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sofiasalsadance · 5 years

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When you “hold hands” with your History students, on the dance floor

I am one of those professors who has proudly proclaimed that I don’t like to do any “hand-holding” with my students, meaning, that I am not going to spoon-feed class material, keep reminding students of deadlines, going after students and asking them again and again to turn in papers, and so on and so forth. I have rejected the figurative professorial “hand-holding,” at least in principle, if not always in practice, for many years. But now, as I am teaching a “Salsa: History in Motion” class at the University where I work, I am finding myself holding my students hands, on the dance floor, literally, as we practice salsa partnerwork together. Teaching this course is being the experience of a lifetime. I have loved dancing salsa for a few years now. But, in the great tradition of post-Enlightenment disciplinary separation, I have kept my “hobby” separate from my professional life as a history professor. In teaching this History of Salsa class, which makes the salsa dancing part as important as the history part, I am managing to join my obsession for all things salsa (dancing it, listening to it, learning its complicated and fascinating history) with my job. And I can’t be happier doing it. In undertaking this experiment, I am doing things I have never done before, like dancing with my students, holding hands, of course, and sharing music and movement together.

It was not easy to even conceive designing a class in which I would share these other aspects of life with students. I am not a dance professor. I also consider myself a pretty “serious” professor, mostly in the sense that I don’t joke a lot with students or make them laugh. I have been a professor who, like many, has “imparted knowledge” from the “head.” In addition, I have felt for much of my teaching career as an awkward professor, whose foreign accent is always at the forefront of any teaching I do and someone who does not really know enough of the students’ culture to be able to connect easily with them. In a deeper sense, I have always felt being a professor--a woman, Latina, foreign professor--as a heavy burden. The expectations that as a professor, you should always “know” everything, you should not make mistakes, you should be, as one of my colleagues says “the sage on the stage,” have weighted heavily on me. Of course, some of these expectations and ideas about professors are probably just “in my head,” but the reality of lecturing in front of hundreds of students in some cases, being evaluated at the end of each course, completing files for tenure and promotion, in which your teaching is discussed and assessed, make it clear that these expectations do exist out there, and matter to a large extent. So, teaching has not been an easy thing to do. I find that I get extremely nervous when I have to do some types of teaching, like lecturing in a big auditorium. Even in smaller classes, I often feel nervous and it takes me a while to relax and actually enjoy the experience and the contact and give and take with students.

As I imagined and then implemented a different type of History class, one in which we spend as much time dancing as discussing/analyzing/writing, I have discovered how something as simple as holding hands in the dance floor makes the whole teaching experience different. All of a sudden, there is nothing to be nervous about. You don’t have to be the expert who does not make mistakes. You are simply human, experiencing movement with other humans, who happen to be your students. And I have the feeling that my students also see me as simply another human. Perhaps one of the most wonderful things I have lived in this class is the joy that you can derive together, from movement and dance. As the students and I struggle through difficult polyrhythmic dance movements, like those of the Cuban rumba and orichá dances, we simply laugh and enjoy the moment. Dancing in a university class, such as this, is of course great fun, but more importantly allows me to connect with my students beyond words, beyond the intellect, beyond “the sage on the stage” persona I have felt forced to perform. We connect in our bodies, through rhythm and movement. Even more, dancing with my students is also helping me experience the joy of discovery of this complicated history of salsa along with my students in our bodies. As we dance these dances, we are living in our bodies histories from the different peoples in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico, the United States who created/used/enjoyed these dances. It is as if we have all embarked in a journey of discovery that, for once, involves our whole being, and not just our heads. Here, I still am the professor, of course, who is leading and proposing a route, but the journey itself is shared and very rich, full of embodied experiences that are not just what I planned, but what the students and I create with our bodies and our minds.

#salsa #history #historian #professor #salsa history

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sofiasalsadance · 5 years

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Why do we dance?

Sometimes, when I am at a salsa congress, watching performers struggle with stage fright, leaving their souls on the dance floor, wearing their very expensive colorful customes–embellished with thousands of rhinestones–I ask myself why do people do this? Why do regular people, who have day jobs, put themselves through the very hard work, expense and effort to join salsa teams, learn complicated routines, and perform them for strange audiences? I suppose I ask that question about myself. Why do I do that very thing, which at an earlier moment of my life seemed completely foreign and not even desirable? In a broader sense, I wonder why is it that at a certain time in my life, dancing salsa, in fact, training to dance salsa, even at a competitive level, became so important, almost the center of my life? It is not as if am a “born” dancer. A lot of people assume that because you come from a Latin American country, you “naturally” dance, but that is not the case. I am from Ecuador, and was raised in a very evangelical family, that did not encourage dancing or any embodied form of personal expression. I grew up as a very clumsy kid, who was very good in all subjects, except for Physical Education. I always fell, flat on the floor, when I tried to do the cartwheels and other exercises we were forced to do at school and was profoundly embarrassed at my inability to… well, move. So, what I did in life was to stay away from “physical education,” concentrate on what I was better at and eventually pursue a university education, finally getting a Ph.D. in History. I am a History professor. And I don’t think you can get into a less embodied field of knowledge and research, within the Humanities and Social Sciences, than History. At least the way it is regularly practiced. But that is the subject for another blog… Of course, I always wanted to dance. I imagine that your body longs for movement and expression, and rhythm. Maybe that is part of what makes us human. And as I became an adult searching for opportunities to dance became a constant in my life. When I was a graduate student, I started taking classes of West African dances. I did this for several years and eventually joined West African dance companies in Tucson, in Cleveland, and one even in Cambridge, MA, where I lived for a year. I absolutely loved dancing, especially the traditional dances from Guinea, Mali and Senegal. West African dance classes normally feature live drummers. Dancing the polyrhythmic dances from West Africa to live drums has been one of the most pleasurable experiences of my life. So, here is one reason why I dance: pleasure.

But what about salsa? And why training so hard to dance salsa? I started to take salsa dance classes at a local studio, probably about four years ago. I was at first looking to dance with a partner, to learn partnerwork, and this is why I was attracted to salsa. I love the communal aspect of West African dance, and I love how dancer and drummer establish an amazing language amongst themselves in which both tell each other what they want to do and do it, without words! But at that time, I was not good at any partner dance. So this was a challenge that I thought salsa would help me with. As I started taking salsa dance classes and learning a few things about lead and follow, I became obsessed with salsa. I wanted to go to the club all the time and dancing socially gave me, again, a lot pleasure. I enjoy letting myself be led, and I love to create beautiful shapes and lines with a partner in social dancing. I love the connection that you create with a partner and how you can, without speaking, without saying a word, participate in a dialogue, a give and take, sometimes even a little bit of a power struggle, that is just danced! Dancing with a great lead is an amazing experience, where one feels like time is suspended. A three-minute song can feel like an eternity. It is as if both partners are in their own world, a world of interconnected movement and creativity. Of course, this can be addictive. From here, joining a salsa team, where I would be trained more formally and strictly in salsa dancing was a natural step. I have been training at a salsa dance company for two years. I wanted to become an even better salsa dancer.

As I have been part of this salsa company, I have discovered even more about salsa than I ever thought existed. I had been curious about salsa not only as a dance but also as music, even before I joined the team. But with the training in the company, I started to learn how to listen for the different rhythms within the salsa, how to connect to them, how to dance, each of them, differently. My body is learning the dance vocabulary for each of them! I am fascinated by the almost infinite universe that salsa music and salsa dancing is. The basic teaching of counting salsa and moving along the 123-567- count, which is taught at many studios, is so limited and not really what the universe of salsa is. It is so much more than that! So, salsa satisfies my human need for movement, rhythm, connection, and yes, it is pleasurable, but salsa also satisfies my need for learning and discovering new things. But this time, I can learn and discover in my body, not just in my head!

From learning and discovering the universe of salsa music and dancing to training–in a very disciplined way–to perform salsa, there is a big jump. I have always being disciplined in what I do. I guess you don’t get to be a History professor if you are not disciplined. But training to be a salsa dancer has taught me that I can make my body do the very things I thought I could never do. This has been so rewarding. It has given me a sense of accomplishment that is beyond what I can achieve by writing or giving a talk. It is a feeling of accomplishment that is felt in the body. I also don’t find spending hours alone in the studio, in front of a mirror, trying to learn a jump or the pachanga (very difficult!), lonely or sad. I see this as another way of being with myself, of getting to know myself, and to challenge myself. Performing in front of big and small audiences was so difficult at the beginning and continues to be even after two years. But doing it has given me a strength that I did not know I could have. Performing a shines solo routine (which I have done only once) was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. And even if it seems as if all of this learning and development would be relegated to the world of dance, in fact, the strength I have learned from salsa dancing has been very important in so many areas of life in the last two years. As life surprises us with hardship, losses, sadness, and difficulties, it requires a lot of resilience from us. Salsa dancing has given me that as well. Why would I not love it?

#dance #salsera #dancers #mambo #historian #salsa #salsa music #salsa dancing #salsa history #salsa dancer #latin dance

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