Selecting A Dance Style

A postmortem on a hasty decision

Several hundred hours into salsa dance, I’m starting to realize how deep the differences between dance forms go.

I originally selected Salsa and Bachata for reasons that were kinda arbitrary: my dating coach suggested Bachata. The bachata studio offered salsa as a bundle deal. I, a utility-maximizer trying to get this show on the road, accepted the bundle.

I assumed that “Partner Dance” was a single genus, and the specific styles—salsa, bachata, swing, tango—were basically just choosing between different physical mechanics that ultimately would offer pretty similar core experiences. You hold a person, you move to a beat, you try not to step on anyone’s toes.

I was wrong. It turns out that choosing a dance style is less like choosing between skiing and snowboarding, and more like choosing between joining Twitter or migrating to Bluesky. The literal, physical UX is the least important part of that decision. No, the main thing you’re choosing is actually the people you will be hanging out with and the social norms of the space. Which became apparent to me a couple months ago when I started attending a west coast swing studio.

Demographics/Culture

Salsa and bachata is probably about half Latino and half non-Latino in my area (Minneapolis). I didn’t really think about this until I started West Coast Swing and realized that not only was the dance scene a lot whiter, it was also a lot more progressive/queer-coded than Salsa or Bachata— people gave pronouns, there was lots more people who specialized in leading or following in a non-gender-conforming direction, and just generally there were a lot more progressive-coded social tells in the atmosphere.

As a guy, girls are likely to ask you to dance a lot more in west coast swing than in salsa/bachata, since the Latin dances seem to hew a lot more to the standard gender roles of “the man asks, the woman declines/accepts the dance.” (My salsa instructor tries her best to push back against this social norm, but it very much persists in bars and socials.)

A girl once told me about the Argentine Tango scene; apparently in that scene you never just “ask” someone to dance (what if you’re rejected?), so you have to do this whole thing where you make eye contact and if the person wants to dance they’ll make eye contact back and maybe you both nod and it’s a whole weird thing.

Follow Agency

In West Coast Swing it’s possible for the follow to take an active role in the evolution of the dance (they call it “hijacking”); in Salsa/Bachata the lead is the one causing everything to happen, and the follows are mostly restricted to “styling” (that is, movements that are totally self-contained and which the lead is not expected to interact with.)

A couple girls at my salsa/bachata studio express a preference for leading, specifically because of the massively greater creative freedom a lead has in shaping the dance.

Musical Flexibility

Salsa and bachata really want to be danced to salsa and bachata; you’ll get the side-eye if you ask someone to dance salsa to Charlii xcx. Possible? Yes. Easy to persuade a follow to go along with? No.

I contend this is a cultural thing, not a limitation innate to the dance, but it is an unofficial social rule nevertheless. (Gemini wanted to get into a long argument with me about how salsa fundamentally requires clave/tumbao/etc but I maintain I am right and it is wrong because only the on-2 version of salsa is actually aligned with the instruments, whereas most people seem to dance on1 which works for any 4/4 song BUT ANYWAY MOVING ON.)

By comparison West Coast Swing does not give a single shit, as far as I can tell, what kind of music you dance to. This is in fact so true that I have never— not once— seen someone dance West Coast Swing to actual swing music.

So, which is the best dance for beginners to start with?

Well, it depends on a few factors:

The Size Of The Local Scene For That Style

Can’t dance if you don’t have a venue.

The Music

Obviously: if you enjoy salsa/bachata music, then you will have overwhelmingly more fun practicing the corresponding salsa/bachata dance than if you’re just suffering through the music (though there are, of course, other options for scratching that musical itch.) So yeah, grab a style of dance that accommodates music you like.

But that pales in importance to one other factor.

The Ratio

If you are a Level 1 Dance Person trying to decide which demon to summon, you should be looking at the supply and demand curves of leads vs follows in your studio.

Think about it. If you are a lead in a studio with a surplus of leads, you will spend 50% of your night standing by the punch bowl, accruing zero XP. Whereas if you are a lead in a studio where follows are overabundant, you will be asked to dance continuously, and this will allow you to ascend the power curve massively faster.

When I was just starting to dance I found myself in a lead-heavy Salsa studio, fighting for scraps of practice time. But when I recently dropped into a follow-heavy WCS event, I felt like a resource in high demand. The morale boost of being the “limiting reagent” in the chemical reaction cannot be overstated.

And it’s not just morale but also logistics: see, the main thing determining how fast you Get Gud (and, by extension, how fast you can have tons of fun dancing skillfully) isn’t anything to do with the dance itself, it’s whether you can find someone you like who’s willing to practice a lot of hours with you. Having a consistent, reliable practice partner is the game changer for becoming good at a dance on a rapid timetable, and the more in-demand your role is in your local dance scene, the easier it will be to find this person.

Innate Difficulty?

Nah.

Some people will tell you that Bachata is “easier” than Salsa because the music is slower, or that West Coast Swing is “harder” because the elasticity of connection is difficult to nail. There is some truth to this—the “Time to First Acceptable Dance” varies considerably.

But this is missing the forest for the trees. Every style of partner dance is deeply counterintuitive for the body, and it’s a source of constant argument among practitioners what partner dances are harder than what other partner dances. These arguments are mostly stupid: they’re all hard, and getting out of Beginner Hell for any one of them will involve several dozen hours painstakingly overriding the muscle memory you’ve spent decades building in your body.

The thing that lets you survive Beginner Hell is having sources of joy that are unrelated to dancing well. If you can find at least one dance partner who you like, and if the vibes are on at the studio, you can grind through any learning curve and have fun doing it regardless of the technical difficulty of the dance. Which means you should be minmaxing for (A) partner availability and (B) vibes at the studio when you’re off the dance floor. Are these people you want to spend time with?

Maybe I Should Have Framed All Of This As Being About Choosing A Dance Studio, Not A Dance Style

Contrary to my dating coach’s perspective, the vibe of a dance is malleable and the sexiest part of being a dancer is being good, regardless of what style you happen to be doing. One can dance energetically or sexily in any style, but you can’t fix bad logistics and you can’t change the music. Which means you should try group classes at a few different studios till you find one where the ratios skew in your favor and the vibe seems like the kind of place you’d want to spend lots of time.

Possibly my real thesis is actually just that the specific studio matters more for your experience than the actual type of partner dance being taught (assuming it is a reasonably popular nightclub dance). And ratios are highly studio-specific.

FAQs

Wait, shouldn’t you just dance whatever you find most fun?

Ah. So, when you’re just starting out as a lead none of the dance styles are necessarily going to be fun; you’re just trying to get through it without injuring your partner while being acutely aware you are not providing a particularly enjoyable experience.

I suspect this mindset is why leads tend to flake out after doing a couple group classes regardless of specific dance style.

On the flip side of it, every dance style is almost absurdly deep and has a skill ceiling that is as high as you want it to be. If you get deep into a dance style you will start having fun, and the fun will vary wildly in tone based on what you’re doing. But it’ll be fun nevertheless.

The real question, then, is how to get deep enough to start having fun. Which means you’re now asking: “How do I accrue the necessary practice hours to get deep into it?”

But the music is so different!

Totally valid!

Truthfully I’m not that keen on salsa or bachata music. I mean, it’s fine. But most of what I enjoy in the dance is the movement; if I had to do it all over again I suspect I’d prefer having learned a dance with more musical flexibility than what I actually chose, though I made a lot of friends doing this and had a really good time generally. Ultimately, I like the people at my salsa/bachata dance studio, and salsa dancing itself is fun as hell. Life is full of tradeoffs!

You just talked about like three dance styles! This is not comprehensive!

Yeah. I only discussed nightclub dances that exist in my area (Minneapolis/St Paul); ballroom dances (e.g. tango, waltz, etc) look like fun but way fewer people actually know them and way fewer venues provide regular opportunities to perform them, which means I wouldn’t have nearly as much opportunity to put them into practice.

Which is a shame, because tango looks extra as hell and I love being extra.

See also: