Dance lessons at SalsaAkademien

_MAL2336.jpg, originally uploaded by Michael A. Lowry.

The dance troupe Sacuye recently chose a new name for its teaching operations: SalsaAkademien (The Salsa Academy). This week they proudly opened their new dance studio near Odenplan, at Odengatan 89. It’s just next-door to Container, the place where ClubSalsa used to arrange socials on Sunday evenings. SalsaAkademien is offering free trial classes for all of this week and next. Wednesday evening I attended several of the classes: level 4 salsa, footwork & body isolation (pictured above), and finally level 5 salsa (renamed from level 4+ to reduce confusion*).

Marina’s body isolation exercises were challenging as always. I swear that woman must have some snake genes in her, the way she can move. The level 5 course was more difficult than I expected, in part because one particular dance move vexed me. I kept messing it up, and couldn’t figure out what I was doing wrong. After the class, Ibi showed me what I needed to change, and with a few repetitions, I got it mostly right. It was then that I realized that I had already learned this move years ago, but had only forgotten it, probably due to lack of use. Once I did the move a couple of times, the memory of how to do it suddenly manifested itself again in my conscious mind and merged with the newly-formed memories from practicing the move that evening. Then it suddenly clicked and I could do it without problems. The brain works in mysterious ways.

I brought my camera along and took a few photos during and after the classes. You can see how nice the new studio is! All ten photos from the evening’s lessons are online.

* Marina insists that the so-called level 5 course is not truly what she considers level 5. Apparently, there aren’t yet sufficiently many dancers of that caliber in Stockholm to merit the existence of such a course.