There’s a certain amount of fear. That’s understandable. For a novice on the dance floor, drops of self-esteem can fall away with the sweat. Take salsa for example. Depending on the dancer, it’s either an energetic way to shed a humble skin or turn it to scar tissue. It helps to be in good hands. 

You Can Dance, Seoul. Wednesday, 7:40 p.m. Directly above, the patrons of Itaewon district’s 3 Alley Pub are celebrating in their own way, but in the studio below it’s five minutes ’til tee time. The couches are comfortable, overly even, and after a full day’s work the danger is in sinking too far back to hear the call of the congas, the trumpet, the timbales, and the all important gatekeepers of rhythm, the lean wooden claves. But then the music starts. The Beginner 1 salsa class is a quick learn. Ask the owner/instructors Helen Kim and Joey Bzdel and they’ll be the first to tell you, that’s the point. “It’s delightful, bubbly, happy. Salsa becomes like a stress relief tool,” Helen starts in. “It’s very approachable. For guys, after 45 minutes they know the basics.” In Helen veritas. Salsa’s basic step is delivered in two measures of 4/4 time, with each taking three steps to complete. Quick-quick-slow, quick-quick-slow. Sounds like a playbook for undecided lovers. Even so, the full eight-beat measure continues and assuming you do, you’re dancing. 

“It’s about how to learn what you need to dance and have a good time,” adds Joey. “There are other studios in Seoul that teach dance-sport, which is dancing for competition, but we’re more social oriented.” In fact, that’s how it all began. After four years as a dance instructor at Arthur Murrays in Canada, Joey traveled west to go east, across the Pacific to Seoul to teach ESL. “When I was here, there were times when there wasn’t much to do. It could be a C.I.A. operation just to find something different going on.” Before long the something was dance, and the somewhere was his apartment. Friends wanted to learn. They came until the numbers warranted a bigger space then moved to a popular club in Itaewon. Opening the studio in 2007 was the latest step. It seems in dance, progress is measured in meters squared.  

The Oxford Paperback Dictionary categorizes salsa as dance music of Cuban origin, which is hopelessly abridged. Even salmonella gets a longer entry. There’s obviously more to say about both. Cuban. Puerto Rican. North American. African. Salsa is a child of many mothers though most people seem comfortable with Afro-Caribbean as a starting point. Influences brought to the region by Spanish colonizers and African slaves were mixed and shaped over time into multiple musical styles: rumba, mambo, cha-cha-cha, and perhaps salsa’s ultimate derivative, son Cubano, a late 19th-century style fusing Spanish, African, and French Creole elements. They eventually made their way north on the heels of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants. Between the 1950s and the 70s, New York’s Latino community was central in the development of the salsa we know today. Pop, rock, and jazz peppered the results. If there’s a more critical debate being fought against the sunset walls of Seoul’s salsa clubs, I haven’t picked up on it. Action rules.   

Club Caliente, Itaewon. Friday and Saturday nights have it. Here are the faces ready to shine at the expense of bumping elbows on a crowded dance floor, or risk a limp from a stray high-heel. Kimberly is good enough to give her take on it all. She’s been managing Caliente since it opened eight years ago and recalls a time even further back when she first learned to salsa. “I’ve been dancing for 15 years. Back then people said, ‘What is salsa?’ I didn’t know either.” Before the likes of You Can Dance then, she’d found another way. “I learned from friends from Puerto Rico. One of them was my English teacher.” The subject changes to the club’s clientele and their way around the floor. “A lot of Koreans come earlier, around 8 to do their thing, and stay until about 11. There are different types, but (they dance) like they’re in a competition. They have to learn to enjoy it. The foreigners come later.” 

Yoo Sun-jin regularly mans Caliente’s DJ booth. He pumps out salsa in sets of three songs opposite bachata and merengue, two Dominican Republic dance staples. Reggaeton, an energetic smash of Jamaican, Latin and hip-hop is dropped in for effect. There’s hardly a track that doesn’t cover the floor with a patchwork of locals and foreigners. The Latino crowd is heavy, some engineers and factory workers, others US military livin’ large until curfew. Their movements are an enviable schooling in what salsa is, or can be. Partners pour in and out of each other like warm wax, far more the  passion play alongside the robotic libido of the beginners. But smiles are worn everywhere. 

“It’s just amazing to see two people dancing together,” says Helen. “It sounds cheesy, but it’s something indescribable.” She comes close to leaving it there but doesn’t. Personally, I think she could have. In a way, it’s the best description going.