Confusion (Part 5)

When I suggest to students that they learn both leading and following, one of the most common comments I hear is that it confuses them to learn both roles. This is certainly a fair point and learning both roles at the same time may result in neither one of them being picked up correctly. The obvious confusion is the fact that leaders start on their right foot while followers start on their left foot. Additionally, many other aspects are equally difficult to reconcile such as the difference in pressure points or the fact that leaders are supposed to think of the next move while followers should not anticipate anything. This certainly makes it hard to learn both of these structures simultaneously and it can be highly confusing and maybe even counterproductive to learning certain moves. However, I have equally met many people to whom it was helpful to learn both roles at the same time and who found it much easier to differentiate between the different roles this way. Ultimately, it is completely up to the individual how and when they want to switch roles and the level system we have created at Tiempo España Dance Academy allows people to go back to the beginner’s class at any point and learn the opposite role. We do not pressure anyone into trying this out nor do we suggest the timeframe when this should be done but we simply recommend to everyone who comes to their first beginner’s class that they should try out both roles as part of their salsa journey.

While I understand that it may be confusing at first, having struggled with this myself for many months, I truly believe that any dancer hugely benefits from becoming proficient at dancing the role they normally do not occupy. For leaders, it is helpful to understand how it feels to be led by other people so that they can reassess their own signals, their pressure points, musicality etc. Similarly, for followers it is very helpful to understand how to lead moves to be able interpret signals better and follow them more easily or even support leaders in key moments such as tornillo’s etc. In other words, it increases the general awareness of both followers and leaders around the dance buying them some crucial time that they can use in any dance to perfect their respective moves.

Tiempo España Dance Academy News

It has been a while since we announced all the changes around our dance school so here is a long-needed update around everything we have done lately:

We still write our blog on a biweekly basis, publishing a new article every Friday at 7pm and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. However, we are taking a break from our very popular “Rueda Hand Signs” series which goes hand in hand with publishing a new video on Youtube when it normally comes out. This is to gather some additional material and spend some more time on theoretical concepts to enhance our level 5 and level 6 classes where we still need to introduce a lot of theoretical concepts so we will focus on some of these in the coming months. Our plan is to re-introduce this series again in the future and publish more advanced moves accordingly.

With the addition of our latest teacher we currently have 10 people teaching classes at our various locations which is the highest number of teachers we had to date despite unfortunately losing some teachers over the last few years. This increasingly allows us to give students higher quality classes as we can tailor them to their level and needs. Our teachers are increasingly experienced, and a number of teachers are now training for level 4 or even level 5 which will give us more opportunities for advanced classes in the future.

Thanks to an increasing number of students reaching level 6 we now have various dancers who are ready for performances which is a tremenduous achievement and we want to thank all our advanced dancers for their time, commitment and dedication to our school. The first performances we have scheduled will be a guest performance on 11th October at a Ceroc social at Ceroc St Chads in Leeds. We will have another performance straight afterwards on 12th October at the Leeds Dance Studio where we run all our Leeds classes for their 10 year anniversary show and as a result will not be running any of our normal Leeds Saturday classes that day. We are very excited to be part of these performances and are impressed with our students that they have reached such a high level of dancing. Keep your eyes on the event page of our website to find out furthere details if you would like to watch the shows.