What I Learned from Liz Lira

As tiny as a munchkin yet as powerful as a lioness, Liz Lira is a memorizing dancer to behold and was truly the star of the show at the Charlotte Salsa Invitational last weekend. To watch her dance is to watch perfection, her mouth forever smiling, her body never finding an awkward position, and her feet eternally dancing on tip-toe like a prima-ballerina. I would die of exhaustion if I danced that cleanly during every song all night long, but she made it look effortless. Not even breaking a sweat or taking so much as a single deep breath.

She moves differently from most salseras because of her extensive ballet and modern dance training, which is probably why I found her workshop so valuable. She did not focus on drilling a fancy styling combination like most instructors do. Instead, she spent the entire hour working on body positions, turning technique, wrist movement, and finger extension. They were such tiny ticky things, but by the end of the night I could feel and see an drastic improvement in my arm styling.



This video of Tony and I dancing is testament to my styling improvement. Before Liz, my arms would be sloppy not doing much of anything. Now, they move with more confidence and purpose. Instead of staying in front of me all the time as I turn, now my arm is doing a fancy comb the hair swish. Also, when I put my arm up after a turn, her advice to bend the wrist is really helping to improve the look of my dancing.

These nuggets of wisdom are priceless to me because they are techniques that can be applied to every man I dance with, not just the ones who happen to be in the same workshop as me. It's been so frustrating for me this year to learn really cool, complicated combinations only to forget them shortly thereafter because my partner forgets it, can't manage to do it correctly, or simply didn't take the same workshop as me. Liz really understood that as ladies that we can't control those things. We can only control the precision of our dancing.

I will try to keep this lesson in mind every time I practice from now on. My assignment for this week is to come up with at least 3 different ways to add styling to a right-hand turn and a cross body lead. I feel that if I can learn to make these basic moves special then everything else should fall into place because looking good is not about the complexity of the combination but the quality with which you execute it.