This week was the municipal election throughout the province. As with most municipal elections, incumbents have a massive advantage: It’s very rare that an incumbent mayor or councillor loses their seat on city council. This time was both very different and very much the same: The resulting council will be comprised – as per usual – almost exclusively of incumbents. And because the number of wards in the city was reduced by nearly half, a record number of incumbent councillors will not be returning to City Hall. The same, yet different. The City will have to find its way anew with the as-yet unknown effects of the legislated changes and will, in many ways, be operating with the same focus areas and intentions as before.
Someone who is an experienced dancer has an opportunity analogous to that facing the new-old councillors. The dance itself is essentially the same dance. After all, social salsa dancing is social salsa dancing. And, it is usually the case that many of an individual’s partners through an afternoon or evening of dance are “incumbents.” Moreover, there’s not a lot of significant variation in salsa music either, especially when you compare it to the genres of music that animate some other dance styles. Week in and week out, it’s the same…
…yet for any given song, any given dance, there is the opportunity to create something different with your partner. There are countless variations on old, classic moves that can bring a freshness to dancing to any particular song. There are ways of combining several ideas from various turn patterns that can create an entirely new combination that is no longer the rote studio pattern. And, despite salsa music having a very particular, predictable structure, when you learn to dance to the music, as opposed to simply reciting pattern after pattern, you and your partner can create something entirely new with each song, even though you are dancing with the same focus and intention as you always have done.
As an instructor, I try to keep this in mind as I create each week’s lesson (especially in the Repertoire class) based on a particular choreography. Each class introduces new ideas and variations on classic salsa configurations that one can certainly dance according to the choreography taught. And, the individual ideas can be taken out of that context and inserted into one’s social dancing to spice up the connections, the creativity, and the fun. If you haven’t been to class in a while, you might find it, if not necessarily inspiring, then at least new movement provoking and definitely fun, especially when it moves out of the class and we…
See you on the dance floor.
Mark