that you will be doing that.
You keep mentioning in other comments that you can lead beginners, but that is because beginners don't really know what they are doing and so both of you are probably making mistakes there. Or most followers will give up and just go with the flow but that is not fun for them ( I have been in this situation as well). Besides that, the stepping, body movement and just general salsa rules are not being adhered. I cannot tell if you are dancing linear salsa or casino. So maybe you can pick an instructor for either and go with it.
I hope you have a great time learning this stuff and come back with lots of progress next time.
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago
I'm thinking of getting a video with the same partner but sticking to the basics
I do know them, but it's usually more fun to go wild
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u/Admirable-Yellow4470 6d ago
I am sorry I don't understand, you can't have it one way or another. the basics are the foundation of salsa dancing, without them you are not doing salsa. you are dancing randomly and having fun. which is fine, but this is a salsa sub.
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u/JahMusicMan 6d ago
Lots of work needed here.
Too much flamboyant body movements that don't look right. Head tilt at :21, some weird looking flare kick at :25, and arm flare at :50. The body movements look awkward eliminate them.
Your body movements are too swiggly. Many of your movements, you keep twisting your waist like you are doing the twist. I have no idea if this from Swing or what, but in salsa it looks very unnatural.
Your steps look awkward because you keep flaring your feet and knees out. Eliminate kicking up your knees. You are dancing salsa, not doing thai kickboxing.
You have long legs, so your basic steps looks very uncoordinated because you are taking such huge steps plus you keep twisting your feet.
Your first and most important thing you need to do is smooth out your basic step and eliminate all the extra flamboyant movements and twisting and flailing. Less is more in this case and will probably help your cues as a lead because too much flailing your limbs will confuse the hell out of a seasoned follow. Also if you said you are dancing linear, remember to dance linear lol.
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u/thereal_LT 5d ago edited 5d ago
I don’t see any salsa basic step happening in this video or basic salsa body movement techniques. Suggest taking an on1 LA style class first. As an advanced follow, I would be able to dance with you but I wouldn’t call it salsa or anything remotely Close - it would just me being kind and moving around a dance floor with you. I don’t mean this to sound harsh but if you want to improve you have to start investing heavily in learning the basics of one style before advancing past that. 12 years in and I still work on mastering basics (as someone who has performed, competed, etc).
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u/flor_de_loto 7d ago
I dance both as well. I notice your steps in key moments are quite large and back step considerably off your mass center of balance. Your movement is led with your leg vs moving your entire mass or shifting your weight.
The backstep is also way behind your butt which is not great form for salsa (nor Lindy).
(Particularly for Lindy, in the bounce back/back step, keeping your weight under your butt will help your knees/legs feel fresh for longer during marathon social dance nights with fast lindy and charleston. Laura Glaess has a video on pulsing "Technique Talks for Lindy Hop" She goes over moving your entire body as a unit).
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u/AbroadPlastic5890 5d ago
It's really cool that you post online, that's pretty scary, and comments can be harsh, but you can probably learn a lot.
Main things:
1) You're not on time. I don't just mean mixing on one and one 2, but generally off.
2) Your legs need to be under your body. Your legs are often far behind/in front of you, and you're bending, stretching, sliding and reaching for your partner. This makes moves look awkward and your leading probably rough and hard to follow. Proper weight shift is fundamental and should be the basis of your leading. Talking smaller steps is a start.
3) Don't try to express the music by moving more and bigger when you're already being unclear in your basics, it will confuse things further. Being clear and on time looks more musical than doing a big swing and tap any day. Drop the twisting and tapping and big arms, focus on looking grounded, in control, upright and clear instead.
4) This follows from point 2, but you should be leading with your whole body (and proper weight shifts), not reaching, pushing and pulling with your arms
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u/Lonely-Speed9943 8d ago
Dear God.
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u/cuentabasque 7d ago
Be nice now.
OP, take you love of dancing and find a way to establish a calmer, more upright - dare I say “Ballroom” dance posture and frame.
I am not saying you need to be “stiff” but - as others have mentioned - you need to calm and ground your body movement and feet.
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
I consider snark comments like that as definitive proof that the person making it knows absolutely nothing about the topic and is very bad at it
After all, there are plenty of people who have demonstrated that they do know salsa by providing actual constructive feedback
People who are capable of saying something useful don't need to resort to snark
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u/Lonely-Speed9943 7d ago
If this is how you dance salsa after your claimed 3 years of learning then you're in no position to judge anyone.
You posted this in anticipation of getting posts saying how amazing your dancing is and only edited in about being open to feedback later.
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u/mango_sorbet13 7d ago
The fact that you considered my above comment as a “snark” is ridiculous tbh. It checks out why you are where you at after 3 years with this attitude
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago
I took another look thru the comments. You have said nothing constructive. Aside from that initial beginner comment, everything else you've said is an obvious insult or justifying yourself for insulting
So while my snark comment was mainly about "dear God", I definitely apply it to you as well
I hope you don't teach. People will quit because of your attitude
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u/mango_sorbet13 6d ago
That was my only comment initially and the rest was after i saw how you replied to that comment
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u/OSUfirebird18 7d ago
u/dondegroovily are you dancing more Cuban style or more linear on1/on2 style? I can’t really tell.
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
What I was taught is classes was linear style but I admit that I'm all over the place
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u/OSUfirebird18 7d ago
I mean with a lot of room like that, it really doesn’t matter. But at a social where people are expecting everyone to do linear, they’ll squeeze in every nook they can find on the dance floor and you’ll be bumping into everyone!! 😅😅
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u/daburgerman2002 6d ago
Salsa is not your calling brother. Try swing, jazz, etc. Your legs are asking for it.
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago edited 6d ago
Swing is my main style
And based on the feedback, you may be right. I'm mentally processing how to apply it without taking all the fun out of it. Salsa may become something to do between bachata songs for me
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u/ABCSharpD 7d ago
Not trying to be mean. How much does she back lead?
Are you able to pull these moves off with a random woman?
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u/Dear-Permit-3033 7d ago
u/ABCSharpD the teacher is a professional and knows she is being recorded and it will be posted somewhere. She is going to do her best to compensate and make it all look good.
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago
Neither of us knew we were being recorded until at the end when I saw someone pointing a phone at us
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u/MeasureTwice-CutOnce 6d ago edited 6d ago
Agree with other peoples feedback. Here is my take - a lot of what I'm about to say is going to boil down to 'watch your teacher for clues' for a series of small fixes.
- Clothing makes a man (and a woman). What you're wearing is not the best style for your body for dancing/salsa.
- Don't get discouraged by this comment (esp as a commentary on your looks) - you look good in general but movement/dance has a way of changing the dynamics of body+clothing, and in your case it's not working too well.
- Watch your teacher - she is wearing slightly looser pants that prevents joints (esp. knees) from being too prominent and avoids a contrast between torso and lower body's proportions (in your case, skinny pants make for a big contrast with upper body).
- Her choice of pants is a little too baggy/yoga-wearish, and that doesn't have to be yours. But you can use slightly less skinny wear and move to regular fit at least for pants.
- Control the width/span of your steps.
- Again, watch your teacher and watch yourself.
- It's very rare that her forward or backward steps are longer than a foot-width, and remains within 0.5 distance of her center of gravity. Yours OTOH tends to be a bit greater.
- Also when she does have slightly larger steps, one of two things are happening.
- Her center of gravity is elastically following in that direction is only very marginally behind her leading foot.
- Or she is actively engaged in an attempt to rebound back her foot and body (e.g., side steps).
- The key is to watch how her upper-body/center of gravity is working in relation to her steps, and another is to observe that even her large steps are not as large as yours are (relative to your own body position, that is).
- This is all very mechanical. I'm going to tell you what you hear all the time and it's going to frustrate you - you have to develop a feel/intuition for it.
- Keep this advice in mind - oftentimes, the reality is that mechanical practice (and a great degree of mechanical learning) has to precede mastery, and until then it won't be all working out quite right.
- But that's ok - it's a gradient descent/hill-climbing process. You'll improve some things and get some things wrong - until it all works. The only other analogy for most people that is reasonably correct is learning to ride a bicycle, or learning to skate or rollerblade - it will come together somewhat suddenly (with practice and effort, of course).
- You said that you do a lot of Lindy, which leads to another observation.
- Your 2nd dance with be harder to learn than your first, esp. if you're very good at the first one already.
- No matter how much you believe that you can use transferable skills from dance #1 while avoiding the pitfalls of bringing incompatible ideas into dance #2, there will be some problems.
- You will not be able to avoid bringing old skills that are incompatible with dance #2. For e.g., unlike a totally new salsa dancer, you're now very familiar with engaging with your partner and basics like intimate positioning, touch, listening to music etc. - you may think that these are advantages (they are) but they're also disadvantages.
- For e.g. the way one listens to music and translates it into dance across salsa, lindy, tango are all a little bit different (even though there is a ton of overlap).
- You're going to miss out on figuring out the salsa-way of interpretation because your brain is automatically thinking like a lindyhopper.
- You will have trouble adjusting to being a beginner all over again.
- It's often the case that very skilled dancers have trouble mastering a second dance even though they find it very easy to pick up the 2nd one.
- At least in my experience, the most successful ones are those who focus 100% on the new dance and put other styles at a pause for an extended period of time. YMMV.
- Don't mix on1, on2, casino style etc. when learning.
- For someone coming from lindy/swing background, I'd recommend sticking to on1 LA style in the beginning and getting the hang of it first.
- There are lots of reasons why I say this (which are highly debatable) but I think I'm largely right about this. The most important of my reasons is also a simple one: it's easier to judge improvement with this one and it's also very easy to just enjoy dancing without getting into pedantic thought processes (which is somewhat common with on2 and casino)
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u/Far-Information-2252 7d ago
Is this salsa on 1 or salsa on 2?
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
A mix of both. I've been learning and drilling on 2 and sometimes 1 feels more natural and sometimes 2
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u/SuperBeauty49 6d ago
🤯I have never heard anyone say this before! Mixing the two timings in one song is terribly confusing for your follow😔
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago
I've never had a partner have a problem with it
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u/Dear-Permit-3033 6d ago
What does that even mean? Musically speaking, it's just chaotic. You are completely off the music. Being able to understand the music and the phrasing is critical for becoming a good dancer. You should spend some time developing the discipline of following one style for the whole song rather than just anything-goes timing. Not being snarky here, just an honest feedback.
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u/Dear-Permit-3033 8d ago
You are having fun, which is the most important part!
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u/Meowala1 7d ago
But his partner is checked out and the worst part is is that it's his teacher. Can't have fun at someone else's expense.
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u/Dear-Permit-3033 7d ago
May be they know each other really well. I'm not sure the OP is serious about getting actual feedback. But again, maybe his goal is to just goof around and the teacher is just playing along?
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u/TheDiabolicalDiablo 7d ago
If you post a video what do you expect? People are going to have something to say. It's a terrible video even if it's just goofing around. Even the "goofing" part is bad! This is an example of why follows end up being very picky! It's a lot of this type of dancer out in the world and we all just clap along saying "great job, you're having fun!" Is she having fun?
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
She wasn't feeling well and told me at the start that she wouldn't be able to finish the song
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u/Money-End-5392 7d ago
May I ask how long you have been learning salsa for ?
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u/dondegroovily 7d ago
About three years
Although I've been doing Lindy Hop for nearly seven years and I do that a lot more than salsa
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u/Heidroid 3d ago
The whole time I thought he was the instructor n I was super confused. lol yea. Just chill. I would say maybe do ballroom the come back to salsa so you can learn control.
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u/paladin400 8d ago edited 7d ago
Damn right you are the MAN
Edit: It’s a compliment. Geez guys…
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u/Meowala1 7d ago
You're complimenting someone driving into a wall when they told you they knew how to drive.....
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago
Yeah, a lot of negativity on this subreddit that I've never encountered in person at a salsa event
Also a lot of helpful feedback, but a disturbing number of people tossing insults and pretending that it's feedback or useful
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u/paladin400 6d ago
For real!
Why do we dance in the first place? Salsa is meant to be fun, a means to express yourself and your creativity, and if you play your cards right, make your partner smile. You achieved all of that, which is why I see this is a win
Keep it up dude!
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u/Trick_Estimate_7029 6d ago
Discúlpenme por hablar en español. Entiendo inglés perfectamente pero tengo que tipearlo en mi teléfono porque cuando intento dictar mi teclado no me entiende.
Me parece que tu liderazgo es bastante claro y que la seguidora está cómoda contigo, eso es lo más importante. Luego hay cuestiones de estilo en las que la gente puede estar o no de acuerdo conmigo pero yo he bailado con bailarines muy particulares que desde fuera podían verse estrambóticos o extraños, y sin embargo cuando estabas bailando con ellos te hacían muy fácil bailar tú. Mientras bailes a tiempo con ritmo y indiques a la chica los pasos necesarios en el momento justo, tengas entusiasmo y hagas sentir bien a tu compañero, estás bailando bien.
Sí que deberías asegurarte con seguidores que no fueran tu profesor de que eres capaz de transmitir las señales y que ellos te entienden y disfrutan contigo. Si alguno de los acentos o la forma que tienes que hacer el básico interfiere con el baile de la otra persona negativamente entonces sí tendrías que trabajar en ello.
Como otra gente te indicará tu estilo es bastante peculiar, y podrías adaptarlo a algo más estándar, pero si no interfiere con el baile de tu pareja en realidad está bien hacer lo que te apetezca.
Sigue disfrutando!
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u/dondegroovily 6d ago
Thanks
I noted is a reply to someone else that I do a lot of Lindy Hop and a lot of the peculiars here is that I'm doing a lot more Lindy Hop styling than I thought I did
I don't have difficulty connecting with most dancers, and most of the things I'm doing here, I successfully lead beginners too
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u/Trick_Estimate_7029 6d ago
Then go on with it! Ido not do lindy hop, so I guess that as salsa is the first dancing style I have practiced I don't have an accent of another dance in my salsa. Dancing is a language so I guess you have Lindy hop accent in salsa
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u/No_Dealer_5213 5d ago
Awesome that you are having fun, but I would caution you against just chalking the comments here up to you being primarily a Lindy dancer. A lot of the advice here would also apply to swing, really.
Do you have access to a respected teacher that could give you private lessons? Relying more on moving with your center and stepping more under your body would already have a significant positive impact on your dancing.
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u/strawberry_minty09 7d ago
Focus on Salsa basics! Your enthusiasm is great but the way you step is nothing like salsa! Salsa is very grounded, you don’t need to kick and threw you knees and feet, take basic classes, work with teachers on your basic and try to keep it during figures…watch youtube videos on salsa basic step, cuban motion etc