Finding My Beat
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Finding My Beat
When I initially heard those leads of conga drums, I was instantly hooked. There, a woven fabric of salsa dancing would become a message in the end, which was not just a technique of dancing, but an introduction to a multi-coloured cultural heritage. A Mid-westerner by birth, I was brought up in a family modest with its expression. Subdued emotional display was marked by more severe values and emphasis on restraint rather than release. My parents’ family heritage ensured our strong Swedish traditions with humble outputs. But once I was a teenager, every time salsa rhythms thundered, it was impossible to resist their beckoning. The delirious concoction of Afro-Cuban beats, merengue rhythms, and Puerto Rican homeland tunes left me shivering full of that energy that I had not encountered before.
I will never forget how I sneakily attended my first salsa dance social, passing through the hallway with fear. There, a magical story manifested before my eyes- colourful whirls, elegant movements, and unwavering laughter. The atmosphere was infectious. Standing in the midst of the carousing and electric energy at the dance floor's heart, a special warmth that was all around the place slowly spread out with the waves. Locals might have come from different backgrounds, but somehow, they moved and jumped around as one bunch, having no cues to tell them when an individual move or improvisation was coming up.
The women's quick move of the hips and the spiky heel-turning gestures exuded a certain confidence and feminine strength and liberty. Contrary to the refined and well-ordered stereotype, these movements undermined traditional wisdoms of vulnerability and gracefulness, and gave birth to a stronger, more grounded version of women. Men exhibited their nimble footwork and courtly style to be modestly macho. It was a simple way to mash up masculine dance's arrogance with humility, instead of egoism or pleasure trips. Primal yin and yang were unpredictable and struck a perfect balance; it became a prototype that greatly redefined basic gender orientation.
Reading that, I was absolutely sunk; yet so amazed. This was a culture pretty at its best in an existence where the primary feeling was one of joy. Additionally, I discovered that salsa was far more than just a rhythm of the songs and the movements of the dance. I had a culture of immersion, one that celebrate the complexities and intersections of the Afro-Caribbean and Latina diasporas. Since day one when the salsa history and the sociopolitical contexts of its origins and evolutions were so seriously and melodically in each step of a new movement. When beats, turns and lulls were heard, they carried happiness and freedom - or suffering, difficulties and eventual, outstanding performance against hardships through music.
Whereas salsa was fused with and contributed to a complex web of different cultures, at the same time, detailed gestures and intricate rhythms kept intact its deep roots. The clue be it a lyrical guajira with a pastoral story-telling from Puerto Rican or an amorous flirtatious cha-cha with echoes of urbane salseros from Havana, all styles signified a legacy. The marvellous mystery was not the merging of this different ethnic groups on the dance floor but the byproduct of what came out of it to create the revolutionary.
Salsa's diversity, free harmonies, and code created a fourth dimension, a world where the three paths joined to give way to multicultural celebrations, intersectionality, and the exploration of past cultured blended with present elements was ongoing. In this reality, I was not only doing the steps well, but also the meaning behind them. Through the timeless rhythm of salsa dance I got a loud clear directive to stop a half way and start the new process of merging all aspects of my hybrid being into one big entity. First and most important salsa is a process which enables this art to correlate both traditions while generating something new in the meantime.
With a loose communication between the dancers there was a development of a complex cultural third space where diversity, intersectionality, and multi-identity were the favourites as the part of final explorations and creative freedom. What I have realized after being involved with salsa for quite a while now is that the process of fully understanding and experiencing the essence of it is by embracing the various parts of my identity that connect to my Midwestern background, my race and how privileged I am, put together into one long journey that is complete and real.
The lineage of salsa runs from the banned drum circles in slave quarters to the defiant expressions of those in a climate of severe racism and poverty through enslaved people. The syncopated rhythms of the music carry the resilience of those who made it through the inhumane Middle Passages, putting the liberation of the soul into each spontaneous movement. The Cuban Son dances are at the core of salsa and they evoke the images of slaves secretly maintaining their traditions by gathering together and performing on Cuban plantations. It was created out of improvised call-and-response dialogues, the versatility of code switching, and the dynamic intersections of Afro-Latino roots, therefore being much more than an irresistibly cool party sound – it was a brilliantly scheduled act of sociopolitical self-determination through art.
Salsa dancing opened my eyes to my self-worth through the view of rebuilding all that I had to destroy to survive the pressure of the society. The pulse of an intersecting path brings the integration of various elements of my life history into one where cultural codes, ancestral lineage, orientation, and past trauma have to subside to one harmonized identity. Between moving to the fierce rhythms of salsa and conquering the maze of moves with my head held up high – boldly creating new forms of consciousness through the power of authentic dance – became a part of me.
What salsa, the traditional, dance could do is to connect the future radical thinking to these vibes or world circles of a system where more awareness, inclusion, and wellness for everyone and planet will be established. As a common offspring to the cultures, we the descendants of the ancestors living till now will bring our memories and dreams to life and will be building the future of humankind, making it full of courage.
As an individual I was exposed to salsa and it changed me gradually having great impact in who I have become. Salsa's wild beat has opened for me a way of living that is both the community relations and the creating of relationships, as well as living from the grace of improvisation that life shows to us. The combination of two basic paradigms, the natural world and the transcendent, third space, is at the heart of both my own metaphysical philosophy and the daily ritual of my spiritual life. Furthermore, apart from the compulsive and the freeing sense of joy that I am going to forever deal with and which would relate to the moment I would become an individual and enhance the society's condition.
From the dance floor to the classroom, I could apply embodied learning through which the ancient spiritual knowledge of the descendants of Africa would be decoded as well as the Latin folklorico concepts of authentic identity, and prevailing universal themes of collective resilience and creative renaissance which form in the face of unwavering oppression. Salsa thus presented the viewers of all ethnicities with the vivacious threads to intuitively comprehend the diverse experiences for the most part skipped from the airspace of central culture narratives. By means of actual physical initiation in these complex internal systems students will be able to produce self-discoveries of how humanity is trans-dimensional and interconnected: especially for diasporic communities that are always resistant and transform specialists by nature.
As I go deeper and deeper into Salsa's roots, savory accents, and dynamic collisions, I can easily create shifting and transforming instructional platforms thereby creating life-changing learning experiences both on the dance-floor and in the class-rooms. My role involves passing the sacred tradition of salsa dancing and trying to teach it to younger generations, teaching them the importance and significance of salsa dancing. The fineness of the dance forms can be traced to the spirit of inhuman power embedded in each spontaneous moves - the spirit of a people who were still there inventively drawing from their ancestral beliefs and building trans-border belongingness through the very beats keeping their stories always green.
Through the journey of discovering the history of salsa and its cultural value, the initial unrestricted delight that had sparked on that inaugural night to light my spirit is transformed into something that will last a life time. By blending into different identities in various dimensions, I realized spiritually that the journey of my own individual to becoming is to be catalysed. First of all, she demonstrated to me how to dance my way into creation - harmony-loving, as I stand in spirit solidarity with all the survivors still writing their legacies onto the universe after millennia. Ultimately, salsa does not capitalize on variety in musical genres, region-specific methods, and chronological histories. This creative energy is made up of an unstoppable spirit of a people who, as they are dancing, are in the process of self-liberation, remaking their connection with their ancestors, and crossing borders in their building of home heaven.