9/20/2001 » Dance

I got to the salsa competition and stood there for a minute before noticing the silly grin plastered across my face. It felt like home. It’s goodness, salsa freaks are passionate and friendly people, they really suck the marrow out. It’s a world unto itself. There’s another competition on Sunday, the British Salsa Championships at Hanover Grand in West End.

I enjoy women’s upper backs, not the undefined upper cords but rather the comma-shaped valleys around the shoulder blades, the striations, valleys and shadows of a good salsera’s scapulae shifting on beat. Lots of flirting, mostly subtle, the focus was on the dancing and the dancing alone. I recovered my shines and Suzy-Q’s, the falls, hops and arm patterns. Got asked to dance the minute I walked in, and a couple more times that evening—there are far more salseras than salseros, a good male dancer is a hot commodity.

The dancers were fantastic, the athletic young Afro-Cubans, the man with the bendy flamenco outfit and the Barbie-doll black partner, the Lenny Kravitz lookalike in a Russian soldier outfit with his Russian baby-doll partner, and of course the guy in an Elvis wig and shades whom I later found out was desi. His name was Ash, Ashwinder perhaps. The winning partners could both do the splits and then take it back up, the woman doing it in high heels. El macho hizo cosas con su cuerpo que no nunca podré hacer.

The outfits were showy as usual, barely-there kerchief tops, sprayed-on dresses, alligator-skin leather pants, gold hotpants, silver slash-cut skirts, backless tie-on shirts, sequins, a Jessica Rabbit bustier. I’d seen some of these people on a different continent, taller or shorter, thinner or healthier, but the same styles, the same characters: the strict-faced, stiff older white woman in a sexy black dress, a sallow-faced smoker, no fun to dance with; the mop-top eraserhead Barbie dolls; the healthy Korean woman, good dancer, with too much makeup; the sexy Asian women in crop-tops; the stiff young black women with stubby features; the bootie-shaking Afro-Cuban women; the smooth Latino guys with ‘I’ve been doing this since I was 4’ authenticity; the handsome Spaniards with tied-back hair; the swing crossovers with sharp moves and no belly, no sinuousness; the handsome white guy with a devilish grin and surprising skill; Brooklyn style, all individual shines and no arms; the on-two Colombian style; mambo-style, speed salsa; the smooth Afro-Cuban men, all side-to-side Cuban style; and some new ones, a gay couple and some oddly-dressed ducks.

A good salsa floor is a great party, multiple little dramas, shattering at the end of one song, re-forming with the next. But it’s clean. People don’t drink much — it would interfere with the dancing; people scope, but it’s seeing how well someone dances before asking for a dance. It’s all about dance. No matter how skimpy the scraps of spandex on your partner, dancing takes high concentration. Then there’s the slow, breaking smile of syncing with a new partner, mirroring her moves and realizing you flow well together, a genuine ‘thank you’ at the end of a dance or two.

I recited the mantras of the salsa freak: Puerto Rico, the motherland; whites can’t dance (Raúl from Peru disagreed); and salsa at Havana Club is rubbish, give me the hardcore stuff. And I was in. Raúl told me about the best salsa clubs, the best teachers, how he learned salsa (hanging around teachers), the story of the Cubans (they arrived for the ‘Lady Salsa’ musical 6 months ago, and fans wouldn’t let them leave), how salsa’s exploded here, how Scandinavians are good salseras, the Latin Festival in July, where I’m from, what I am, how I learned Spanish, and how there are plenty of Asians in salsa.

Salsa is sexuality as it should be: beauty, a carnival, a party. Everyone can dance, women ask you, everybody dances with you at least once. It’s a proud celebration of sexuality for its own sake —not in the service of orgasm. It’s sexuality with head held high rather than furtive, drugged, orchestral maneuvers in the dark. It celebrates competence, celebrates skill. It’s warm, inviting. A friend once told me that of his three conditions for his remarriage, one was that she must appreciate golf. I fear salsa’s become one of mine.