Once the basics have been mastered the next stage for dance schools and Rueda groups is to start taking certain moves apart, figuring out what is effective about them and putting them back together maybe in a different order or by mixing them together with other moves. Small aspects may be changed i.e. adding alardes or using the left instead of the right hand or two hands instead of no hand but the important thing is that the overall structure of the elements are still followed making the final product a Cuban salsa move despite the fact that it may not have actually been invented in Cuba. This is a stage a lot of people try to reach too quickly using shortcuts that means they cannot fully explain how and why the move works the way it does and why it should be classified as Cuban salsa rather than anything else, let alone how it can be led on the dance floor to someone who has never seen it before. A famous idiom says “We must learn to walk before we can run” and the same applies here. It is difficult and highly skilful to create a new Cuban salsa dance move, and this comes after years of practice and for dance schools who promote their new moves they must first demonstrate that they have got the basics right that they use as a template for their creations.
I learned piano for many years and as much as I did not mind spending hours upon hours practicing classical music which was the standard for piano lessons at the time, I could not wait to get to practice other types of music. It took years and years of practice until I was finally allowed to play such things as improvisation solos in Jazz music- a journey that certainly seemed to take frustratingly longer than necessary at the time. In hindsight, however, remembering how much I struggled when my teacher would give instructions such as you can play a solo at this point using the mood of the song, staying within the same meter, using the appropriate progression given by the song to make the melody harmonious etc. it would have been an impossible task to achieve without my years of training in the fundamental aspects of the instrument and musical theory. The point is, I could have certainly pressed a couple of random keys on the piano if someone had told me in my third lesson to “freestyle” but it would have resembled white noise more closely than Jazz improvisation. Similarly, someone “improvising” on the dance floor after their third Cuban salsa lesson will not evolve the dance form but rather display very publicly that they have not yet mastered the basics yet.
It is this stage usually that decides whether a dance school, performer or promoter is going to grow or retract as moving into this category too soon is going to display gaps in the basics that will give the dance school a “cowboy” reputation that is very hard to lose. However, moving into this category at the time where the basics have been mastered, demonstrated and taught many times will make students trust and appreciate the skill and experience to the point where new moves are accepted with excitement as they will not only look new, creative and exciting on the dance floor but come with the added benefit that they follow the exact same fundamental model used for all the traditional moves such that they can be incorporated seamlessly into any social dance without there being any difficulty or misinterpretation as long as the move is led correctly.
I am very happy that our school has grown to the point where we are getting increasingly asked for some of our own material and after teaching and researching traditional moves for many years I feel excited to start publishing some of our own creations. While the vast majority of the moves we teach in class and display online will continue to focus on moves that are known internationally, we will start to introduce some of the moves we have invented from time to time such as the move that will be published next Friday.
