Absolute Boarginners: Spicing things up with Warwick Salsa

Wanting to learn salsa is all well and good when you’re watching the tassels flying around on Strictly, or gawping at Warwick Salsa’s performance videos on Youtube. The moves are flamboyant but graceful, and the sexual tension feels like it could be cut with a sharpened ballroom dancing heel. There’s something about watching two people salsa (well, I hasten to add) that makes a girl feel that, with a few weeks of lessons and some sparkly shoes, she too can be spinning lithely to some Cuban tunes, the object of onlookers respect and envy.

It’s a happy sweaty-palmed party in the Copper Rooms twice a week, that I’d encourage you to attend.

Needless to say, this illusion was crushed after my first class with Warwick Salsa. Turns out, the moves are actually horrendously complex. Luckily, the classes are separated into experience groups, with the recommendation being that you take three beginners classes before moving into Improvers One (‘Improvers’ is basically the exec finding a nice word to mean beginners who can make 3 steps consistently in the right order).

The structure of the classes isn’t like some other performance societies’ lessons, who have beginner, intermediate and advanced classes on at different times and days. Warwick Salsa have two classes in the Copper Rooms each week, that see the exec split up and teach groups of different levels, all at the same time. After an hour of learning, everyone comes back together for freestyle dancing (or watching from the side with your two left feet, in my case). This means that you can start the classes at any point in the term, and you’ll always be able to jump in at beginner level.

Getting jiggy with out: Warwick Salsa take to the Piazza

One warning about the classes for those who aren’t sure what to expect; you won’t really get to see the people you came to the class with. In my life experience as a female, I’ve observed that when entering new and unfamiliar territory, we like to cluster in groups. If you’re hoping to do that thing you used to do in P.E lessons where you stand at the back with your mates and do whatever stupid sport it was that day half-arsedly, while chatting to your mates. Rest assured you won’t be able to do that here. In Warwick Salsa classes you begin by pairing up with a member of the opposite sex, and the pairs stand in a circle. After nothing more than a ‘hi what’s your name?’ and a ‘no I realise I look 14 but I’m actually a finalist’, you’re clutching each other in your sweaty palms and stepping on one another’s toes. After a few minutes, the men all move along clockwise, and you do the whole thing all over again. It’s really no surprise that people have dubbed Warwick Salsa classes as unofficial speed dating events.

I’ve been attending the classes since the beginning of this term (admittedly, not very consistently), and have genuinely had loads of fun. Everyone I’ve met has been lovely, if not sometimes uncoordinated, and I’ll definitely keep it up for the rest of my time at Warwick. Oh and don’t worry about sweaty palms, literally everyone has them. It’s like downstairs Smack where there’s an implicit understanding that you’re all disgusting sweat buckets. It’s a happy sweaty-palmed party in the Copper Rooms twice a week, that I’d encourage you to attend.