Over the last 15 years dancing has captivated me over and over again.
And before I get into details about Kizomba and Semba, let me first share how it started, being addicted to dancing…
Once upon a Time
In 2005 I encountered cuban salsa – to be correct; the dance is actually called casino and the music is called salsa; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_salsa.
2005 had just started with a mess in my private life; I was married for 8 years and had two small kids. My marriage was breaking apart, my ex-wife and me had just decided to get separated and ev. to get divorced. Facing divorce with two small kids was like a deja vu about my own childhood drama, but just now I was in the parent role. The separation was causing me to feel anger and frustration, while I was realising how that might negatively affect my kids. Like the fights of my parents had a profound impact on my wellbeing as a child.
Additionally the house we were living was a construction site due to renovation, which felt totally overwhelming given family situation.
Dance as Therapy
I needed some positive distraction: an activity with fun, positive vibe, relaxation and some social contacts. I remembered how I used to dance in Highschool, an activity that totally forgot about. So I decided to start dancing.
But which dance ? I started some online research about the dance schools and the dancing scene in Zürich. At the same time a befriended architect couple mentioned that they were involved in the setup of the new location of Salsarica; a major salsa dance school in Zürich. So I googled Salsarica, one thing lead to another and I joined evening classes for cuban salsa in February 2005.
After three months I was hooked.
Dancing; Hobby or Addiction
What started with a single night per week soon became 2-3 nights per week. I would help out in other classes, when they didn’t have enough leaders, which was often the case.
After a while my weekly schedule looked as following:
– Monday: joining the free, open practice hour 20-21:00. After 21:00 party
– Tuesday: helping out 19-21:00. 21-23:00 my own class
– Thursday: helping out 21-23:00
– Friday: go dance at a party
– Saturday, Sunday: join workshops if available
This pace required a lot of effort in organising baby sitters, coordinating free evenings and weekends with my ex-wife.
I’m not 100% sure what my ex-wife and my non dancing friends (I still had some non dancing friends at that time) were really thinking of my increasing dancing activities. But they for sure had some inaccurate, naughty fantasies combining my addictive behaviour with Salsa dancing.
The Zone
But what I was really experiencing, was being in the zone, also called Flow.
I felt emerged in a bubble of positive energy – fascinating moments – lasting for about a song. My daily problems, the surrounding issue and thoughts just fade away. After a few dances like this, I would go home and fall asleep; tired and happy. I had dancer’s high in analogy to a runner’s high
I met like-minded dancers; leaders and followers. People who experienced something similar. I didn’t need to explain myself to them, they understood how I felt.
At the same time I was fascinated by the increasing body awareness and control. The result of countless hours of rumba and afro-cuban workshops.
I started to realise that being a good dancer is not something you just have in your blood. Of course some people might be more or less gifted about their body awareness, but at the very end It’s the number of hours of exercise you do.
Is it in your Blood ?
If you are born into a cultural environment where playing music and moving to music is omnipresent, you’ll have a lots of dancing hours without even taking any class. You’ll be dancing while still wearing Pampers.
If you weren’t so lucky and rather born into a reluctant environment towards omnipresent music and dance and waited to take classes till over your 30ies as I did… Well It’s gonna take some time and thorough dedication to get those missing dance hours into your muscle memory.
I exercised my body moves where ever and when ever I could; while brushing teeth, at the office my feet were doing Pasitos underneath the desk, moving shoulders while driving straight – don’t take this as an advice…
Back to the Roots
2007 I spent a whole month in Cuba to shape up my cuban salsa; I wanted my dance to have more authentic style and groove. I asked my cuban teacher Esther in Zürich and she put me in contact with a teacher in Habana.
It was an eye-opening experience and still has an influence on my approach towards Kizomba & Semba:
When I met my teacher and I told him my goal.
He pretty much said “ok you’ll achieve that, but you’ll not be dancing salsa”
My reaction was “ok… so what are we going to do ?”
He “well, you need to go back to the roots”
During that month we had almost daily sessions of two hours, we would dance at least 90 minutes cuban rumba and Orishas, dances dedicated to the African gods in the Yoruba culture.
I was extremely challenged. I didn’t have a sense of hearing for the pure African drumming involved in Orishas, let’s not even mention the challenges in dance steps and body control.
Nevertheless this experience had an immense impact on my dancing. My cuban salsa had evolved and had a different groove. It wasn’t one big change, there were several subtle, little changes in the stepping, posture, timing, etc. And I didn’t realise it by myself so much, but the feedback and comments I started getting were stunning.
The best compliment I got was years later during my travel in south America when I danced spontaneously during a dinner in a restaurant in Asunción, Paraguay. A cuban song was playing and my Paraguayan friends wanted to see some dancing. After the dance a waiter came to me and said “I’m cuban and you just made me feel home, thanks”.
The Lessons
The two major lessons I learned in my cuban salsa addiction period are:
- You can master any dance, if you are dedicated and disciplined enough to put in the hours of exercise required
- I you really want to master a dance and feel it, you need to go to back to its roots
There is a third lesson. It’s a difficult topic and I have no general advice how to really handle it:
- Relationships and dance addiction aren’t very easy to handle at the same time; I guess that’s valid for any kind of addiction, but I’d like to believe that dance addiction is maybe not that destructive like some other kind of addictions ?