It’s Wednesday night at Layalenas, a middle eastern restaurant just south of Scottsdale. The restaurant is lit up in a fiery red as giggling girls and well dressed men start to line up to learn salsa.

Step one, two, three and one, two three . . .

as they learn the first basic steps to salsa. The instructor, Johnny Espinoza, leads the class and then observes his new students before moving onto spinning and more complex moves at the end of the night.

Some are beginners and this might be their first night out dancing, while some are veterans of the local salsa scene and waltz in casually as the DJ starts spinning and even takes a moment to step out and dance on the floor himself.

According to Layalena’s owner Ahmad Sayyed, salsa nights have become popular around the valley. On any given night one can easily find two venues for salsa.

“We started this salsa night about five months ago. We here at Layalenas are into a diverse crowd. Thursday nights we have tango and actually we are looking at other themes too,” Sayyed says.

For those just learning, it gives them a place to practice and learn.

“We’ll go every night this week,” jokes finance major Max Holley Sr. to his newly found friends. The group of friends met only a couple weeks earlier in a salsa 101 class at ASU and decided tonight would be a good night to practice their newfound moves.

Between footwork, leading and mixing up their new moves, they have their work cut out for them. “We have like a six month learning curve, but our teacher would be proud of us on our first night out,” Holley says.

During the lesson the girls smile and laugh as they tease their partners and make fun of their own moves.

“Letting someone lead you and knowing what the guys have to do are the hardest parts. . . but I still feel like the girls do more work,” music sophomore Kaitlin Jones says.

And that is what is impressive — that within a few miles of ASU anyone can find a salsa lesson any night of the week along with a DJ and even live bands.

The venues range from places like Club Rain to Mediterranean restaurant Olive Branch or Shall We Dance studio on Sunday nights. The lessons range from beginner to advanced and in many places are all ages.

Some have been in the salsa scene for years, like Spanish and transborder chicano/a and latino studies senior Melissa Anderson.

“Salsa has taken me a lot of crazy places, I went to Mexico with my salsa partner and two of his friends and there was a live salsa band. No one was dancing in this little cantina, so we started dancing like crazy. We got a lot of applauses and people bought us drinks,” Anderson says.

Others, like English literature and Spanish senior Eric Parks, find that fascination with Latin culture helps fuel interest in the dance. Parks ended up moving on from salsa to tango, but still appreciates the aspects of the dance that attracted him in the first place.

“I really wanted to dance salsa, it was the coolest, sexiest looking dance and when I realized that they had classes at ASU, I had to take it,” Parks says.

Anderson, like Parker and other latin dance fanatics, felt the same urge. She says her favorite moment with the dance was making it on the ASU salsa team because she had to choose between it and the drill team. But, Anderson says, the choice was easy. It was salsa.

Salsa all week long:

Monday
Salsa Under the Stars at Stars Ballroom – 6:30p-10:30p – Southeast corner of Hwy 101 and Guadalupe

Tuesday
Club Rain – 9pm-2am – Scottsdale and McDowell

Wednesday
Layalena – 9pm-1am – NW corner of Scottsdale and Curry

E4 - 9pm -2am -Old Town Scottsdale - Drinkwater Blvd.

Thursday
Pepins’ - 8pm-12am - Old Town Scottsdale

Friday
Olive Branch – 9pm-2am – NE corner of Southern and Mill

Saturday
Club Downtown/Palazzo - 10pm-4am - Downtown Phoenix

Sunday
Shall We Dance Studio - $7 all ages, 6-9pm – NE of Southern and McClintock