¡Bailamos salsa!

It’s 9.30 a.m.

”Uno, dos, tres, stop, cin­co, seis, sie­te”, counts our dan­ce te­ac­her, Bar­ba­ro, whi­le he ta­kes some sal­sa steps. The group on Spa­nish cour­se num­ber four keeps their eyes on him and tries to take steps like he does.

Nor­mal­ly we would be ta­king our Spa­nish exam, but now the who­le group is le­ar­ning how to dan­ce sal­sa. Af­ter the dan­ce les­son, we’ll take our cour­se exam.

Bar­ba­ro is from Ha­va­na, Cuba. Last win­ter he came to Fin­land. Af­ter he has told us so­met­hing about him­self, he starts te­ac­hing us the ba­sics of sal­sa.

First, we try to take some ba­sic steps. It do­esn’t feel dif­fi­cult, but soon I no­ti­ce that it isn’t as easy as I thought. I have to think of so many things at the same time: steps, hands, hip and the mu­sic! And be­cau­se Bar­ba­ro spe­aks only Spa­nish, the­re are also some pa­lab­ras (words) I don’t re­mem­ber.

But when we have prac­ti­sed more, it be­co­mes ea­sier. It’s ac­tu­al­ly re­al­ly en­ter­tai­ning and en­joyab­le! Roo­sa Gra­nan­der, one of the stu­dents in the group, also feels this way.

-I would go to a sal­sa les­son again some ot­her time. It was fun.

Gra­nan­der thinks that she would like to have si­mi­lar exam days more of­ten.

-I would rat­her dan­ce than take some exams! She laughs.

Be­cau­se the stu­dents li­ked the dan­ce les­son, we may go to le­arn more sal­sa or ot­her La­ti­no dan­ces in our next Spa­nish cour­se.

Thank you, Bar­ba­ro, for te­ac­hing us, and thanks also to our Spa­nish te­ac­her, Son­ja Lam­pi­nen, who or­ga­ni­zed this ple­a­sant event!

Pho­tos: Son­ja Lam­pi­nen

Ba­sic steps