Salsa
The style
With roots in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Colombia and New York, Salsa can now be found all around the world. Salsa is exuberant, fiery, fun, romantic, sexy, flirtatious and one of today's most popular dance styles!
Salsa is a dance that is constantly evolving, and over the last thirty years it has diversified into a number of different styles, with influences including West Coast Swing, Latin Hustle, Ballroom, Jazz and even Hip Hop. Cambridge has a thriving club scene, with people dancing a variety of styles.
Cuban style
In this style, the partners dance around each other. It is more of a social dance than LA style and as such is slightly less technical and showy, but many argue it is more relaxed and fun.
LA style
This is the style most frequently danced in London and is that favoured for competitions and show routines. It is still a social dance but is danced in lines and is more technical than Cuban style, notably including many multiple spins.
Rueda
For Intermediate level Cuban dancers who want to try Rueda de Casino. This involves the dancers standing in a circle, following moves called out by the leader, which often require the fast swapping of partners.
For a list of the basic moves covered in this class please see the Rueda Basic Moves List.
Please note that before learning Rueda, you'll need some prior experience of Cuban-style Salsa.
Classes
The information in this section describes the kinds of classes we usually offer for Salsa dancers. For more general details or the specifics for the current season, please see:
For beginners
If you've never danced Salsa before, start with Salsa Beginners, where you'll learn the Salsa rhythm and some basic moves.
We sometimes offer a Fast Track beginners course, for those who have danced other styles before or who are keen and learn quickly. The Fast Track course covers similar material to the corresponding Beginners course, but progressing more rapidly.
For improvers
For dancers who have been to Salsa Beginners or taken a few classes elsewhere, Salsa Improvers builds on what you've already learned, developing confidence on the dance floor and the ability to improvise. At this level, our classes focus on a particular style of Salsa, such as Cuban or LA.
For more experienced dancers
For our more advanced Salsa dancers, Salsa Intermediates will take you beyond social dancing. You'll become confident with improvisation, and learn to create more complex sequences. Around six months. experience is recommended before moving up to Intermediates.
We also offer a Salsa Advanced class suitable for intermediate/advanced LA style dancers. These classes focus on improving specific aspects of your dancing, such as spinning or performance.
Finally, dancers with a few months' experience of Cuban Salsa might like to give our Rueda classes a try for something a little bit different.
General Dancing
In some seasons, we organise a regular salsa social night, usually described as 'Salsa GD' by analogy with our Friday night Ballroom and Latin social. When this is running, it appears on the timetable of regular classes.
Unfortunately we don't have the critical mass to run this all year round, but there are several salsa clubs in Cambridge that run socials if you still want to go out for the night!
Special events
We don't run many salsa events, but when we do, they tend to be BIG, usually with live music, professional salsa DJs, demonstrations and 150+ dancers.