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Apprentice
Join Date: Dec 2004
Posts: 54
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The New Salsero On The Block
The New Salsero On The Block
by Johnny Johnson
It's tough being the new kid on the block, leaving the comfort of your old neighborhood, family and friends to try to rebuild your new life. The salsa community is no exception to this rule. In your old community, you have friends and family that watched you grow from a child to a young adult. It's almost a sense of pride for them to bear witness to your growth and development. Within the salsa community, these same rules exist. You have your parents, which are your instructors who teach you your first steps. After months of practicing, these same instructors eventually share the dance floor with you at the local salsa clubs. The bond created between instructor and student is nearly unbreakable. It comes from the respect of a student towards an instructor, that this person introduced them to something they have grown to love; combined with the pride of an instructor towards a student, as they watch the time and energy they put into an individual begin to flourish.
In addition to family, you have your neighbors. These are the individuals you grew up with. Sometimes these individuals become life long friends. The salsa community has no exception to this rule. Some of your closest salsa buddies are the individuals that struggled with you in those basic classes. This could also be the person you met at the salsa club while trying to get acclimated to your newfound salsa scene. This is the person you shared your new turn patterns, shines or styling tips with in classes or salsa clubs. This is also the person you sit up with at the local restaurants after a night of dancing for a salsa recap. This bond is also very had to break.
Finally, you have those kids up the block that you didn't really get along with. Unfortunately these individuals exist in the salsa community as well. This is the person you always feel like you were competing with, although there is really no official competition. They're the individuals that stare at you on the side, while they are dancing with someone else on the "dance floor." It's also the girl or guy that says "NO" to you repeatedly, when you ask them to dance; only to dance two seconds later with someone else. Fortunately, these bonds never existed.
So you move into your new salsa neighborhood, with hopes and dreams of a good situation. You search the web, find the local salsa events, get the directions off Mapquest, and you're off to your new salsa life. You step into foreign territory and take a few notes. Who are the cute girls or guys? How's the dancing? What's the predominant style? Where are the salsa corners? How's the music? You begin to search through the crowd to find that available individual with a good salsa foundation. You ask them to dance; they look at you kind of strange (because you're new) but if they're nice, they say yes. You begin to dance with them, they're surprised (if you're good), and people begin to notice you. Your next dances become a little easier to obtain as the nights go on. This is one of the best feelings within salsa, the ability to communicate with strangers through dance. This is an attribute that makes salsa dancing one world.
So you meet a group of people and they give you the ins and outs of the scene: who the best dancers are; who you should stay away from; where the best places to go dancing are; who the top instructors and groups are; etc. You begin to create new friendships and gain comfort in your new neighborhood. It's one of the greatest salsa feelings in the world. Unfortunately, it doesn't always stay this way. Depending on your level of dance, obstacles are bound to come your way. Most good dancers face several typical scenarios, namely, the infamous salsa territory battle.
Unfortunately when locally established salsa dancers get comfortable with their level of dance, performance and instruction; they are not always the most welcoming individuals to the new salsero on the block. In fact, it becomes more like territorial infringement. Some good dancers want to be the only good dancer, performer or instructor on the scene. They do not want to move over and make room for others. Therefore a new salsa dancer should be prepared to deal with these individuals taking the necessary precautious to ensure territorial infringement does not occur.
In reality, good dancers make a good dance scene. Just look at New York, New Jersey, LA, Boston, Chicago, and DC (just to name a few). These cities are full or world-renown salsa dancers, performers and instructors. Although they may also suffer from the salsa territory syndrome, these scenes are highly admired by many salseros because of the "quantity" of good dancers; not because of a single dancer, teacher or performer. Truth be told, this is the key towards having a good salsa scene; I don't build up my frequent flyer mileage to go to DC, NY, and Chicago just to dance with one dancer. I go because I am going to dance with a room full of great dancers!
Although Chicago is home, I have had the opportunity to move around and experience salsa in several cities. Unfortunately, I see some of the same symptoms. If people think you are good, some good dancers become intimidated and turn a night of fun-filled dancing into a salsa showdown.
If dancers ask you to teach, some salsa teachers get intimidated and do whatever they can to discredit you. Ironically, the better dancers are, the better the scene will be; so having more instructors may have a positive result on a dance scene. Personally, I have learned from many instructors and although I credit a few key individuals for my growth as a salsa dancer, I often encourage dancers to learn from a variety of sources.
In addition, if you have a successful salsa endeavor whether it's a publication or promotion, some locally established publicist, promoters, or dancers feel cheated if it did not go through them. Let's be realistic, no one owns a salsa scene. We as salsa dancers are free to dance, teach, perform, publish and promote without anyone's approval. Fortunately, many of these salsa endeavors have the positive result of giving a scene more notoriety. However, many individuals choose to overlook this for selfish objectives.
Whatever happened to that first night of dancing in those newfound cities, where people were friendly and welcoming? You may hear a lot of salsa dancers say that they enjoyed dancing salsa more, before they became "advanced." Why? Because when you're new to salsa dancing, you don't have to deal with the issues mentioned above. Also there is a level of excitement for your newfound hobby that may never be matched again.
I guess my question is, how to do we rekindle that feeling of excitement as a new dancers in our old salsa neighborhoods, now that we are more advanced in foreign territory?
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Great post and welcome to DF!!!
The only thing I could suggest to this is to seek out others with the same focus whether they may be a beginner, advance or in between. I know it's not easy (I'm still on a hiatus from dancing since this time last year 
) but as youngsta says, direct your energies toward the new doors opening in your scene. Those who carry that negative vibe, as Boriken says, use the amnesia tactic. Unfortunately, you have no control over others but you can control your own focus. I wish I had more to add but.....
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