Dance Lessons!

This week's post is going to focus on two very popular dances in Costa Rica; merengue and salsa. Throughout the month that we spent there we took three dance lessons and each class was about two hours. During the first class most of us were very hesitant and embarrassed to learn this new dance. There were about thirty of us in a small dance classroom learning from a woman and her sons who were around the same age as us. Being that both the merengue and salsa are with a partner the five lucky guys that were in our group got to stand in front of everyone while all the girls took turns dancing with them.
The first week we learned the merengue which took most of us a few minutes to catch on to. The instructor would walk around and observe all the different partners and if she saw something she did not like she would separate the couple and teach whichever person needed help. This was sometimes funny because some partners got separated a lot more than others but very helpful at the same time. The salsa was a little easier to follow since we had experience with the dancing from the week before. (Click on the links and learn how to merengue and salsa!!!) On the third and final week we reviewed both dances that we learned and as an ending to the lesson our instructors' sons taught us a dance that was very popular in the clubs in Costa Rica called "Pase la manivela". We all joined in and once we learned it we all did the dance every time the song came on in the clubs.
Since we only learned each type of dance for one and a half class periods it is not something that I can remember off of the top of my head. But I feel like if I was dancing with someone who knew the dance well it would all come back to me rather quickly. I'm really glad that we had these lessons because not only were they fun, we also learned a lot from them!