Salsa – the dance of love and freedom

• June
• 15

7:30 am Category: articles

Salsa is a beautiful dance of love and freedom with a lot of passion, surprising moves and attractive routines. This is the life that we live accompanied by motion and music.
Salsa is a Latin-American dance with its roots in Cuba – island of joy and never ending happiness. Today you can hardly consider this dance as something that belongs just to Latin-American culture as with time passing salsa has become more popular all over the world. Now it is becoming more and more popular in Daugavpils.

Vice-champion of European salsa championship, Maksim Slivinskij, has generously agreed to answer few our questions.

Tell us, please, Maksim, about yourself. How long have you been dancing salsa?

I got to know salsa since it came to Latvia, which was in 2000. Back then I went to my first salsa festivals. But as for dancing in general I was in Sport/Latin dancing since I was 12 years old. I have graduated from the University of Daugavpils as a dance teacher. When I first saw salsa I liked it very much due to the fact that you do not depend neither on your partner or your teacher. It is a social dance which you can dance at parties and in clubs.
I have always dreamt to be able to dance as in those movies where just random people meet and boom! – they dance fabulously. Of course, we all know that all those dances where staged and made by choreographs. This is almost impossible in a Sport/Latin dance. But when I discovered salsa it turned to be possible as men can lead any women and women can follow any men. It looks very effective and what is more, it is possible at any place around the world as salsa is becoming very popular.

How long have you been teaching classes?

I began to teach salsa in 2005, thus I will have a little anniversary in 2010. Before 2005 I was travelling around Europe, watching people dancing and teaching salsa in order to get a basis for my own start. There was a  European salsa championship in Latvia in 2007 and we won second place back then. First place was taken by couple from England. But we still were ahead of Sweden and a couple from Moscow.

Do you plan to participate in any salsa championships?

As for me I don’t plan to participate because I consider salsa as a social dance and therefore I don’t want to make competitions from that. Even when I look back at that championship I didn’t go there to win something but just to find out what my level was. That was the only reason. Right now I have some active students which could be considered as future participants of any kind of competitions, but only if they wish to go for it.

Tell us more about your classes.

Usually we have two classes per week. Even though we dance in pairs during classes it is possible to have private classes as well. There are also Rueda classes, but it is necessary to have a partner here. This is not the case with a normal classes as we change the partner throughout the class. It is not just us but whole world practices exchanging the partners. Some people don’t like it, but as I have experienced a lot of teaching techniques this one is the most effective. This technique helps you to understand other people. It’s like in daily life – if you are not socialising that much then you feel uncomfortable once you are surrounded by unknown people. The same applies here, you need to learn how to dance with different people because everyone dances in a different way – men lead and women follow differently.

Maksim, tell us, please, should people have some dancing experience to attend your classes?

No. It is not necessary. We have people who want to learn or just try to learn how to dance. It would be best if you could come for the first three classes in order to learn the basics and then you could decide for yourself whether you like it or not. Sometimes you can hear people saying: “No! This is not my thing!” Yet they have never tried it. But if you never try, you will never know for sure.

What about age range?

The range is limitless. Though I am not teaching younger people yet. I prefer teaching adults as I consider salsa as a dance for mature people. That is why I teach classes for high school students and older people. The main age category is above 30. But time is changing and therefore I would like more young people, students to join us dancing salsa because more and more of them start to show the interest in this particular dance. But I guess we are still lacking information flow among young people about such activities.

What qualities, do you think, should a person, that wants to learn to dance, have?

The most important is a desire, a desire to learn. Someone can learn the basics in a week, someone – in a month. Desire drives you to learn faster. Not least importantly are kindness, being simple in communication and ability to enjoy things. If you will watch closely those dancing people you will notice how positive they are.

How long does it usually take to learn salsa?

The basic level could be easily mastered in 3 months. But anyway practice is the key for improving. And it is also worth mentioning that dancing during classes and in the clubs are different things. There are some people, who dance well and know a lot of dance patterns, but as soon as they step on a dance floor in a club they forget everything. But I always say that it is normal and that all beginners have such difficulties. It is because the atmosphere at the club is completely different from the one you have during classes. Teacher is not counting while you dance and you know that many people might start watching you dancing. All this confuses those people, who are not used to dance outside classes and thus they start to forget all the moves. But solution is as simple as it is – practice. But as I mentioned before, beginner’s level is about 3 months. That should be enough to go on a dance floor and perform nice dances.

Men or women, who is in the majority?

Usually it is women.

Why do you think it is like that?

I think it is mostly because people still don’t know anything about salsa. You know that in the rest of the world it is usually opposite. For example, in United States there are more men than women dancing salsa. It is often the same during salsa festivals in Riga – lack of women. During my classes it happens sometimes, that we have more men than women. But still it is not that often. I think men like salsa due to the fact that it is beautiful and while dancing they can do things that in daily life they would hesitate or be shy to do. In this dance men can flirt with women and women can flirt with men. Most of us wouldn’t act like that in our daily life but here you can do that and I teach how to do it in a proper way. And thus, most of those men who start dancing salsa with us stay with us. There is also such a stereotype as “men do not dance”! We try to get rid of that stereotype. Actually, I was the one who was always saying “No way! Men do not dance” when I was still young. Then I accidentally showed up at one of a dance performances and I liked it very much. I crushed all my fears and went to those classes and I stayed. And right now dancing is the business of my life.

What benefits do you think that people who dance salsa get?

First of all, they feel more confident when it comes to opposite sex relation. Women become more feminine and men more masculine. Furthermore, the connection between men and women in salsa is told on a totally different level. We even have a slogan, which sounds like this: “Discover a new level of communication”. Men always lead in a dance. Therefore, we teach them to lead and on contrary we teach women to be more feminine. In normal life women can be leaders but not here in dance. If you compare dance with a painting, then the man is a frame and a woman is the painting itself. Man leads and woman beautify the dance. This is the principle of communication in a dance. If you have two leaders trying to lead at the same time then such a dance would look awkward and careless. What is more, sometimes people tell me that they used to have some problems with their back before they discovered salsa and now they don’t have any. Although, the body almost doesn’t take any load the overall state of your body improves. Hence dancing salsa not only brings you joy but it is also healthy.

Where can future “salseros” show their skills?

Mainly these would be the parties that we organize. Starting from next season we plan to organize parties like that each second Thursday and each third Friday of each month at “Plaza” and “Dinaburg” respectively. But this is just a beginning as we hope we can manage to increase the number of such parties because practice as I said before is very important. There is no entrance fee to our parties, therefore anybody can come to watch or maybe even dance if he/she feels like it. This year we performed at Daugavpils’ city festival and later this year we are going to perform at Visaginas’ city festival. There is also a salsa festival in Riga which we won’t miss. So as you can see there are plenty of opportunities to show to other people your skills.

What would be your advice to those, who would like to learn salsa?

Just come to the classes, try it and dance. If you are scared to come straight to the classes, go to salsa parties and watch people dancing. You can find a lot of salsa videos on internet as well. It’s not as difficult as it seems to be. Salsa is progressing throughout the world and I sincerely hope that in the near future salsa will become very popular in our city, too. Life is a motion and motion is dance.