Hi
I currently attend a full time dance course doing 7 types of dance. I would be interested in starting salsa classes in my free time for something different. Can you give me some advice?

im really interested in this kind of dancing but dont know where i would go in edinburgh for lessons

One of the things which spurred me to do more in Latin was a (quite white) salsa teacher who pointedly tried to tell a class that we couldn't possibly get that cuban motion in a lifetime (excepting him, of course). I dumped that teacher immediately and would now happily go head to head with him any day of the week. As if!

Quite beside the fact that "latin" isn't a race anyway, you'd think from the article that salsa has been done since the dawn of man, when it just ain't so. LOTS of dances and styles have been done in that region. When I was a child, it was all loosely referred to as "calypso" and was taught in various dance schools with nearly no rules and no specific names for individual styles. The people making this silly racist claim seem universally to be of a generation that doesn't even remember a world without Nintendo, let alone a world without a salsa club on every other corner. With all due respect for latin culture, I hardly think I'd turn to these particular folks for advice on what I can or cannot do. Hmmmm...and I thought lambada was supposed to be "the forbidden dance".

I listen to African salsa now - and merengue, and more. Seems the West Africans sent their music eastward with the slave trade. When it eventually came back to them fused with ACTUAL latin music, they loved it! They dance it, without stylistic rules. So, do they not get to claim salsa because they were out of the loop for a while, or are they granted a historical exception? Just how lame is this all going to get?

I don't see why people who teach social salsa need to be certified by anyone at all. And I don't see why salsa needs to formalized into a syllabus, either, unless there's a strong desire to create a ballroom version of it as was done with mambo and cha cha (both of which have retained their street versions quite handily!) I do see why ballroom mambo would quite naturally steal a few moves from the modern stuff, though. I noticed that the Junior Olympics now has a salsa competition, and I have heard what I thought was idle talk of a competitive ballroom latin dance being replaced with salsa eventually. Perhaps there's more steam to this whole move than I first thought? But then, all these self-proclaimed genetically-ingrained salseros would be out of it, since I've seldom met one who knew anything BUT salsa. So I guess it's a lifestyle after all, eh? Whatever.

Salsa and Mambo are two extremely similar, but nontheless different forms of dance. If they were the same, there wouldn't be a Salsa.

I have seen many changes. It's whatever the circumstances called for at the moment. I first learned salsa from a wonderful dancer from Puerto Rico, but it isn't the same as she taught me then, and it will probably change again, but that is the beauty of dancing!