Come along to our cuban Salsa dance classes and discover this wonderful and lively social dance from Cuba. Our classes primarily focus on partner work, timing, technique as well as a whole lot of fun moves that you can take back to the dance floor! In our Beginners classes, we introduce you to basics of leading and following as well as the Salsa rhythm and timing. As we progress through the classes, we slowly move to more complex turn patterns and combinations and give you plenty of ideas to improve your social dancing skills. In our Intermediate and Advanced classes, we also teach Rueda moves. In our advanced classes, we focus more and more on technique, form and body movement!

It is recommended to come along to these classes with a dance partner if possible, however, a lot of our students do come along alone and find new friends to dance with at our classes. We endeavour to balance leader and follower numbers as well as possible which is why we highly recommend registering for our classes.

The Basics Steps and Rhythm of Salsa
Salsa music, like a lot of other rhythms consists of 8 beats. Dancers dance on the first three beats, followed by a pause on the fourth beat. That's why you will often hear Salsa music being counted as "1,2,3 ... 5,6,7 ...".

The steps are also sometimes danced with a quick-quick-slow rhythm, i.e. instead of pausing on the 4th beat a slow step (emcompassing two beats) is taken every third beat. This is quite common practice in Linear Styles of Salsa such as LA Style and New York Style. In Cuban Style Salsa however, you will often see dancers marking the 4 and 8 with a tap instead of a pause.

You can see an example of the basic steps on the left. The dark green feet at the bottom demonstrate the man's steps and the light green feet at the top demonstrate the women's steps. The foot the dancer has his/her weight on with each beat is always highlighted. As you can see, men and women are always dancing with opposite feet (like looking in a mirror). Ex: The women start dancing with the right foot stepping back and the men start dancing with the left foot stepping forward.

Click here to view our class schedule to see when the next term of classes begin so you can come along and learn some more! We can also organise private lessons for students who wish to progress at a faster rate or are preparing for an event like a wedding, for example.