One of the many amazing things about salsa dancing is how it absorbs dancers into the dancing.  You know that experience!  You go out dancing and you may not even feel very motivated to dance; then you hear the music and you get a partner and start dancing.  Before you know it several hours have passed and you can’t understand what happened to the time. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this experience “flow” and, while this word is still used, many today may more likely call this experience “zone” or “being in the zone.”   Csikszentmihalyi studied the phenomenon as experienced by rock climbers and surgeons among others.  What he was interested in was to identify how flow happens and what its significance is to our lives.   Csikszentmihalyi believes that the experience of “flow” corresponds with the experience of happiness.  No wonder we dance all night.  It makes us happy!  Salsa dancing is fun.

Flow occurs when there is a correspondence of action and awareness.  This simply means flow is experienced when we are aware only of our actions; when we are in our moment; when we are fully present to what we do.  This makes sense.  We’re not, in some part, standing beside ourselves commenting on our dancing as we are doing it; rather we are wholly absorbed in our dancing.

 Csikszentmihalyi found that an important factor in creating flow is the match between the challenge of our activity and our skill or ability.  He found that flow is most likely to occur when we experience a challenge demanding our fullest concentration on our activity, but that if the challenge becomes too great, too much beyond our present skill level, we experience anxiety and may simply shut down.  If the challenge is too low, then we tend to get bored and thus distracted from what we are doing. 

So how does this work in my teaching and understanding of salsa dancing based on the salsa connection?  I think it is an important way of understanding the connection between partners.  Both need to be present and active to be connected.  Flow occurs when both partners are connected to one another and to the music through being actively and fully present and attentive to the connection to one another.  Dancing creates an amazing opportunity for two people to merge in their experience of flow, their shared and interactive sense of the identity of their action and awareness.  I also think this understanding of flow is relevant to different levels of skill between partners.  If there is a mismatch of skill levels, there is a greater chance for either one to be bored or the other to feel anxious.  If either occurs clearly there will be no salsa connection, no flow, and consequently the dancing won’t be fun.  It is important for dancers to understanding this.  It doesn’t mean that dancers should only dance with partners that push, but comfortably so, their skill level, although this can work.  It does mean that dancers can still have fun by focusing on creating the salsa connection with whomever they are dancing.  This will require that partners attend to one another and find their challenge in discovering and adjusting skill and effort to match the other’s skill levels rather than exacerbating the differences between skill levels.  It means that the challenge is in making the salsa connection and this is always a challenging part of salsa dancing.

This idea of flow also relates to my teaching which I call “Salsa Challenge.”  I hate the term “boot camp” so often used now.  Who ever enjoyed boot camp?  This is an experience designed to painfully break down and rebuild the participants.  While the military may feel this is necessary, I much prefer the idea of the challenge that pushes the existing level of skill so as to entice growth and development that is fun and exciting.  Some call this creative stress.  I believe that in teaching longer classes (most of mine are 2 to 2 ½ hours) students can get in that flow and by constantly keeping the level of challenge just above the level of skill, dancers learn the most and do so the most quickly.  The challenge for me as a teacher is to understand where students are and adjust the speed and level of teaching accordingly to keep the majority from either feeling anxious or bored.

Take the Salsa-Challenge. Experience the Salsa Connection.