~3 months after starting salsa I also did half a year of bachata classes. From what you see online and what we got shown in classes and also other workshops, sensual was the bread and butter, the "why are you even dancing bachata if you don't incorporate sensual movements". So I just slapped the label "Bachata" onto this mental box and stopped after a while, as the classes had less and less favorable lead:follow ratios and the novelty wore off.

But between normal Salsa courses my dance school is doing a handful of Bachata lessons right now and I was really interested to see how my teacher would teach it.

She is really stubborn in her ways, has a snobbish view of Salsa Cubana being the only real way to dance Salsa (or rather, that on1 isn't really Salsa because it lacks the fluidity and action-reaction part of Cubana) and honestly has the experience and qualifications to back all that talk up. So I was interested how she'd teach Bachata.

We began the first class with an intro to Merengue and then transitioned to Bachata, with the focus of really using your hips, even on the tap doing a little upturn of your hip through pressing the foot into the ground instead of just letting the foot fall to the ground for lack of better explanation.

So, second lesson comes around and we learn a move hooking the follower in with both elbows, bringing her close and moving her hands to our shoulders.

My teacher turns on Obsesion by Aventura and we have this tight repertoire given by the teacher consisting of turns for both and a few other moves that lets us dance this song beautifully.

It also helped that my grandparents listened to this song so much it is burned into my brain from my childhood but I had completely forgotten about it til this point. Being able to anticipate the song with its clear sections allowed for a level of musicality I haven't experienced before in either Salsa or Bachata, even with my limited range of moves.

I had a really nice experience with this as the last song and in the week since then realized two things, A) I really like the older songs better, not the electronic new stuff from Prince Roys and what-have-you B) I really don't like the sensual moves everybody is doing and teaching.

My picture of Bachata is completely different now and I really fell in love with it. Unfortunately I live in a small city with no one instructing Bachata like her and this is only a small series of lessons, but I'll keep this experience close to my heart and am going to be looking for ways to learn Bachata the traditional way.