Diane Ackerman declared that “touch seems to be as essential as sunlight.”  Saul Schanberg wrote, “We forget that touch is not only basic to our species, but the key to it.”  Remarkably the word “touch” is the longest single entry in the unabridged dictionaries of many languages.  In the Oxford English Dictionary the entry runs 14 full columns.  Constance Classen wrote “touch is a fundamental human medium for the expression, experience and contestation of social values and hierarchies.”

We live in a society and at a time when touch is highly restricted.  Touch often suggests abuse and is restricted sadly, but for understandable reasons, in schools and work places.  However, touch is essential to social dancing.  While there are occasions when inappropriate touch takes place on the dance floor, most dancers understand that touch is essential to dancing and that the conventions of dancing tend to restrict touch to certain types and body areas. 

Okay, what does touch have to do with this salsa connection?  First, let me say that I find it amazing how much information two people can communicate to one another through even the briefest and lightest touch.  Touching in salsa should usually be light.  I describe it this way.  If we want to appreciate the feel of some fine fabric, silk or velvet say, we don’t grab a big wad of it in our fist and squeeze it tightly.  Rather we use the tip of our finger and touch it very lightly.  The salsa connection is like this.  We gently connect with our partner and concentrate on the amazing subtlety of the connection.  But not all touching is the same.  I think many partners touch more in the sense of just hanging on to one another.  Many leads (guys) tend to hang on like they fear loosing their partner.  They press their thumbs into the backs of the follows’ fingers grasping with all their might.  And follows (women) often do this as well; that death grip. This sort of touching is like grabbing a fist full of silk; one can never feel the beauty of the texture.  Touch can also be simply incidental.  This is where one or the other dancers goes through her or his moves while holding on (rather incidentally it would seem) to a partner. 

But touching can be sensitive and interactive.  This occurs when both dancers are constantly attending to one another, connecting with one another, constantly adjusting to be fully sensitive and connected to one another through this light, but clear and active, act of touching.  This is fundamental to establishing the salsa connection.   This sort of touching also requires the re-evaluation of our concepts of lead and follow.  I think most believe that the lead pushes, drags, and otherwise forces the follow around to do what he wants her to do.  We have grown accustomed to presenting this idea in feminist and gender-sensitive terms by saying that the lead is showing off the follow or presenting her as beautiful.  A recent metaphor I heard was the man is the frame, the woman is the picture.  But I think it is time to take the equality of the roles completely seriously and to show how both roles are equal, although a bit different, in importance, presence, and action. 

Touch is one of the most essential aspects of the salsa connection and the right touch requires loads of practice and attentiveness to create the embodied skills to constantly experience the salsa connection.

Take the Salsa Challenge.  Experience the Salsa Connection!