While I respect every form of dance and am most certainly interested in getting a better understanding of other types of salsa I will readily admit that Cuban salsa has been my greatest passion since I discovered this dance form not only because of the music, rhythmic structure or simply the way it makes me feel but also because of its rich history and cultural values. I have always felt that some of these aspects have been neglected by most dance schools that I have been to and since I started teaching myself, I quickly discovered why. Most people, especially at the start of their dance training, do not want to come to a dance class that is essentially a lecture about history or practise the clave rhythm with claves for an hour without learning a single move. Instead, a lot of people come to salsa to meet some new friends and do something fun after work where they can listen to nice songs that make them forget about their workday.
The majority of people I have met become passionate about salsa very quickly but what they want to learn in class is one move after another, ideally something involving complicated looking arm movements, styling and body movement. In other words, many people are much more concerned with the way salsa looks rather than the way it feels and not everyone is immediately interested in learning a lot of technical details around its development. It is therefore no surprise that a lot of dance schools have started ignoring these aspects in an effort to attract more students which at least from my experience has led to two extremes: Dance schools which will almost exclusively teach different dance moves while not informing their students about the rhythm, history, culture, music etc. and dance schools which focus on these other aspects of dancing to the extent that they will only teach certain moves after these have been mastered completely. I.e. I have been to dance classes where people learned 5 new moves or more within the span of one hour feeling exhilarated about their apparent progress without having been taught anything about where these moves came from or even just what the moves are called and without being able to lead and follow these moves properly after the end of the class. While it feels great to be exposed to so many new moves in just one session it is almost impossible to retain these moves in memory the next time students go dancing and almost inevitably they will forget the moves they did even just 2 or 3 weeks ago if they learn this amount of moves every time they go to class. Similarly, I have been to classes where teachers spoke 50 minutes about the history and rhythm of the dance before playing music once at the end of the class or classes where students learned to play claves for an entire hour doing nothing but the basic step.
I have had some amazing dance teachers in both categories and even met a few teachers who were generally trying to balance all aspects of Cuban salsa in the majority of their classes, a skill that I still aspire to recreate even when the demand becomes rather one sided around a certain aspect of the dance.
