Salsa lessons 3

Because I have plenty of time to think while working on the basics and my awareness of our bodies intensifies to compensate for the dance partner’s inexperience, I started to notice all these awesome things that I am doing which I wasn’t aware of before.

The most amazing feat of my subconscious is the awareness of people, where they are and what move they are about to do. A consequence of dancing waltz where floorcraft is essential in order to avoid people while keeping the whole routine going smoothly. Avoiding obstacles in your path as if your routine were planned with the obstacles in mind.

I believe that several years of dancing, looking all around and bumping into people in crowded dance floors managed to burn this ability into a subconscious routine that I don’t have to think about. Leaving my mind free to take care of other tasks. I don’t know how else to explain this to non dancers, let’s just say that if I need to take a step back and somebody is about to pass behind me in a perpendicular path, I know without looking that I have to take a smaller step and I trust in this “knowing” without questioning it.

The funny thing is, put me in a soccer field where the same skill can benefit me greatly and it doesn’t work. As if the very feeling of wood underneath the leather soles of my shoe activates the ability.