Styling Inspiration or Lack of Creativity?

One of my favorite cinematic scenes was from the movie Pulp Fiction where The Wolf ends his exploits by saying:

Just because you are a character, doesn't mean you have character.

The salsa analogy:

Just because you are styling, doesn't mean you have style.

I was reading a thread on salsa forums exactly on this topic and feel like my stance on female's styling, or styling in general is fairly different from the majority.

So one of the new up and coming schools here in New York City is headed by an absolute brilliant dancer (and her boyfriend), and she is known as being one of the best at styling. I don't disagree, but watching their class videos online, pains me. I think the fact that she's made her style so packaged has made it ugly, and seeing the dozen girls behind her all doing the same thing is disappointing. I take classes at the school where she originally trained and one thing that I notice is the similarities and how she's added her own flair and distinctiveness to what is this school's styling classes.

The most important point to take away from this thread is to develop individuality. Classes are great, and I encourage follows to go take them (I think it's bad advice to dissuade someone from not going) but it's just as important that you realize that what they teach you is not only specific moves, but a way to develop your own moves. There's a reason that things are taught in a certain way, slowly, and standardizing how moves are broken down is a lesson in how to learn. Take what you learn, and the process of how you learn and begin to be creative and distinct. This is the best advice I could give any one. This is also the hardest thing in salsa to achieve in my opinion.

I massively disagree with the original poster on the fact that guys don't care about styling. I think we've become desensitized to a lot of it, but there is a reason that Magna Gopal is so well known and it is because of her style, not her styling. She's creative, playful and unique. You can't teach that necessarily, but you can teach isolations, body rolls, the basics, and then provide the motivation to get follows in front of their mirror at home and practice.

I think styling classes are great for follows even if they only know the basic, because

1. it's one more opportunity to get the girls in front of the mirror practicing (teaching discipline in students is just as challenging as anything else)


2. it's never too early to do isolations, or body rolls


3. you can easily bring in and teach shines with turns, which mimic the steps needed to execute chaines and inside turns, which will make their following better


4. styling should be understood and taught in the periphery and an instructor that makes that clear will be taking an opportunity not only to teach styling, but to teach the wisdom that has been espoused in this thread; following > styling. It's easy to want to cut these classes because you think girls should practice following more, but where are you people with all this wisdom outside of salsa forums? When are you teaching it? A styling class is the perfect place to make this clear, and any decent styling class should be teaching how styling meshes in with the follow. Sadly, it's disturbingly rare.

So while someone pointed out that it's the instructor's mistake to allow relatively new dancers in styling classes, I don't think that's a problem relative to the mistake of not preaching creativity.

Lastly, we're entering into a new world with the internet. The ability to watch so many different women from around the globe should provide for what is an evolutionary equivalent to mutations. The more you mix and shake, the more uniqueness you should get. BTW everything above is just as true about men's styling. Just because you are styling, doesn't mean you have style. When styling, uniqueness rules.