How Travel Changed The Way I View Dance

I have been dancing salsa since 2010 and at that time it was a slow process into the salsa world. I took a couple lessons to learn the basics because of a crush (of course) and then spent most Friday and Saturday nights at the local salsa clubs in Kansas City attempting to muster up a basic right turn and to learn what the hell was a 1,2,3, 5, 6, 7. I could never understand back then why the hell they always skipped 4.

Needless to say, that relationship ended, but from that one choice sparked a deep passion and desire inside of me for dancing that I had only ever felt before for traveling. At first, the dance was a way to meet new people in places that I traveled and moved. I discovered very quickly that the salsa niche was a very welcoming group and no matter what city I stopped in for the night I was able to meet new people and dance the night away with 100 of my closest friends. I can easily say that some of my closest friends I have met in random cities on the dance floor or by asking a girl next to me to help me with my shoe. Dance just inherently brings people together.

Fast forward several years and I found myself consumed with the passion for dance, spending 4-6 days a week taking classes, practicing for performances for the professional performance team I was on, and going out in the salsa scene at night to social dance. Salsa consumed my life and in that moment I was happy and filled with joy; until the feeling of competition and judgement entered my perfect happy little world. Dance soon became a dread, the thing that I was hoping would be canceled each week as I planned out my calendar. It became something that filled me with such anxiety that led me to comparing myself over and over to everyone around me. Soon, it become something that I wanted to avoid it at all costs and I slowly drifted away from the dance world.

It wasn’t until I started to travel around the world that I began to re-associate myself with the salsa community. I took a step by creating this blog, finding out local salsa spots in each country, and providing that information for other travelers here. I was excited to be back in the dance world, meeting new people, checking out the local spots, and feeling the music again. However, I began to notice that some of my reoccurring thoughts consisted of: “Why can’t he do a basic?”, “when is he going to spin me?”, “wow, we danced this whole song on just a basic and I am bored” and overtime I hated myself for thinking those thoughts. I had realized in that moment that being in the salsa world in the United States of taking classes, learning from the “famous leaders of the dance”, and being on a performance team had created this idealist mindset in me.  There was one moment when I was in Antigua, Guatemala and checked out a local studio where they were offering lessons. I was excited to go and meet other dancers in the community, but when I got there I was disappointed by what they were teaching and what they were offering. I reflected a few days later and thought to myself, “who do you think you are Amrine that you are judging others?!” I was appalled by myself and the thoughts that were coming from my mind about others and their dancing.

I realized that I did not like who I had become, the thoughts that were being formed in my mind, and my idealistic attitude. I wish I could say that I made a conscious decision to completely change what I had learned and formed in my mind over the years, but it wasn’t. It took the majority of my time on the road traveling the world to realize what I was missing and how to change it. I really started to make a change when I spent an entire week in Cali, Colombia to completely dedicate myself to this location that was known for salsa dancing in an epic proportion. I walked away from that city completely disappointed because I had an ideal way that I thought salsa should be and I inflicted that on everything that the city represented. Looking back now, I regret not taking more time to learn the different styles and view of dance that Cali had to offer. It was a hard lesson to learn, but I am grateful that I had went about it because I now view dance in a completely different manner than I did four years ago before setting off to travel the world.

I re-learned that dance is about taking in the moment with your partner, learning who they are by the way of their dance and not your perceived way of how dance should be. It is a conversation between two people and their emotional dedication to the music and how it moves in and out of your body. I began to connect again with the lyrics and the rhythm of the music and fell in love all over again with the 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7.  I found a new appreciation for the way that others danced and connected with the music and started to realized that the couples that I most enjoyed watching dance were doing the least amount of spins and complicated patterns and instead were connected with each other and the song.

It’s been a couple years now since I have returned from traveling and while I am on a dance performance team again, taking some classes, training, and doing my best to improve my dance abilities I have a renewed and refreshed view of the dance that is no longer muddled by the expectations and unhealthy competitiveness that I once felt before. My relationship with dance has been a surprising and unexpected journey that I never thought I would be on, but have made the decision to grab it by the reigns and dive head first into what it has to offer me until I am physically no longer able to dance.  You’ll be seeing me on the dance floor up into my old age- future prosthetic hip and all!!

Have you experienced something similar? Please feel free to comment below and share your dance experience! Happy travels and dancing my friends 🙂