One San Jose State dance club has mesmerized audiences with light-footed salsa performances and brightly sequined costumes, but its members are missing one key element this semester: the ability to practice and compete in person.
SJSU’s Spartan Mambo moved practices, performances and competitions to an online format this semester in compliance with Santa Clara County’s coronavirus guidelines.
“For this semester, all of our classes and practices have been moved to Zoom,” said Spartan Mambo head coach Takeshi Young. “So I think that’s definitely challenging.”
He said teaching dance through a computer screen is difficult to adapt because in-person practices are easier to observe and guide students’ body movements.
“It’s harder to learn salsa when you’re just watching it on a computer screen, versus being able to see something in person,” Young said.
He said Zoom causes problems because of the audio lag when music is playing or when club members experience internet connection issues. These complications make it hard for Young to provide feedback and interrupts the team’s practice.
Practicing salsa without a partner has challenged the club and Young said he has focused on teaching footwork and solo dancing instead.
The dance club has not added members this semester because of remote learning.
“Usually we do a lot of recruiting for new students at the beginning of the semester,” Young said. “But given how everything [is online], we decided not to do any new recruiting.”
The club typically registers 30 students each semester but has no new recruits and few returning students. Despite this, Spartan Mambo is practicing remotely with 14 members.
"Any type of willingness to want to learn is openly accepted here in our team,” said Spartan Mambo president and political science senior Emily Fernandez.
Auditions were the only criteria to join in previous semesters. Fernandez said most students who audition are new to Latin dancing.
“I seriously couldn’t dance the first time I danced salsa, you know, I had two left feet,” she said.
Fernandez said Young and the team take extra time to make sure new members understand the dance technicalities.
“If you want to learn, myself as the president, the coach and some other leadership members are willing to take time out of their day to help anyone,” she said.
Isabelle Poblete, a business marketing sophomore, said when the pandemic hit, Young came up with an idea for a video project.
Although there haven’t been any in-person Latin dance competitions because of the coronavirus pandemic, teams plan to perform and record virtual salsa performances for competitions, Poblete said.
“We give performances each semester, we do have a competitive team that tries to do one or two competitions per semester,” she said. “With COVID-19 being an issue we’re trying to do video projects.”
Spartan Mambo is looking forward to recording a socially-distanced dance video.
“We have actually a possible video shoot planned at the end of or at the beginning of December,” Young said.
Some club members are having trouble finding spaces to practice with ideal flooring
for dancing.
“It’s a little difficult doing Salsa practice in my apartment just because of limited space,” Poblete said. “The different flooring makes it harder to dance.”
Poblete said despite the obstacles, the club has adapted well to online practices and are working with dance teams at other universities to arrange a remote competition.
“We’re thinking of hosting a virtual salsa footwork competition in December,” Young said.
Poblete said the circumstances the team faced this semester have given dancers a new appreciation for their time together.
“I think what I’ve learned is just not to take anything for granted even if it’s something as simple as going into a dance studio and being able to dance with people as a community,” Poblete said. “I feel like I took that for granted when it was
pre-COVID, now that we don’t have that anymore, I realized just how important that is.”
