If you’re thinking I’m going to write about the salsa we dip our tortilla chips into, I forgive you. That would be my first assumption too, if I hadn’t actually seen myself in action earlier tonight. And I have, in fact, had some surprisingly good salsa sauce here in Medellin, surprising because Colombian food is actually quite bland. But this blog post is not about salsa eating, it’s about salsa dancing, and about me. If you think the previous sentence is oxymoronic, I forgive you again because you’re probably right.
You may notice that there are no photos of me accompanying this blog. I hope that’s not too disappointing, but there are limits to the humiliation I am willing to embrace.
It’s true, I went salsa dancing. Or, more accurately, I went and tried to dance salsa. I tried very hard, gave it a hundred and ten per cent, but it would be incorrect to characterize what I ended up doing as “dancing”. “Dancing” connotes graceful, lithe, rhythmic movements and what I was doing was much more akin to salsa lurching.
How did it happen? Earlier this evening, I went to a language exchange at one of the language institutes near my hostel. It’s common for local language schools to organize weekly language exchange evenings where Spanish learners and English learners can come to practice with native speakers. Some of them are party oriented, complete with shots and drinking games, others are more “sober” and focused on the language. That’s what I thought I was going to.
It started at 6:30 and I arrived a little early and had some conversations with other people waiting. Many Colombians don’t have a lot of opportunity to practice English, so I felt like I was helping out.
One of the hosts called us to order and led us in a couple of quick icebreaker activities, and mentioned that tonight’s special activity was salsa lessons. I started to sweat. Perhaps it’s my formative years in antidancing Steinbach, perhaps it’s a physical shortcoming, perhaps it’s just a lack of practise, but I have anianability to move gracefully to music or to follow a rhythm. I can’t dance.
Our organizer divided us into groups and invited us to compare notes on St Valentine’s customs in our respective countries. After a few minutes of group conversation, he announced that the salsa lesson was about to begin. My entire group got up and went to the next room for the salsa lesson, and I followed.
In the room, in front of large full length mirrors, there were two salsa teachers. One of them taught us a short series of “forward” steps, demonstrated them and then led us in a practice. The other one participated, watched and encouraged us. Mostly I felt like she was watching me, in disbelief, wondering how a person could be so clumsy.
Before I could really get the hang of the “forward” steps, our teacher moved on to the “backward” steps, and then, again too soon for me, to the “lateral” steps. Next, she said it was time to do it with a partner. I was paired off with a kind young woman who had a sense of rhythm which immediately made us incompatible as dancers. But she would just smile sweetly and wait for me to find my way back to the beat whenever I lost it, and, every once in a while, I actually felt like my body was dancing.
Next, one of the organizers announced it was time to change partners and try it again, but with real salsa music this time, not the slow, practice music we’d been using. This time, I was paired off with a woman about my age who spoke no English and said she was there just for the dancing, not the language exchange. She was a great dancer and a wonderful partner. She showed me how to use my hands to signal to her what to do, when to go forward, when to go backward, when to cross over, etc. making it seem like I was leading, when she was actually the one doing it all. I just followed and had a lot of fun and, every once in a while, I felt like my feet were actually “dancing”. I was feeling elated.
The next song seemed like a faster one than I could handle and I decided to call it quits while I could still enjoy the feeling of having danced a little.
I went and sat in with a group that was conversing and had a few conversations with some men who wanted to practice their English. It was fun to do that too, especially in view of how patiently many Colombians have been with me, letting me practice on them and making great effort to understand me.
Then it was back to the hostel for supper and for a little reflection on my evening. I had enjoyed it immensely, despite feeling extremely awkward at many points. Maybe that was exactly why it had felt so good in those brief moments when it worked. It was actually very analogous to my language learning experience. At the beginning, you can’t express anything but basic thoughts and you can’t even do that with any grace. You sound rude and stupid, you can’t speak in a proper cadence, you feel constrained and clumsy and you most certainly can’t make words “dance”. But you keep on, and, especially if you have a good partner, every once in a while you find yourself expressing a thought well or having a conversation that works so that you forget that you’re speaking Spanish and you just do it, and then afterwards, you feel like you did something very cool; perhaps not making words dance (I’m far from that), but putting a few words together so that they work. And that leaves you feeling elated.