Dance With Me [IV]: Blindfold Yourself

If you are a salsara or simply a person with your own mind, you would be able to identify with this post best.

I am both of the above. I have always enjoyed shopping alone because I tend to think that I don’t need a second opinion.

Why complicate simple things with contradictions?

I picked up Salsa, Bachata and Merengue in 2005, after my Jazz instructor Dino quit the scene. I figured it was time for me to try something different, to get a life out of my consultancy job which sucked the soul out of me.

Thus, I signed up for my first Salsa class with one of the bankers that I was working on the same project with.

This was what I was told on my first lesson.

“Ladies, allow yourself to be led.”

*GASP!*

Salsa, for a female, requires one to literally be blindfolded. I am not kidding. But it really required me to allow my partner to guide and lead me and permit myself to be half a step behind.

Coming from a dance background where I was trained to find my own centre of gravity and to figure out biomechanics through trial and error on my own, this was not easy. I trusted no one but myself – I once did, until a dance partner let me go in mid-air when I was unaware and I ended up with an injured ankle.

Take the above metaphorically.

Until today, I have issues trying to follow any man that asks me for a dance. I need more than one whiskey on the rocks to let myself be led with no resistance on the dance floor.

I got through lessons 1,2,3,4,5 and led almost every single man that I partnered with. Then I graduated into level two and three and after a number of impromptu invites to Union Square, the local Salsa club, I figured that I was hard to lead - a number of men have told me that.

But.

I have found partnerships in a few good and rare men. Some of whom have the capacity to truly lead and gave me the sense of security to let myself to be led. These were the rare occasions where I allowed myself to be blindfolded and see where the music takes me.

The experience is different but it feels nice to be led, on my own free will sometimes.