Salsa!

On Friday night, I finally experienced some Colombian-style dancing firsthand(!)-- a group of us went to  La Troja, which is a historical place in Colombia to go and dance salsa. Contrary to my initial assumption, this is not a “club” or dance place of generic style; we arrived at 10:30 to an open seating style location replete with blaring music and tables overflowing over the sidewalks—not many walls involved in this place. People—Colombians and as many tourists/foreigners as I’ve ever seen in Barranquilla—sat at their plastic tables and shouted to be heard over the music. 

So where’s all the salsa at this famous salsa place? Welp, turns out La Trosa is perhaps the only established dancing place I’ve ever been without a dance floor— dancing here meant finding space on the patio between tables and, under glaring lights, (attempting to) dance Salsa. Avoiding the gaggle of foreigners in one corner, our group of volunteers (complemented by two of our host fathers) positioned ourselves directly in an uncomfortably central location and began our clumsy imitation of salsa.

Now, I couldn’t tell you all the music played was salsa, or if salsa was all people danced, since I think there might have been a few different dances going on throughout the night. However, I’ve learned that I’m pretty sure the act of doing salsa, or any of its dance cousins, is potentially physically impossible. At first glance, it doesn’t seem to have many steps. However, turns out actually dancing it basically necessitates dislocating your legs from your hips in order to simultaneously shimmy the entire limb while traipsing back and forth in short double-time steps, flicking your ankles, and provocatively swaying your ass, all while keeping your shoulders fairly still, although a shimmy and shake or two up there is apparently desirable as well.

This is what I learned first from observation, and then from when the friendly Colombians (male and female) sitting near us, after watching our painful gyration attempts, began to give us helpful hints from the peanut gallery. “More hips!” and “Relax!” were followed by the women getting up to demonstrate the aforementioned impossible moves…and then their boyfriends hopped in to try and guide us girls through a song or two, to various degrees of success…

Meanwhile, the poor guys in our group were just completely given up as a loss. At least as girls you can usually follow the direction of the knowledgeable guys, if not the complicated foot patterns. Guys, well…handicapped already by genetics and a lifetime of getting away with the “I’m jogging in place while bobbing back and forth!” style of dancing...as one guy in our group was bluntly told by a native, “You’re bad at this.”

Waking up with ears still ringing and a cramp in my foot did not exactly sway me towards going back to La Trosa the very next night, as some people in our group planned to do …I think perhaps it’d be advantageous to find a place with less revealing lighting to get some practice in before repeating that exercise quite yet!