How to start dancing salsa

This is what stops most people and it makes the least sense. Salsa classes rotate: every few minutes you change partner and dance with everyone in the room. Coming alone is actually better for learning, because it forces you to understand people who lead differently.

Schools expect most people to arrive on their own. Nobody will look at you twice for walking in alone.

Salsa is counted in eight and stepped in six: one, two, three — pause — five, six, seven — pause. That is all you need to hear at the start, and it is the first thing any class teaches.

Finding the "one" in the music takes most people a few weeks. It is not a sign of anything: it is the part you train.

With one class a week, in a month or six weeks you can get through a whole song without thinking too hard. Not well, but without losing the beat — which is what you need to start enjoying it.

What really speeds things up is dancing outside class. One night at a social teaches more than three classes, because it forces you to solve things on the spot.

Comfortable clothes and shoes that turn. That is literally it. Trainers are the enemy: they grip the floor, and when the foot cannot turn, the knee does. Any smooth-soled shoe works to start; dance shoes come later, if you stick with it.

Bring water, and a spare shirt if you sweat. It is appreciated.

Group, almost certainly. A private lesson teaches technique faster, but salsa is danced with different people, and that only comes from changing partner — which is exactly what a group class does every five minutes.

Privates make sense later, once you know what you want to fix. At the start you do not even know what to ask.

It varies a lot by city, but the usual format is a monthly pass for one class a week, and in most places it comes in under a gym membership. Plenty of schools give the first class free or let you pay per session, which is what to do before committing to a month.

There is an even cheaper way in: the one-hour class many socials run before opening the floor, included in the entry. It does not replace a course, but to find out whether you like this at all it is plenty.