On a recent Thursday night, a woman in light-colored jeans and spiky high heels floated across the wooden floor of the Multi-Purpose Room of the Sullivan Gym in Portland. Her agile movements were carefully syncopated with the fast rhythmic beat emanating from the small boombox, and the twenty-four students watching her were struck, clearly amazed.
The dancer was Cassandra Terry, a 20 year-old sophomore who introduced Salsa dancing to the USM community last semester when she started the Salsa Club. Although Terry has only been dancing for a year, she moves like an expert, gracefully doing what she loves.
Terry started the club last semester with fellow instructors Warren McPherson (a native Jamaican) and Taylor White, who is now in Spain, teaching English and learning about the Spanish style of Salsa dancing. This diversity of background is relatively typical in the Salsa community. In fact, as the style has caught on across the globe, many different cities have put their own spin on it. Over the last year, Terry and her friends have begun to define a Portland style.
“I started dancing last January when my parents dragged me to one of their ballroom dancing classes,” says Terry. On the day she went, the class was learning Salsa, and she fell in love with the style immediately. Within a few days she had enrolled as a student at Bath Dance Works and had begun learning the basics from an experienced dancer named Rickey Hines.
Terry’s sensual moves and rhythmic flow on the dance floor is impressive, and it’s easy to see how students would be inspired by watching her dance. If she can accomplish so much in a year, maybe they can too. And, even if they don’t, Salsa is fun at any level.
The style that the beginning dancers learn is actually very simple.”The main steps in salsa are on the beats 123-567,” explains Terry.”The dancer steps forward, together, back, together.” The Latin music that Salsa dancers groove to is fun and upbeat, and it “makes you want to move” she says. “When you dance with your partner and make aconnection, this dance can turn passionate and sensual in a sexy way.”
During the lesson, the instructors separated the men from the women and taught different dance moves to each group. The men learned how to swing the woman’s arm out to her side, then pull her hand up, allowing her to turn under it – everything happening in time to the driving beat. And the ladies aren’t the only ones who spin. The man can either spin under the woman’s arm or spin in front of her. Either way it looks pretty cool.
This past Thursday was only the second class of the semester; but,with over 20 people in attendance, the club is clearly gaining momentum. “It’s very popular in big cities such as Boston, Miami, New York and Montreal,” says Terry. “It just hasn’t hit Portland hard enough yet.” Although most young people in Maine haven’t tried it yet, Terry predicts that the dance style will catch on soon.”They’ll be begging for more,” she said. “It’s hard not to get addicted to it!”
When class ended a small group of students ventured through the bitter cold to keep feeling the rhythm, this time at One Longfellow Square’s monthly salsa night. For them, the beat never stops.