First year. That was about six years ago, so my chronology may be a bit rough.
A salsa teacher started holding class once a week in the cafeteria right after work. When I overheard my wife tell a friend that she'd "always wanted to learn salsa", I suggested we take the class. She wasn't able to attend for about another 6 weeks, so I went in knowing that I needed all the help I could get. In fact, knowing that I could not learn to dance (so certified by wife & her friends 25 years prior) I decided to avoid fatal frustration by adopting an attitude of having fun with it regardless and laughing at myself as I floundered; ever since then I've always had the class reputation of being the guy who's always smiling and laughing. And in that very first group lesson, I drew on the closest thing that I had had any training in, which was Aikido about 25 years prior. From that very first lesson I received compliments and praise from almost all my partners for my strong and smooth lead. So from the start, I have been using the Force (when I first saw Star Wars, I immediately recognized their "Force" as Ki, AKA Chi).
My wife join later when her school year ended for the summer (she's a teacher) and we attended through the summer until the class was dropped due to low attendence. So we took a beginning salsa class through the city along with an east coast swing (single time) class, both of which we did for about half a year (she mentioned she'd always wanted to learn swing). During those beginning classes, I came to realize that my very first salsa classes had been intermediate level! Well, I had expected it to be difficult, after all. Plus, we also learned casino rueda one month.
OK, we needed to try to move on to intermediate level, but we couldn't figure out where, so we ended up dropping that line. She and her friends had seen some girls doing a line dance one night (my wife and her best friend were "groupies" for a blues band her friend's husband played bass for; hey, they must'a been groupies because her friend slept with the bass player). So I accompanied them to Memories, a Lindy club (now gone and moved to the next county) for a private lesson in the Shim Sham. And the next month we dropped in for a Lindy workshop, but we were lost and besides Memories lost their lease and closed a month or two later.
The next month after that a friend took us to the Club House run by Julie and Tom Mattox and we started lessons there. First some country and ballroom, but finally we ended that first year by starting to learn West Coast Swing. I still could not find nor follow the beat; it would take about another six months of just West Coast Swing group lessons before I finally had learned to follow the beat with any degree of confidence.
Und dann ... ("and then", a device used in the German film, "Lola rennt", AKA "Run, Lola, Run", in which the future of incidental characters would be shown in a short series of snapshots)
She didn't like the WCS teacher's attitude (Tom could get too gruff) so she dropped out. I continued on for a few months, during with time I finally got the beat, but finally dropped out myself since I wouldn't have anyone to dance with if she didn't learn. I got her into a Lindy class later (she'd always wanted to learn jitterbug), but she soon dropped that too. Turns out that even though she'd been dancing all her life and loved it, she just could not learn partner dancing; she hated anyone telling her what to do. The last time we tried, it was like a wrestling match.
We're divorced now (not because of dancing, I'm sure, though she refused to ever give me the reason); in two weeks it will have been final for a year after having dragged on for a year and a half. In trying to deal with that ordeal and with a horrendous family tragedy four years ago, I've thrown myself into group classes (Shim Sham is still the only private I've ever taken) in a wide range of dances (swing -- both kinds, balboa, drags, country, salsa, NC2S, hustle, ballroom) such that for the past couple years now I have classes from Sunday to Thursday and will go out dancing at least half the time on Friday and Saturday.
And I still constantly get compliments for my strong and smooth lead and for my good frame (learned, ironically, in the very first beginning salsa classes) and for always knowing how to do the moves. I've been called a "natural dancer", much to my surprise, and a friend has remarked that I pick up new steps and new moves very rapidly. And I still get a reputation for being the guy who's always smiling in class.
:lol:
