OUT to Dance offers group dance classes in West Roxbury
and private lessons in Roslindale. Join us!
About Salsa Dance
Perhaps you’ve tried salsa dancing in a club or party and you want the basics broken down for you, or you’ve just heard how exciting the dance really is; by taking each dance pattern step by step and building on what you just learned, you’re absolutely guaranteed to succeed, and to love it. Experience the joy!
Salsa Dance is danced to music with a recurring eight-beat pattern, i.e. two bars of four beats. Salsa patterns typically use three steps during each four beats, one beat being skipped. However, or just a simple shift of weight. Typically the music involves percussion rhythms and is mid-tempo go fast with around 180 beats per minute.
Salsa is a slot or spot dance. Unlike Foxtrot or Samba, in Salsa a couple does not travel over the dance floor much, but rather occupies a fixed area on the dance floor. In some cases people salsa dance in solo mode.
History of Salsa Dance
Salsa music is a fusion of traditional African and Cuban and other Latin-American rhythms that traveled from the islands (Cuba and Puerto Rico) to New York during the migration, somewhere between the 1940s and the 1970s, depending on where one puts the boundary between “real” salsa dance and its predecessors. There is debate as to whether Salsa originated in Cuba or Puerto Rico. Then again, it is a debate, and there is the possibility that it could have originated in both places or only one. Salsa is one of the main dances in both Cuba and Puerto Rico and is known world-wide. The dance steps currently being danced to salsa music come from the Cuban son, but were influenced by many other Cuban dances such as Mambo, Chá, Guaracha, Changuí, Lukumí, Palo Montel, Rumba, Yambú, Abakuá, Comparsa and some times even Mozambique. It also integrates swing dances. There are no strict rules of how salsa should be danced. The fun is in just dancing!
Music for Dancing
When joining our Salsa Dance and other dance classes, note that our OUT to Dance studio locations, West Roxbury and Roslindale, MA, are within twenty minutes of downtown Boston, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Hyde Park, Brighton, Allston, Brookline, Newton, Chestnut Hill, Dedham, Norwood, Needham, Westwood, Milton and Quincy; and within 25 to 35 minutes of Cambridge, Somerville, Arlington, Wellesley, Natick, Waltham, Braintree, Brockton, Stoughton, Canton, Foxboro, Weymouth and surrounding towns. We are also less than an hour from Providence, Rhode Island and New Hampshire.