Official Recognition of Salsa Dance Instruction

Salsa is a ‘Freestyle Dance Form.’ This means that anyone can teach Salsa without prior qualifications or formal education. There is one association in charge of giving Salsa Dancers the opportunity to get an officially recognized Salsa Dance Instructors Degree: IDTA. Some 'Salsa Amateurs' are starting to earn 'big bucks' with their self-developed Salsa Teachers Certification programs.   

From Top to Bottom

There are several private persons and Dance Companies developing syllabi's for teaching Salsa and for educating Salsa Dance Instructors. Many pretend their Teachers Certifications are the ‘real deal’, or they simply avoid the topic of accreditation. The World Dance Council (WDC) is the world’s largest official Dance Sport organization. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recognizes the WDC.

Neither the WDC nor the IOC recognizes the World Salsa Championships, which Albert Torres and his Salsa Seven Group organizes, as an official body accredited with organizing Dance Sport competitions. This is neither the case concerning the older Mayan Salsa Dance Competitions.

The British Dance Council (BDC) is the official charter of the WDC in the United Kingdom. The International Dance Teachers Association (IDTA) forms an integral part of the BDC. The IDTA is the world’s largest board of dance examinations with over 7000 members in 55 countries, and covers the full spectrum of dance examinations on a worldwide scale. The IDTA is 107 years old.

IDTA and Salsa

The IDTA started the international Latin American and Ballroom Dance Program, the well-known Medal Test Program for Bronze to Gold Star ranking. All Latin American and Ballroom dance instructors from different associations all over the world have learned their basic dance and didactic skills from the books developed by two IDTA Fellows & Examiners: Guy Howard for Ballroom, and Walter Laird for Latin American Dance. A great deal of the older dance instructors have done their Ballroom part out of the books written by Alex Moore, the predecessor of Guy Howard. One of the main objectives of the Association is to provide and maintain technique and syllabi's in all dance genres training dance as a profession. IDTA also gives training in Salsa Dance Instruction.  

The Salsa Dance Syllabus IDTA uses was written in 1998 by Paul Harris. He wrote a book titled ‘Salsa and Merengue: The Essential Step by Step Guide’. Harris’ work is considered a definitive work of its kind in the international dance industry. Harris has written syllabi's in Salsa, Mambo, and Merengue Dance for the IDTA, the British Association of Teachers of Dancing (BADT), the National Association of Teachers of Dancing (NATD), and the United Kingdom Alliance of Professional Teachers of Dancing. His book was key in forming the Club Dance Division of the UKA. Salsa Dance Teachers from the U.K. finally had the opportunity to gain a professional teaching qualification.  

Quality

IDTA Examiners and IDTA members can enter their students to follow the IDTA examination program. Salsa has evolved a lot since 1998. The quality of IDTA’s relatively thin Salsa Dance program cannot be compared with the extensive works in the Salsa Teachers & Business Training and Certification program of someone like Edie ‘The Salsa Freak’.