Salsa and East Coast Swing/Ballroom Dancing and Elements of Etiquette
By Jocelyn Shworak
For my morning March Intensive, I took Salsa and East Coast Swing. Swing dance is a very energetic form of dance with three different types: East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, and Lindy Hop. If you like to dance, learning how to swing dance is very important because swing is the most popular form of dance in the country. Salsa is also very energetic and is done in basic counts of three. Learning how to do salsa is also important because it is the most popular dance worldwide. Every day in the Salsa and East Coast Swing March Intensive, we would start with salsa, then work on East Coast Swing, and end the day working on a merengue line dance.
On the first afternoon of Ballroom Dancing and Elements of Etiquette, we learned how to do the tango, which is in counts of 5. On the second day, we learned about table manners and how to do the rumba. Learning how to rumba is important because a rumba can be done to music for a tango or cha cha if you do not know these dances. On the third day, we learned how to do the cha cha, which goes slow, slow, quick, quick, quick. One the final day we learned how to waltz—which is 1, 2, 3—and reviewed all the dances we had learned. Over the course of the week, each of us had to present one custom or etiquette to the class that we had researched before hand.
These March Intensives were very fun to participate in, and I would recommend signing up for them next year.