Salsa City Forum » Salsa Music and Dance » Learning Salsa

To be honest, it's personal choice, they're all different so I would go to all the lessons and see which style you enjoy most and where u feel u get the most from it. They're all great in their own ways.

Andy rocks! Simple as.

Creep! ;-)

Yes he does, I would say he's one of the best teachers I've ever been taught by!

Joking aside - Andy is GREAT... (Do you sense a but coming here?) With the greatest of respect to him - I am not as hot on his “beginners level” classes. This is only my own opinion but... I see Andy as a more “demonstration” than “explanation” style teacher which is fab for advanced and cuts out all the crap. But for absolute rank beginners, John’s teaching is truly at “noddy” level which benefits people who have NEVER danced before. So for beginners I would recommend John over Andy - saying this, John certainly isn’t as strong at advanced (and I actually think he would agree with this).

Goin back to John, I find he teaches the same every week, which is ok as I find it takes a while to get used to. So, is Andy the same or do he teach diff every wk?

It depends which classes u go to... If u do the beginners then yes, it is pretty much the same with a few extra things thrown in, but oncw u start improvers and intermediate u learn a different turn pattern or variations on turn patterns every week. He also teaches other footwork and things in the warm ups as well.

He seems to have less of a drill instructor style than some others, so you can actually practice stuff at your own pace during the class after you've been shown it and walked through it a couple of times. I hate it when the instructor is shouting at you what you should be doing all the time when you're dancing with a partner, how are you supposed to concentrate on leading/following?

The worst thing is, when you're getting the drill instructor stuff and everyone’s being told what to do when, I still try to follow the guy’s lead and if I don’t get a lead of some kind I don’t follow. Some guys must think I'm an absolute moron that doesn’t know any steps at all but I don’t think it’s helpful to train ladies to walk through routines/combinations of moves. That gets you nowhere when you're dancing socially outside of a class and it doesn’t help the lads learn how to dance with a woman who’s not anticipating what comes next.

I think John is a great instructor, very good at what he teaches, as it takes a lot when u got people who can't get it as quick as others. I can find it a bit hard to b honest, I think it takes a lot of lessons to get it rite.

Hi, just come home from salsa at O’Neill’s and I got to say it was a good routine but most of the men was hard to dance with as half of them couldn’t do the dance and messed me up. So when I went on to men who knew what they were doin it was hard to know what I was doin.