Austin's Free Day of Dance

A week ago I hadn't heard of Austin's Free Day of Dance and now I'm surprised that it's only been around for three years. It's still rather new which would explain why there weren't as many people at Esquina Tango as I had predicted. Or perhaps people decided to take an earlier dance class at one of the other studios offering free dance classes around Austin. I opted for Esquina Tango because I took Samba classes there about a year and a half ago and therefore had some familiarity with the place. The experience was still a little scary, but the familiar surroundings and smallish class size made it more bearable! Thankfully there were a few others there who went alone and so we got to pair up when the time came to dance with partners. The instructors were sensitive to that and tried to show us how to do steps that we could practice alone if we didn't want to dance with a partner.

Esquina Tango offered classes for various styles of dance and I decided to go with "Latin rhythms", salsa and merengue. Just for the record, I find classifying things as "Latin" pretty annoying. With that said, the class was fun and a little scary. The fact that I have two left feet means that I was operating wayyy out of my comfort zone for that hour-long lesson. It didn't help that the instructors were going fast and doing complicated moves that super beginners such as myself can only hope to stumble along to. After the class ended one of the instructors reassured me that they normally don't go as quickly in the Salsa classes that Esquina offers, but they did it for show and to make it fun/interesting for the people there today. I'm thinking about taking some dance classes there since it's close to where I live, a super relaxed environment, and fairly affordable. Who knows, maybe a year from now when the next free day of dance rolls around I'll be able to do some of that fancy footwork too.

http://www.freedayofdance.com/