Salsa Dancing in Peru
I don’t salsa dance. I just haven’t learned yet. When I go dancing, which I do enjoy, it is usually Blues or Micro Fusion or anything else that incorporates a lot of smaller movements. The first, and, so far only, time I have gone Salsa Dancing was in Peru. I am a big believer in experiencing a thing within its culture, if I have the opportunity. When I travel I order a lot of food that my stomach questions what I have done to it because I want to experience what that place has to offer and not just what I am used to. So, when Sally, the tour director, charged with keeping me and 30 other twenty-somethings safe in Cusco, offered to take us Salsa dancing I thought, “if I’m ever going to Salsa Dance it should be in Peru,” and went.
The other thing I don’t do is speak Spanish. I tried when I was younger and when I failed to master that I tried French in college. I failed at that one too. Actually, I worse than failed, I decided that French was a stupid language and dropped the class halfway through the semester. I still tried, while in Peru, I greeted servers at restaurants in Spanish and did my best to order with words rather than pointing and grunting but that didn’t mean I actually spoke Spanish anymore than to say, “sorry, sorry! I don’t speak Spanish,” in Spanish.
Fortunately, a man holding his hand out to you and making eye contact seems to be universal dance language for, “would you like to dance?” And I do know the Spanish word for yes.
Sally led our small group of willing dancers through a maze of stairs just off the Plaza de Armas, up to a sweaty, crowded, club packed with couples moving their Latin hips.
Perfect. This was my moment. I was going to Salsa Dance in Peru.
I went out onto the dance floor with a few of my friends and we did our best. It was obvious that none of us had done it before, but we did our best and the enjoyment of dancing comes from doing it, not from doing it perfectly.
A hand brushed my shoulder in the space between songs. I turned toward the offered hand. Did I want to dance? Si! At home I go Blues Dancing once a week in an attempt to be better at doing things for myself and tricking myself into exercising and socializing more before I end up bricking myself into my home. And I am a chronic wallflower, there’s nothing anyone can do to save me from that either, it is not a character flaw it is just part of who I am, so I inevitably get ask at some point throughout the night, while I sit in the corner, enjoying my wine experience, “are you here for dancing?” I am here for dancing and I was there for dancing. I accepted the offer of a dance.
“Hola.”
I KNOW THAT ONE! “Hola, como estas?”
“Bien,” and he launched into full conversation mode. Several long strings of sentences featuring very few words I knew rushed at me, bumping me as I tried to follow my lead through a turn.
“Oh no! Lo siento, lo siento! No habla.” It’s a little funny, the vast majority of phrases I know in other languages are some version of, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak (insert language I am speaking in here).”
He took it very well. He nodded politely and switched immediately into French, shooting the same series of questions at me as before. They were probably something like, “have you ever danced Salsa before?” “How was your New Years?”
“Oh no. That’s worse. Go back.”
The song started winding down and the dance came to an end. “Um… gracias,” I muttered, now more than a little embarrassed at my inability to communicate with anyone outside of the USA.
He looked me up and down and nodded. “United States? English?”
“SI!”
“You look like a Spanish girl.”
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