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Salsa dancing for dummies

By Jeremy Schwartz | Tuesday, October 24, 2006, 01:32 PM

Following through on a years-long promise to my wife, Nancy, I took my first salsa dance class this week. Salsa is an obsession here in Mexico City, and if I want to avoid looking like a complete fool at the city’s legion of salsa clubs I will need some professional help,

The class was a lot bigger than I was expecting — about 40 men and women. Even with the crowd, the instructor zeroed in on the gangly gringo from the get-go. As we plunged into a particularly complex move, featuring bewildering spins and footwork, he implored me to follow the advanced student in front of me. Stubbornly, I continued spinning when I shouldn’t and turning in almost perfect opposition to the rest of the class. The instructor grimaced as though I were causing him pain.

Later, with the entire class in a giant circle, he screamed at me from across the room to shake my shoulders, not my “pompis.� It took me a few beats to realize what he was talking about as he got more and more frustrated. Pompis are butt cheeks. I took it as a good sign that at least I was shaking something (and isn’t the point of salsa to shake your pompis?).

It was only by the end of the class that I shook the feeling of having entered a very deep pool and not being able to swim. The logic of the moves slowly, painfully became clear. But I figure I still need about six months before I dare to hit the dance floor in a club.

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Comments

By Johnny Damon

October 28, 2006 8:22 PM | Link to this

We hope you’ll come back to Austin if only to demonstrate your new moves.