Simple is Beautiful – 2nd part of Dancing Musicality

Many friends have left messages after I post the blog about the musicality. Maybe I should continue this subject before I go on to the next.

If you have read my first post you might know that before I came back to China for my kid, I had already finished the salsa basic classes and some intermediate classes, also I had gone to several salsa parties before I came back to China. The salsa school I went to in New York area had a training program. In that program, the basic class had three levels (Brown 1 – 3) and intermediate class also had three levels (Silver 1 – 3). Each level ran about six weeks and the students cannot repeat the class unless he is going to pay. After I came back I retook the salsa from basic classes again. The reason is that some people I danced with told me what I did was quite different from what they learned in the class. Therefore I decided to do it from beginning so that I could merge in into the local salsa circle.

Now, after almost half year in China, I like to compare two different salsa education systems from a new student point of view, one is the American one and other is Chinese one.

I have been several Shanghai’s salsa schools after I came back, so the comparison I make here is not to a particular school, rather as a whole. And I just want to talk about the basic and intermediate classes since they are the classes the new students first time get involved into this fantastic salsa world.

What I observed is this.

Technically, the new Chinese students in the class have learned more than the American counterparts if they really can absorb everything they learned in the class. The skill level is higher than the American counterparts in the class. The Chinese teachers try to give the new students as much as they can within one class, versus the American teachers only give the new students what they can take in the class. It reminds me how I spent my childhood in the Chinese primary school and middle schools. In those old days, we got more knowledge form the books and schools than the American counterpart. That fact is reflected in my kid’s school life. From my kid’s homework and textbooks I could tell that I got much more from school than my kid when I was in his age.

Yet, spiritually and musically speaking is another story. The new students in the American salsa school got more than the Chinese counterpart. First of all, among the students, there were many Latino people around and they have the model to emulate. Secondly, the teachers also spent more time in the class than the Chinese counterparts to teach the students about understanding the Latin music and cultural so that their dancing looks like the amigos’.

Again, those differences are also reflected in the childhood education. When my kid was in the 3rd grade, he already had the project assignment, which required him to do research on the internet, to write the research paper and to do the presentation in front of the class. And very often, the American teachers, instead of doing one side teaching, encourage the little kids to discuss, to express their own opinions in the class.  I don’t recall that I had the projects or discussions in my entire primary school days. In other words, from the early days, the American schools already emphasize on the students’ creativities rather than the book knowledge.

I have been a dancing workshop for the amateur dancers. I remember, when he came to the workshop, the instructor didn’t teach any foot patterns. Instead, he asked everyone who came to his workshop to forget everything they had learned before. He asked everyone to take off one’s shoes, bare feet, wearing the loose clothes, and closing own eyes. Then he asked everyone to follow the music he played, using one’s own personal understanding of the music to move own body.

“Try to express the music using whatever motion you want and whatever gestures you want.” That was what he asked everyone to do. The music he played was not just one type of music, but many different types from all over the world, some slow and some fast. It turned out that once we got used to his training pattern, we created many new dancing turn patterns in that workshop. His training was to encourage the students finding their own musical abilities, which were not discovered even by themselves before. I remember when I started to dance Mambo 15 years ago, the instructor asked the students in his class to do the solo, not using the foot patterns he taught but the foot patterns the students created instantly according to the music.

And this also reminds me an Asian guy (an American Asian) I met in one of the New York salsa parties. He was a very good and talent dancer and every girl wanted to dance with him. Yet, if you paid attention to his turn patterns, he didn’t have many. But every turn pattern he did was very musical, beautiful and natural. Everyone thought he was a seasonal dancer. When I asked him how he could dance so well and who his instructor was, he told me that he had only taken the basic class. How could you? I asked him. He told me what he did was to follow the music, to follow his feeling about the music. Sometimes he merged couple of foot patterns from other dances such as tango into the salsa dance if he felt like, he told me.  

Besides that, I observed that, technically, there is a big gap between the basic class level and intermediate level in most the Chinese salsa schools. When I was in New York, I have to take three basic level classes before I enrolled into intermediate levels. In the basic levels, we learned many simple salsa turn pattern “components” before we learned the complex turn patterns. But in China, many simple turn pattern components are missing in the basic level. When the students enroll into the intermediate level they are not really ready yet. Therefore I have seen many students (especially the leaders) are struggling in the intermediate level. Since the most Chinese schools have the half year free retaking policy many students retake intermediate level many times. But no matter how many times the students re-take, the basic salsa components they perform are not clean and artistic, since in the intermediate level, the student’s concentration is not in the individual component. Problem is not they are stupid; it is the program needs to improve so that the students are really ready before they take the intermediate level.

We didn’t learn as many turn patterns as I learned in Shanghai in a single class, but we did learn how to follow the music.  This is the message that I try to tell my friends.