salsa in the university world

T

tchaguito

New Member
How important is it to have salsa promoted at university level? I mean, where I'm from, the salsa scene is mostly comprised of late twenties-early thirties people, who are in a stable and independent finantial situation, and thus have the purchasing power to attend classes, go to clubs or even go to congresses nationwide and overseas. However, university students often don't have such resources, and for the first time in my city (which is actually the capital of the country), there is a salsa class in one university. From talks with my teachers, we've concluded that this will be good for the renovation of the salsa scene, by having salseros in the skin of budding teenagers and early twenties folk. I have the feeling that salsa at uni level is very developed in Northern Europe (I don't know about this elsewhere) joining in along the "oldies", and so the salsa scene ends up becoming bigger (which helps everyone) and more diverse. In a way, and this is my view, more democratic and less "elitist".
So, how important is salsa in the university world, will it help improve the salsa scene significantly?

Tiago
 
Here at Duke, salsa is probably our biggest dance. With our club lessons opened to bpth undergraduate and graduate students, we are able to run three different levels of salsa with our beginning class having upwards of 50 people in it. It's really big on the university's campus with us having to fight two or three other salsa groups for the potential salsa dancers on campus.
 
There is a group here at the local university known as Ritmos Latinos which is doing just this; promoting interest in Salsa and Latin dancing. They hold their graduation dances at the studio at the end of each semester and are open to the public and feature live music.

There does seem to be a growing interest in all forms of social dance with the college age crowd so having something like this at the colleges and universities at minimal cost is certainly a big plus. Here there is also a Ballroom and Swing group as well as Salsa.
 
setsuna713, isn't having over 50 students in one class a bit excessive? I mean, I sometimes find a class of 30 difficult to manage, let alone 50!

Tiago
 
tchaguito said:
setsuna713, isn't having over 50 students in one class a bit excessive? I mean, I sometimes find a class of 30 difficult to manage, let alone 50!

Tiago
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Our "free" class was at 50, but when people had to start paying for it, the class dropped down to about 35. It's still a huge class, but now that it's over, people should move into two of the different intermediate classes, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.
 
I'm pretty sure that salsa is just starting to bloom. In the eraly 90s I really hadn't heard about salsa, but now it definitely is happening. And getting people of college age is great as they often are at a point when they feel like trying out stuff. Also being away from parenst, sometimes helps, given latin's image, sometimes.
 
College (or university) was where I got exposed to latin dancing :D Unfortunately though, the classes are are huge (like 35+ students during semester :? ) especially the "Street latin" classes and the focus is on attaining "medals" (bronze, silver, gold, gold-bar). However, the classes are extremely cheap ($5 an hour) and are taught by professionals (such as former Australian dancesport champion) so as a way of promoting latin dancing, I think it's great!
 
hopelessly_addicted said:
hmmm come to think of it, I don't think what they teach at my college can constitute exactly as salsa.. it's more akin to ballroom latin...
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We offer both ballroom latin and salsa and our salsa classes are by far much larger.
 
I have students who are still in the university... and I encourage them to talk about it with their fellow students... but I will not accept somebody who is underage (18 years old), because I teach in a club and I do not want to create problems for the owners...

I mean, the "under age" stuff is not very well respected here, but the law exists and I don't want to see it enforced on the owners because of my students! If I had a studio, I would allow underage people too... but until I do...
 
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