We have certainly had our ups and downs and it has not always been easy to run a Cuban salsa school in Yorkshire. Nonetheless, the trend has been upwards from the beginning and our classes and events are busier than ever. Particularly our Leeds class has attracted a lot of new students lately culminating in one evening recently where we had more than 40 people join us for our various classes.
What has been particularly enjoyable to watch, however, is the fact that some of our regular students have reached such a high level of dancing that they are increasingly interested in aspects other than just learning new moves. We have been able to teach different Rueda structures such as Confusion, Rueda Pa’ Fuera, Rueda Espejo etc. as well as working increasingly on musicality by introducing such concepts as dancing Contratiempo. Many of our students use Guapea as a basic step and add additional steps or other forms of styling to make their dance look better which is a huge shift even from just a year ago.
This has resulted in an increased demand for more advanced classes which we have responded to by introducing new level 6 classes at the start of this month as well as increasing the frequency of our level 5 classes to Wednesdays and Saturdays. We now run 6 classes (level 1 to level 6) every Saturday from 6pm to 8pm as well as running level 2 to level 5 every Wednesday with an additional new level 1 beginner’s class being offered on the first Wednesday of each month from 7:30pm to 8:30pm.
We are very excited about our students having reached a level where we can offer level 6 as it is a major milestone both for our students as well as Tiempo España Dance Academy as a dance school. It is at this level that we want to introduce students to performing and focus on perfecting the moves they have learned to date to be able to showcase what they have achieved to others. We will be adding elements of related Cuban dances to the performance so will be increasingly offering classes that focus on dances such as Rumba, Mambo, Son etc. We won’t push anyone into performing with us but we will teach the same background to everyone who has reached level 6 and whether they end up performing this or not it will hugely improve their social dancing as they become more comfortable with all aspects surrounding Cuban salsa.
