Here is my Salsa story...

Here is my Salsa story

I have met many beautiful Latin people and I have often observed how many of them just have to hear a little salsa music and their bodies somehow magically and naturally start to contour to the rhythms of the music often without much conscious effort. Well, let’s just say that was not the case with me.
Growing up, I was a businessmen not a dancer. In fact, I remember often laughing at some of the guys in the disco who were dancers, as I thought they looked a little… hmmm… Let’s just say effeminate.

So how did I became to be a salsa dancer?

It was only after moving to United States that I happened to hear some salsa music. And something about the music simply captured my soul.
(Although in all honesty it probably had to do more with the couple of beautiful Puerto Rican girls that I happened to see dancing to the music at the time.)
In either case, as I saw these beautiful dancers and heard some of the captivating rhythms of salsa, I was sold. In that instant, I knew I wanted to learn to dance too.
I only had one problem. There were no instructors in the city I was living in at the time. Luckily, however, I happened to meet a couple of natives from Republican Dominica who knew a few of the basic steps. Excited about learning salsa, I asked them to show me some steps.
Before I started I was nervous and worried that I was just going to make a fool out of myself. I was also a little worried that learning the dance would be hard for me.
Well, I think at least with the latter, it turned out that I was right.
I quickly realized that I had no talent for salsa dancing whatsoever. But I was determined. I guess it is that thing I was Greek.
I just knew I wanted to learn the dance. And believe it or not it took me months just to hear the rhythm of the music. I was terrible.
First off, I realized that my body is really not made for dancing at it is, me that trying to break away from my usually movements felt like I was trying to bend a thick steel bar using only my bare hands.
I started hearing the echoes of my girls words in my head. , She used to jokingly tell me that for sure I could never be a dancer because I was so stiff.
But learning to move my body in a new way was probably the least of my problems in the beginning. It also did not help that I had no musical ear when I started.
While growing up I actually almost flunked my music class twice, once in third grade because I never learned to play the guitar and another time in seventh grade because my teacher told me I had the worst singing voice in the whole school. (but those are different stories altogether ).
But believe me when I say that I have yet to witness a worse dancer in my salsa classes than I was when I started. I remember practicing my ability just to shift weight from one leg to another for weeks. Also, learning to hear the salsa rhythm seemed like an insurmountable task in the beginning.
For almost two years I did not even know about the importance of counting the music. And since I had no teachers or anyone to learn from my progress was slow if not non-existent.
So how did I go from a stiff white rhythmically in five short years become a great dancer now competing head to head with some of the best salsa dancers in the world?