There’s a moment in life when you can no longer ignore the reflection staring back from the mirror. It’s a confrontation with the space between who you are and who you yearn to be. For me, that moment arrived a few months ago. The excuses had run dry, and the pull towards a more vibrant, fulfilling life became irresistible. It was time, finally, to learn to salsa.
Now, let’s be clear, I’m no stranger to the dance floor. Drop me into a club, and I’ll happily command the center of any dance circle. Weddings? Consider me a professional party energizer. Hip-hop, disco classics, merengue, bachata – even my cumbia has its moments. But salsa? Salsa has always been my elusive dance partner. It wasn’t the steps or the intricate rhythms that tripped me up, but something more fundamental: in salsa, for a woman, the tradition is to be led.
The music could swell, horns blazing, the rhythm pulsing from the ground up through my body, but the moment I stepped onto the dance floor with a partner and felt that guiding nudge, my body would lock up. Around us, couples moved as one, a seductive dance of give and take, while my poor partner was left trying to steer a stubbornly rigid spinning top. Inevitably, we’d both wave the white flag.
The roots of this dance floor stiffness reach back to the 90s and my college years. By day, I was immersed in third-wave feminism, a world of empowerment, of rejecting limiting gender roles. But come evening, the small group of Latino students, a vibrant pocket in my predominantly white college, would gather to dance. The disconnect was stark: the intellectual freedom I was embracing clashed directly with the physical surrender, the pliability to a partner’s lead that salsa demanded. My teenage brain couldn’t bridge that gap. As I navigated adulthood and encountered sexism beyond theory, my discomfort only hardened.
But in my resistance, I was losing out on joy. And it was more than just missing out on fun. It wasn’t simply that I wanted to dance salsa; deep down, I felt I should be dancing salsa. And dancing it with confidence and joy.
I am, after all, a New Yorker through and through, and salsa is as intrinsic to New York as a perfectly toasted bagel. We even have our own distinct style: “salsa on 2,” breaking on the second beat. Its sonic origins are in Cuba, but salsa as we know it flourished in the dance halls of my city. It’s also woven into my Puerto Rican heritage. In its golden era of the 60s and 70s, Nuyorican salsa wasn’t just music; it was the sound of political voice, of cultural pride. Watching someone truly dance salsa, I witness a kind of liberation. Not the choreographed routines of television, but the raw, joyful movement you see at a neighborhood party or a family celebration. My ingrained aversion to being led was blocking me from fully embracing a vibrant part of my own culture.
Just blocks from my Brooklyn home, a salsa studio had stood, a silent invitation, for a decade. Finally, I walked through its doors and booked a series of private lessons. I had lived my adult life as a leader, and I was finally ready, desperate even, to admit that I wanted to learn to follow.
Little did I know that Andy, my dance instructor, would offer insights more profound than years of therapy. Andy wasn’t particularly philosophical, or even overly talkative – our 45-minute sessions were packed with steps to learn. But after guiding me through the basics, and noting my surprising pre-existing knowledge, he cut to the heart of the matter: “Why are you really here?” When I confessed my struggle with being led, he transformed into a laser-focused diagnostician, dispensing commonsense wisdom that resonated with surprising depth. It became immediately clear that the barrier to becoming a better dance partner wasn’t really about the dance steps at all.
His first observation stopped me in my tracks: my gaze was glued to my feet, not on him. When I explained I was trying to get the steps perfect, he gently reframed my focus. “This is about how we dance together,” he said, “not just about your performance.” Eye contact, he emphasized, would synchronize our movements, creating a shared rhythm.
My homework for the week was to master one move – the Cross Body Lead, for those curious – until it felt as natural as walking. “If you nail this,” Andy explained, “you signal to your partner that you’re creating space for them to lead. And who doesn’t want to dance with someone who makes space for them?” Walking home, I pondered how many connections in my life, both personal and professional, had faltered because we were too consumed with our own individual paths to create space for each other.
The following week, my Cross Body Lead was indeed on point. But a new challenge emerged: I was anticipating the next move, rushing ahead without waiting for Andy’s cues – the subtle hand gestures, the gentle touches that guide the follower. “What you think we’re going to do next,” Andy corrected, “is not the same as reading my signals of what to do.” The dance, he was showing me, is a conversation, and I wasn’t listening.
Then came the most fundamental lesson. Andy stopped the music. “You have to believe,” he stated plainly, “that your partner wants you to look good and have fun.” I needed to trust that if I relinquished control and allowed myself to be led, he would guide us towards moves that felt good, that showcased us both.
This, of course, was easier said than done. Even if I intellectually grasped it.
In the seminal 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning, ballroom legend Willi Ninja instructs aspiring models on how to “walk.” He pauses to observe that New York City women possess a certain “hardness” compared to women elsewhere, and his class aims to restore a touch of “softness” to their movements. He doesn’t elaborate on the origins of this hardness, nor does he need to.
Like many New York women, I navigate the city’s crowded streets and jostling subway cars with a body braced for impact, both literally and figuratively. My mindset, however, has been conditioned for independence, for survival and self-reliance, on a deeper level. I wasn’t just a latchkey kid. “If you want to do it, figure it out” was the unspoken mantra of my upbringing. I landed my first job at fourteen. I navigated the labyrinthine FAFSA forms and college applications entirely on my own. Stepping into my college dorm felt like stepping into full adulthood, completely independent. The feminist texts of my college years simply provided an intellectual framework for a reality I was already living: I could do it all, and I had to do it all alone.
Since then, I’ve been married and divorced, navigated relationships of varying lengths, but truthfully, I had never shed the skin of that self-sufficient individual. Perhaps this explained, in part, the relationship trajectory itself. Standing in that salsa studio, I realized that even when someone was dancing right beside me, I had been dancing alone.
Contemporary capitalist feminism often celebrates the “independent woman” as the ultimate ideal. Keychains, mugs, Beyoncé anthems all champion self-reliance. “I can take myself dancing, / And I can hold my own hand, / Yeah I can love me better than you can,” Miley Cyrus proclaims. By these measures, I embody the feminist American dream. Without relying on a partner, I’ve built a financially stable, creatively fulfilling, rich life. I own my home, travel freely, and consider myself – like many single women today – genuinely happy.
But the yearning to dance salsa posed a simple yet profound question: “If I wanted to change this aspect of my life, could I?” Not, “Could I find a partner?” but, “Am I even programmed for intimate partnership in the way I currently exist?” And the answer felt uncertain. Perhaps not without some significant rewiring.
I entered those salsa lessons believing I needed to learn to follow in dance. But what I discovered was that dancing in partnership demands a different mode of being than dancing solo. It requires focused attention, listening not just to the rhythm of the music but to the subtle cues of another person. It requires the leader to be thoughtful, anticipating and guiding. And it requires the follower to trust, to believe that someone else can, at times, lead you to where you want to go. It’s about surrendering some of that hard-won independence to experience the joy of shared movement, a feeling akin to finally dancing with somebody you truly connect with.
I’m acutely aware that salsa emerges from a patriarchal cultural heritage. I can almost hear the collective sigh of Latines rolling their eyes, imagining I’m trying to drag us back to outdated gender roles. That’s not my intention. I’m not wading into the recent debates about marriage or traditional family structures. Anyone, regardless of gender, can lead or follow in salsa. I simply happen to be a straight woman who enjoys dancing with men, and I want to shed the outdated machismo without losing the joy of that connection.
Just as navigating the streets of New York necessitates a certain rigidity for women, living as an “independent woman” (especially a woman of color) often demands a diligent self-centeredness. You are the primary guardian of your well-being, your financial stability, your happiness, not to mention the well-being of anyone else in your care. Protecting all of this within systems often biased against you requires a fierce independence. Anyone who succeeds in this should be celebrated. However, in the soundbite-sized messaging of modern feminism – the idea that we are perfect as we are, that we shouldn’t change for anyone – we might have lost sight of the nuance. Being happily single and being happily partnered can require different skill sets. And neither should be seen as conflicting with the feminist ideal of living life on our own terms. Yes, we should applaud the strength of the independent woman. But let’s also celebrate the women who choose partnership, recognizing that pliability isn’t weakness, especially when it leads to joy, to connection, to finally feeling like you’re dancing with somebody.
It only struck me as I was writing this that the original feminist role model in my life was also my favorite dance partner: my grandfather. He had no grand theories, just a simple belief that the four girls he raised (myself included) deserved to be happy, however that happiness manifested for them. He wasn’t a polished dancer. His Puerto Rican heritage seemed to have skipped a rhythmic generation. But in his later years, he would seize every chance to pull me onto a dance floor. We weren’t the most graceful pair, but it didn’t matter. Out there, together, we were perfectly free.
