We’re inviting college salsa clubs from all over California to come dance here in SLO. You’ll meet dancers from the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Fresno, Davis, Sacramento — and that’s just who we’ve heard from so far.

We’re busy spreading the word, and you can help!

Get your tickets at slosx.com now!

Learning to teach Salsa starts off by analyzing every lead, follow, movement and style that make up a combination. This detailed analysis will improve your own understanding and awareness of the combination, and will also show you which parts of a combination you need to practice.

You don’t have to be a professional instructor in order to teach basic Salsa combinations. All you need to do is find a friend that you can practice the combination with. Break down each component with your partner until you understand the entire move fully. Also practice wording each part of the combination so that you get comfortable explaining each step. It may be second nature to execute a core move without thinking about it, but once you look at each part in isolation, you may find it much harder to verbalize what you are doing. If this happens, keep switching between doing the move in it’s entirety and the part that’s hard to execute and/or explain. Once you can clearly and easily explain every part for both follow and lead, you are ready to teach!

Once you gather a group of friends together, break down the combination in counts of 3. Start by teaching the leader’s footwork, then include arms, then styling, then teach the follow. Don’t teach more than a 16 count combination, and make sure to play plenty of music for practicing. If your students aren’t understanding your combination, you need to pinpoint which 3 count section they are having difficulty with and focus on that section.

Good luck and have fun teaching, learning, and dancing.

1. La Salsa Nunca Se Acaba — Susie Hansen
2. No Woman No Cry — Àngeles
3. Yo No Se Mañana — Luise Enrique
4. Stairway to Heaven — Manuel Gonzalez
5. Nave del Olvido — Avance
6. Hielo — Willy Chirino
7. En Ausencia De Ti — Michel El Buenon
8. Mambo Diablo — Tito Puente
9. Haitian Lady — Willie Bobo
10. Se Me Fué — El Gran Combo

And some non-Salsa to mix it up (Cha Cha Cha, Bachata, etc.):

1. Bésame Mama — Poncho Sanchez
2. Adios, Adios — Salsa Celtica
3. Amor Estereo — Croma Latina
4. Te Extraño — Xtreme
5. Fukuoka — Juan Luis Guerra
6. Cayuco — Tito Puente
7. Te Quiero — Oliver
8. Eres Asi — Domenic Marte
9. Pa’ Gozar — Spanish Harlem Orchestra
10. Adónde Va el Amor — Daniel Santacruz

Si uno no baila en clave — metido en el ritmo de la musica, esta bailando contra la musica.

–Pedro Aguilar “Cuban Pete”

Cuban Pete was one of the celebrated dancers of the Palladium era of mambo/salsa in the 50s. I strongly encourage watching films (here, and here) about this era of dancing to get an idea of the where salsa as a dance came from. The above quote translates to: If you don’t dance on the clave– within the rhythm of the music, you are dancing against the music. Comment below your thoughts on this quote and what it means to you.

In a nutshell, what’s more important to the follows isn’t the number of combinations you know, but the way you lead the ones you know, how you interpret the music, and how you treat the follow while dancing. Not easy concepts, for sure, but important for all us leads in helping us be better social dancers.

Too many CPSalsa dancers wear flip flops or sneakers, week after week, month after month, without realizing what a huge hindrance it is to their dancing. Buying a pair of dance shoes is perhaps the easiest way to improve one’s dancing quickly.

Sneakers’ soles grip the floor, making the knees vulnerable to injuries during spins. Their thick soles prevent feet from flexing, giving the offender a very clunky appearance as they step flat footed on the dance floor. Finally, they look inappropriate in a club environment.

Sandals are even worse. They provide minimal stability and support. A person wearing sandals is much more likely to trip, fall, or lose a sandal. Sandals also make spinning almost impossible. Last but not least, they expose the toes to stomp injuries.

For the above reasons, you won’t see good dancers wearing sneakers or sandals. You also won’t see them asking sandal and sneaker wearers to dance. The moral of the story: Buy appropriate shoes if you want to be asked to dance.

A good shoe for ladies is breathable, protects the toes, has leather or suede soles, and can be tightly supported around her foot and ankle, often by multiple straps. The shoe’s heel can be tall to show off her ankle, but it should be wide enough to give her adequate balance. The soles should be thin enough for her to feel connected to the floor.

Good shoes for guys have leather or suede soles, also thin enough to feel connected to the floor. A tight fit will help with balance and agility, and prevent blisters. Avoid stiff shoes — they can eat into the ankle and prevent the feet from flexing naturally.

Buying good dance shoes will increase your dancing skills by at least 25%, guaranteed. So don’t postpone, buy some dance shoes today!

Mental State

Physical State

CPSalsa was little more than an idea, a smattering of electrical pulses jumping between neurons inside the heads of a couple of guys. Back then, they may not have known that CPSalsa would still be here now, but to them, all that mattered was that they needed to dance Salsa, and they wanted more people to get into it like they were. This little story is about how those two guys gave rise to our favorite little club.

It starts with two guys named Jeff and Ed…

In 2000, Jeff Berkman was a new resident of San Luis Obispo, a new hire at CalTrans, and a recent graduate of U.C. Irvine. He was in the midst of a dance addiction, having learned swing first, then Salsa from a student club while in Irvine. To feed his addiction, Jeff sought a new place to dance, eventually coming upon lessons taught by Ike and Nancy Lara on Sundays at a place called Tortilla Flats (which you may now know as Ciopinot). While at the lessons, Jeff met a student named Ed Rodriguez.

An Aerospace Engineering junior at Cal Poly, Ed was one of the few students taking the Salsa lessons. Unlike Jeff, Ed was fairly new to Salsa at the time, but he too had fallen into the dancing addiction many of you might be familiar with.

Younger than the other dancers, Jeff and Ed naturally gravitated towards each other and began talking about the lack of younger dancers to dance with. By Spring of 2000 Jeff started talking to Ed about the possibilities of starting up a student club. After all, how Jeff started was with a student club, which he enjoyed immensely, so why not replicate it?

Idea to reality

Jeff and Ed’s first move was to approach the ballroom club about teaching Salsa. The ballroom club agreed and they quickly began teaching lessons on Thursdays during the Summer months. Not content to simply be part of the ballroom club (they wanted a night of their own where they could play mostly Salsa music), Jeff and Ed began the process of becoming a student club with Cal Poly. By September, CPSalsa had become official.

CPSalsa began hosting weekly lessons every Tuesday accompanied by a dance. Slowly they began to amass a following of students (and non-students) wanting to learn Salsa as well as a core group of people interested in running the club. Eventually, the list of officers grew to include the likes of Liliana Graham, Nate Nocon, Sonia Balcazar, Amber Ousterling, Ana Ruvalcalba, Rogelio Hernandez, Melanie Mueller, Sieno Castillo and more.

On to bigger and better things

Over the years, the club moved on and grew. Tuesday nights became Friday nights. Measly little CD players and speakers gave way to a full DJ setup. Rope lights snaked their way onto the walls as CPSalsa traded the few dinky DJ lights it had to a full array of advanced DJ lights. Salsa cruises in Morro Bay became a yearly tradition along with guest instructors, dance events, live bands, and lest we forget, lots of fun parties. Of course, a fair share of officers and volunteers made CPSalsa their own, each contributing a little of themselves to keep CPSalsa going.

All of this because two guys wanted a better place to dance Salsa.

Thanks to Jeff and Ed, we’ve had eleven years of CPSalsa. Here’s to eleven more!