Before I get into this most of you know what this article is about from the title. For those of you that are unfamiliar the meaning of dancing on 1 or 2 check out Mike Bello's article at salsafreakwebsite(steps). Also, here is the disclaimer: I didn't write this article to offend anyone. These are just my opinions.

My wife Lory and I started dancing Salsa about three years ago. I'll skip the details of how we got started (that's another story). We wanted to learn salsa and decided to take some lessons. One of the local nightclubs offered a weekly Salsa class so we decided to start there.

The class was a six-week course taught by a local ballroom instructor. This class provided us with some instruction on the basics. When I say basic, I mean real basic! We learned a minimal amount of partner work and a few shines. My biggest gripe is that the instructor did not play much music while he was teaching. Music was played after the class ended. Because of this we had some difficulty dancing in time with the music when it was played after the class.

After several weeks we began to look for some instruction beyond this class. From watching dancers at the local clubs we were very impressed with a couple from New York, Tyrone and Myrna. They are both excellent dancers. We met them and became friends. We took some lessons from them once a week at their house and learned more from them than we did in the nightclub class. At this point we were hooked. We wanted more!

I read an article somewhere that advertised a Salsa instructional tape featuring Eddie Torres. I immediately ordered the tape. I remember the first time I watched the tape. I was very impressed but a little bit frustrated because this tape teaches you how to dance Salsa on the 2 (New York style) and we had learned on the 1. I later found out that there are several different ways to execute a Salsa basic. For example you can break on 1, 2, 3 or 4. There are a couple of ways to dance on 2: the Ballroom 2 and the New York 2.