Help! My Salsa Dance Teacher Cannot Keep the Basic!

This is something that can become quite frustrating if you are a Salsa dance student: your Salsa dance teacher cannot keep the basic in the music, or he/she categorically starts counting 'one' on the 'five' whilst dancing on1. These and other frustrations are rarely told to these teachers, so they continue to give their bad example for years.

The 'wrong counting' can become especially frustrating for Salsa dance students who switches Salsa dance schools, Salsa dance styles or for those Salsa students advancing to a higher dance level. The Beginners will not notice this at first because they do not know any better. The trouble can become worse if a Salsa dance student decides to confront his or her Salsa teacher with this problem.

Switching Salsa Dance Styles
You have mastered LA Style Salsa on1 and you aspire to dance Cuban Casino, South American “Salsa Callejero” (= “Street Style Salsa”) or Colombian Salsa ("Salsa Caleno"). For years, many of the Salsa teachers instructing one or more of these Salsa dance styles have had their own teaching methods. For starters: many Cuban Salsa instructors do not count to eight, but they count to four (“1,2,3 & 1,2,3”). This means that they will not take in account when the music starts on the 'one' whilst teaching or dancing. The second thing that can be even more frustrating for Western style Salsa dancers are Salsa dance instructors not even bothering to stick to one basic. They will jump randomly from breaking on the 'one' to the 'two', the 'three' and the 'five'.

Switching Salsa Schools
You decide to try dancing somewhere else and discover that you are constantly dancing 'out of sync' with the rest of the class. Your new Salsa teacher tells you that you are not keeping the basic step, but you were dancing at a (semi) advanced dance level at your former Salsa school. If your prior Salsa instructor has never told you that you are not keeping the basic, then chances are he or she is not doing it either!

Advancing to a Higher Dance Level
As your Salsa dance level keeps progressing, so will your knowledge of the dance. This happens especially to the ones taking Salsa dance workshops from other Salsa instructors during Salsa bootcamps or at Salsa dance festivals. If your teacher never tells about his own Salsa workshops he has been following, then chances are he or she is currently 'outdated'.

Have you ever noticed this problem? Then do comment down below on how you resolved this “counting problem” with your Salsa instructor. But remember: Salsa “off beat” can also be a Salsa dance style having its own merit as seen in the following video.