Salsa basics

Salsa means spicy mix! In a restaurant Salsa is a tasty Mexican dip. In music it is a mixture of musical styles from Latin America. On the dance floor Salsa is a fusion of exciting rhythmic partner dance styles. In other words it's fun!

Relax and don't be embarrassed: Many people get embarrassed at the thought of dancing. Well everybody else at the club will be dancing as well, and they were all beginners once too.
Everybody at our club is keen to encourage you and understands how it feels to
try it for the first time. So join in, let go have some fun and enjoy yourself.

Dance partners: You don't need a partner to dance Salsa, simply turn up at
Silver Fox Salsa and the club will find you a partner to dance with at a
similar skill level to yourself. When you dance in a Silver Fox Salsa class
you will dance briefly with one partner and then with another and so on
around the class. This helps you get used to different styles of dancer, and
it's also a nice way to mix with the rest of the club.

What to wear: Wear comfortable light clothes and shoes to dance in. You
can get warm and you don't want to hurt your feet with uncomfortable shoes.

What is Salsa: Salsa is a fusion of different mostly Caribbean dance styles, danced to Salsa music. Salsa is danced to the music of the Clave of two bars, each of 4 beats. Dancers will, typically, dance 3 steps on beats 1, 2 and 3 and then pause very briefly on beat 4, where sometimes we introduce what is called a Cuban motion. We dance again on beats 5, 6 and 7 and then pause again on Beat 8, doing another Cuban motion . Most of these ideas are described in more detail on the terms page. See the history page for more details of where Salsa comes from. For more details on where salsa comes from see the history page.

First Steps: Here are a basic Salsa step you can practice at home. The simple steps you will learn at our club are the Mambo, Backwards Basic, Side to side, Cucaracha, Opening Out and Turn. Many of the more ambitious and fun steps are based upon these , so if you can dance these you can begin to Salsa! The Mambo is one of the commonest, easiest to learn and most useful steps when dancing Salsa - so here it is! Try practicing this at home. The steps in red and pink are the leader's steps. The steps in dark blue and pale blue are the follower's steps. Dark colours are steps on the floor . The light colours are where the foot is off the floor (either partially or completely). This can be when the foot is either moving (on beats 1,2,3,5,6 or 7) or doing a pause / tap (on beats 4 and 8). Have fun!

Learning more steps: You can find more Salsa steps at our links page, or on our products - books page or our products - videos page. Best of all come to a Silver Fox Salsa class!