Instructions for equestrians: How to completely ruin a salsa class!

  “If I was a dressage horse I would have tilted you by now”, I joyfully yelled at our salsa teacher in the students’ hall tonight after the first latin song.

Today there was a strong mood for fast tempos and continuous spinning, so we suffered a lot of that for about two hours. Everyone was just trying to learn the steps. I was imagining a dressage horse doing horsey dancing stuff, well, while I was trying to learn the steps as well! I was turning, being turned, pushed, held and the like, all that the Cubans do, but today’s session was just a huge disaster for me -and the other dancers. Somewhere after the first hour (we hadn’t realised that, really), a tutee of mine went to greet two female friends. And it took him forever, so the others started imagining me picking my whip and start beating and were also imitating the noise of it! But in the end, I messed up with everything, making my pairs desperate and made the whole situation so hilarious, that we really started laughing and could not stop. Students who were watching us at the cafe were laughing too. Thank God nobody got hurt!

So, here are the steps for the absolute disaster:

1. Avoid practicing for 2 months
2. Forget everything
3. Lose counting and tempo
4. Don’t concentrate
5. Don’t synchronize with your pair
6. Don’t figure out what to do after that specific move where your hands are on somebody else’s head in a weird way
7. Step on people and let people step on you (by messing up)
8. Make them laugh until they become as awful as you
9. Keep dreaming of your equine friends
10. Enjoy the results of your efforts!

But anyways, if you need a cardio programme to improve your equestrian performance (including speed of movement and balance), go for salsa! Shhh, this is why I’ve joined!