Shines & Body Movement

Salsa Shines is one of the key characteristics of Salsa dancing and is a complementing part of salsa partnerwork. You will use shines when you separate from your dance partner during the dance and create footwork patterns to enhance your dancing. Anyone who wishes to excell with their salsa dancing will need to learn shines. 

Most of us who dance Salsa want to get better and hopefully become advanced dancers. The higher the level of salsa gets, the more intricate the partner work becomes, the more skill will be required from both leader and follower to execute. In order to execute higher level partner work and styling in a good manner, shines will be of great help. Reason being because it will require you to practice specifics that will give you the base to conitinue to grow your solo dancing and as a result you will move with more ease in partner work and understand the footwork better.

Body Movement is a key characteristic in all Latin dancing. Salsa, Bachata, Cha Cha, Zouk, Kizomba, Samba etc. Doing the steps is great, but having the skill to add body movement to it will enhance the fancy footwork and put you on a whole new level. Note that the body movement course is not about learning how to body fancy bodyrolls and pretty arms, that's called styling. This course is about gaining understanding of the body mechanics in order to create fluidity in your dance and as result “execute” the movement rather than “doing” the movement. Styling can only be added once you understand body movement. Styling is like the “cream, cherry and sprinkle” on top of the cake. Body movement is the cake - the base that is put together by different elements and techniques.

This course is also about coordination from one body part to the other. It creates a chain of actions that that if all done correctly, will result in fluid, elegant and controlled movement. You will go through how to isolate certain parts of the body to enhance others and so on.

Shines and body movement go hand in hand. However, it is best to study them separately when you are trying to learn the fundamentals of both at first. Later on you will be able to put the two skills together and add body movement to your shines/footwork/styling - that's when the magic happens.

In these courses you will look into body awareness, coordination, timing, turns, musicality, rhythm, weight transfer and distribution, directional changes, general dance technique, balance and much more. All these elements are essential for all partner dancing and solo dancing too of course. The combination of the two will not just teach you skills, will also teach you how to hold your own on the dance floor.

Who should take these courses?

We recommend everybody, both girls and guys who are taking partner dance classes from level 2 up to take these courses to better understand the footwork and different elements, look and feel for Salsa and/or Latin dancing in general. Shines is for the most the "missing" part that will complement and enhance your partner dancing guaranteed.

The Salsa Shines courses will have Two Levels; Beginners/Improvers and Intermediate/Advanced. Beginners/Improvers is aimed for dancers who have little or no experience with shines besides the shines or footwork taught in regular courses. Here you will explore how to expand your existing shines repertoire and kee learning simle, yet chanllenging variations without overwhelming you. Intermediate/Advanced will go deeper in technical excecution, build on shines vocabulary, explore different timing options and details. Coordination, speed and balance will be a core focus at this level.

The Body Movement course to start with will have One Open Level as we can never really get enough of the fundamental techniques and drills that are taught in the course. We will build up the skills slowly as it takes a while to master it all. You will focus on your entire body from head to shoulders, to arms, to hands, chest, ribcage, hips, etc etc. Then have the body awareness to add it all to your dancing while you are executing all the fancy moves/shines/footwork. Its going to take a lot of practise, there is no denying that.