You might remember from last year that I started a new chapter in my dance adventures:
learning cross-body salsa. I spent the last four months of 2014 learning the salsa basics and ended the year feeling quite excited about my new dance skills. My spins were faster than ever, coordination and balance improved, following skills renewed and generally I feel superb. And utterly confused.
But I had no time to feel renewed or confused. Almost straight from my last salsa class I flew to Brazil for a month of zouking, all day and night. I quite literally had to zouk the salsa out of me and fast! It didn’t take long to sink back in my comfort zone - into the arms of the fantastic Brazilian zouk dancers. The month in Brazil was like a month in *sigh* heaven, to put it short. After coming back home from Brazil I dove further back into zouk. After the bliss of Brazil I didn’t really miss salsa all that much - the zouk tunes were calling to me like sirens luring sailors to shipwreck.
After a few months came the reality - I need more than smooth sailing at my comfort zone. I need to challenge myself. I started to look for new dance classes. And so I stumbled upon a marvelous message: “Looking for a follower for the intensive cross-body salsa training group” ...Hey, that’s me!
And so I signed up for an 'intensive' course of salsa. For the past weeks, couple months, I've been back in the deep water, or so it feels. After every session I literally collapsed onto the floor out of exhaustion - both physical and mental. It has been intensive indeed, so we definitely got what we asked for. I was lucky to sign up with a fantastic partner who has a good amount of skills and enthusiasm so while I felt confused and hesitant, he helped me to push myself forward. And the improvement in my dance has been dramatic to say the least. A lot of it I owe to the fantastic teachers IDNZ.
At the same time I started the salsa course, I also started to host zouk training sessions in my home town. The idea was to provide a free weekly training for any new or old zouk dancer, to spread the love & knowledge I have for zouk and introduce a new style, lambazouk. It has been fun to see people get excited about dancing and making new discoveries - it's definitely rewarding, much more than I could have imagined.
While I've been splitting my time with zouk and salsa the past couple months, I've had a great chance to do some comparisons with these two dances. This is something that's been on my mind for a long time. And now I can present you my results. So here goes, the epic duel - salsa vz. zouk!
