If you wonder how the number of known figures affects your dance experience – whether with the idea that more figures means more fun, or that more figures means more advanced level – then you probably miss the meaning of couple and social dancing. Figures in fact are not the most important thing: advanced dancers usually perform very few figures and they keep continue enjoy dancing. Figures though have their own importance!
How do we dance cuban salsa
I met several times people declaring to know uncountable amount of figures. A friend of mine says he knows 100 figures: not kidding, he counted them and reached one hundred. The record is however an old co-trainer of mine who claimed to know and able to perform 140 figures… Now, there’s nothing wrong in knowing such a huge amount of figures and I assume they were tell me the truth. The point is: the message that gets through is that to become good dancers you have to learn many figures. That’s absolutely not true.
The Dance has to do with many “ingredients”, many techniques skillfully mixed together. We trainer teach figures to beginners because they are fun an through them they can practice the dance techniques in an enjoyable way. When these basics techniques are sound enough, when the fundamental are properly mastered, the process of improvement goes through other important factors such as cleaning the movements, develop a proper upper body movement, knowing and listening to the music to best interpretate it and improve your expression, master the ability to lead/follow, focus on the connection skills and other aspects which makes our own style unique.
Figures occupy little to no space in this entire process and they are of minimal importance to it. Figures are fun, a lot of fun, especially in the beginning: this must be recognized! However, every advanced or experienced dancer can confirm that we usually dance the same 2-3 figures and we prefer to do other things simply because we enjoy more dancing than just doing figures one after another one.
Figures that you must know
There are, however, figures that everyone must know. Those are known as the classical figures, belonging to the history of Casino and Rueda de Casino (Salsa), they are known worldwide.
The list includes steps and transition moves such as Enchufla, Guapea (Para ti y para mi), Vuelta, Dile que si, Dile que no, and figures as Setenta and Sombrero. It also includes common figures done in Rueda de Casino (Dame, Adios a la Prima, …). You can dance virtually everywhere and with anyone – from beginners to professional dancers – by knowing only those few figures and transition moves.
For these reasons they are all very important for social dancing and I believe it is extremely beneficial to master them.
If you’re a beginner, then my advice is to make sure you master the classical moves. This will allow you to enjoy at social events and will lay the groundwork for more challenging things if you decide to improve your dance technique.
Figures that you might want to know
I traveled and continue to travel often. Each time I manage to attend social events and dance with people who lives there. One thing I realized, which is also the lesson I share with you, is that in every city there are certain figures that tend to be more popular and commonly performed than others. There’s a reason for this. Teachers teach what they know and what they can show in their classes. In each city, the instructors who work there have learned to dance somewhere nearby and often share the same teachers, which explains why there is little variety.
In small towns this is very noticeable but in larger city is not that different. Each city therefore has its own set of moves (in addition to the classic ones) that almost everyone there knows how to do.
I believe that is important to know those figure precisely by virtue of the fact that they are known by everyone in that social circle. In practice, by learning those figure you’ll end up in having easier access to the social circle. Therefore it doesn’t really matter if those figures are “standard” of composed/invented by the trainer: what matters is that, when you go dancing, you have fun and those who dance with you enjoy themselves as well.
For this reason, my advice is to keep an eye on figures which are popular in the area where you dance and learn some of them.
Figures that you do not want to know
There are also figures that I recommend to not learn and I will elaborate why.
Not all dance schools have an open and cooperative approach. Unfortunately, conflicts between schools are very common and competition pushes them to focus on their own image rather than making an effort to center their dance instruction on students and _their_ needs. Essentially, they want to send the message that certain things can only be learned from them, because they are the most skilled instructors. And they demonstrate it by teaching long, complex choreographies they’ve created themselves. The small circle of people who practice these choreographies over time hones skills that clash with those needed for social dancing, which instead tend to erode.
This is what you, too, may experience if you follow this path: those outside the “chosen” circle will find it increasingly less enjoyable to dance with you, and you may end up feeling isolated1.
The problem with these instructors is that their ego ends up damaging students who are unaware of what they’re getting into and their will is to learn something useful for social events. These schools bring no benefit to the community; instead, their attitude fosters a negative atmosphere that encourages segregation, ultimately harming the social aspects of dance.
It’s fine to invent new figures, but it’s important to keep everything within certain boundaries. I recommend to stay away from those schools.
How many figures do I know?
While writing this post I counted how many figures I know and how many I perform regularly. The surprising answer is that I know a handful of figures and their variations and I perform more or less all of them. I do rarely perform more that 2-3 in a single dance. Most of my dances are basic steps and transition moves. At the right moment in the music I perform some figure usually starting with a simple Setenta. Two or three times in a dance I “leave” the follower to let her dance alone, and after observing her I do something on my side before taking her back for the rest of the dance. This is my style 🙂
Conclusions
Figures makes dancing really fun. It’s totally fine to learn a lot of new cool figures as long as you’re a beginner/intermediate. However, the more you improve your skills the fewer figures you perform, focusing on other aspects. Figures become over time not that relevant anymore. The question “how many figures” should you learn is misleading. It is rather a better idea to focus on the “right group” of figures – the classical figure and the figures popular in the area around you.
To improve your skills and enjoy the dance as much as possible – if this is the reason why you’re reading this post – I recommend to focus on important fundamental techniques such as cleaning the movements, learning the music structure and how to listen to it, focus on your partner to make he/she feel important.
It’s however normal that beginners focus on having a lot of fun while experienced dancer tends to enjoy the details and spread positive emotions through the connection.
1. The consequences are inevitable: it’s well known that many great performers are terrible at social dancing; the reason is that during their training, they haven’t danced enough with people outside of their partner or close circle