Part 5:  Eye Contact and the Salsa Connection
by Sam Gill

I lived with Navajos many years ago when I was doing research for my PhD.  They have some interesting social behaviors.  They point with their lips rather than a finger or hand and they avoid direct eye contact.  I found myself often trying to respond to someone who was looking in my general direction, but was actually talking with someone away from me.  Cultures practice different conventions on many social behaviors including eye decorum.  We tend to judge whether someone is telling the truth by whether or not they make eye contact.  We even implore children to look us in the eye when we want the truth from them.

Eye decorum in social dancing is often a tricky and difficult social skill to master and I believe it is an important part of that cluster of skills though which we create the salsa connection.  So often we observe salsa dance eye decorum where the partnering dancers never look at one another, especially eye to eye.  When we dance with someone that never makes eye contact with us, we often feel that likely they didn’t even care who they are dancing with.  We likely feel ignored.  This isn’t always intended; indeed, likely rarely.  However, many of us have developed this type of eye decorum because we are concentrating on the dance, or perhaps because we are shy or even embarrassed.  We may be embarrassed that we are so close to and even touching someone we don’t know and feel a little uncomfortable. 

Then many also experience a partner who stares at us, never breaking eye contact.  Some women find that men tend to stare at certain body parts making them uncomfortable. 

Eye decorum can be confusing, complicated, and many find it almost impossible to control their own eye decorum.  Given all this, eye contact is important in creating the salsa connection.  Here are my suggestions.  Make eye contact with your partner and allow yourself to communicate with your partner through your eyes.  So what do you communicate?  Well, for starters that you know they are there and that you are dancing with them; that you are enjoying dancing with them; that you want to be connected with them.  As physical touch is light and not grasping, so too should be eye contact.  Don’t stare or focus on one part of your partner’s body no matter what that is.  Keep your head up and your eyes up so that as you move your body your eyes will come into contact with your partner’s eyes.  Let your eyes smile and enjoy the connection with your partner. 

I often do an exercise in classes where the women are asked to follow the three basic salsa patterns without the man holding her hands.  I ask her to concentrate on what I call (with a touch of humor, of course) “the salsa aura.”  This I tell them in the space that surrounds the lead’s body particularly the shoulders and head.  By carefully watching the lead as he moves, most women have little difficulty (if the man is sure of what he is going to do) creating their salsa connection with him and seamlessly following him.  This is further evidence of the importance of eye contact in creating the salsa connection.

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