Very often, I’ll have new students come into the class, just to “try out” a beginner lesson. You know: “To see if they like it,” it being salsa dancing. As any more active student – not to mention long-time dancers – will know, a single beginner class won’t likely tell the tale of whether dancing is indeed for the absolute beginner, or not. I absolutely love when new students come to try out a class. That’s why we offer a $5, first-time student special for anyone’s first class. The question is, what exactly are you trying out?
So many students who have taken classes elsewhere have told me that my class is unlike any they’ve ever experienced. (And thank you to everyone who has made similar comments!) That’s partially because I’m trained as an adult educator, and partly because I simply love to teach. I get tremendous satisfaction in helping a person go from where “they couldn’t” to where “they can,” if only a little bit. Even more when students come into the class with 3 left feet – none of them able to work in concert – and after a few months, are able to hold their own in a social dance situation. While they might not be up to the level of people who frequent some of the more popular Latin clubs around town, Salsaholics students are more than able to enjoy an afternoon at Toronto Salsa Practice after only a couple of months, and sometimes after only a few weeks.
Returning to the question, what exactly are you trying out in that first class, not just at Salsaholics Anonymous, but in any dance class of any style? I suggest that you’re actually trying out the instructor(s), the other students, the atmosphere, the energy, and the mood of the school. You’re trying yourself out as a student in that environment to see if the total environment of the class is conducive to your learning and developing as a dancer. You may get a sense of the music to see if you’re able to spend an entire social evening listening to the type of music that characterizes the dance. You may get a sense of the style and look of the dance if you stay to observe a more advanced class. But judging whether or not you’ll be able to master the dance itself is pretty much impossible from only one lesson. If you come to “just try it out” with an expectation that you’ll be able to flow into the dance after lesson 1, you will be disappointed.
We will do our best to get you dancing (after a fashion) during your $5 trial lesson. But it won’t be much more than a basic step and a basic turn, which are both good, but won’t get you too far into a social. You might want to think of your intention, on the other hand, as finding a great teacher who will inspire and encourage you to love dance.