The New Salsa Academy Lets You Break A Sweat In Style

The New Salsa Academy is a VR and mixed reality fitness game that teaches you how to dance one step at a time – literally.

Developed by Dance Reality, The New Salsa Academy is an educational fitness game that teaches players the art of salsa in a virtual studio. Led by real-world instructors Rodrigo Cortazar and Asya Sonina, players cycle through a lesson plan that begins with a basic step and leads all the way up to sassy turns and dramatic twists. The structure of each lesson is broken up into bite-sized chunks, culminating in a partner practice with New Salsa Academy’s AI dance partner.

Like in real-world dancing, The New Salsa Academy begins by asking whether you’d like to be in a leading or following role, with the teacher matching your choice. In my hands-on via Quest 3, I based my choice on what limited experience I had prior, starting with a beginner-friendly one-two step as a ‘follower’. From the beginning, I was pleased to see how slow they were going, presenting the information in a colloquial but professional manner. Video of the teachers are rendered into the space, offering a realistic look at how the movement would appear on a human body rather than a digital one — a seriously impressive feature.

Once you understand the specific move in a given lesson, The New Salsa Academy asks you to perform it to a beat, with the headset tracking not only your arm positioning but also your feet. As you perform your best quick-quick-slow steps, your digital footprint dims and lights up per the pressure you’re applying to the ground. For this to work accurately, it might be worth resetting your play space, so the boundaries match your specific room.

After mastering an essential move solo, you move onto the same process, except this time, you have a semi-clear blue partner to dance with. As you raise your hands to meet theirs, the figure’s upper body snaps like a magnet to your position and moves with the beat. It is admittedly a bit unnerving, especially considering how close-quarters the figure gets while performing the movements. At least I couldn’t feel their hot breath in my face. Still, it's valuable to understand my movements across from another human shape considering salsa is, by all accounts, a two-person sport.

As you conclude each mid-lesson evaluation, you’ll get a small contextual feedback message explaining where you went wrong. For example, halfway through my practice, I got lazy and didn’t make intentional movements. The New Salsa Academy was quick to tell me I made a mistake towards the end of the test and to retry it at a slower pace. Between the informative but affirmational instructors and the targeted feedback, I'm forming an understanding of not just the basics of the dance, but how to improve my physicality, too.

As far as fitness VR apps go, it’s not exactly The Thrill of the Fight, with The New Salsa Academy focusing on honing your dance skills instead of burning calories. That’s not to say you don’t work up a sweat, it just feels more like entry-level calisthenics than HIIT. Thankfully, salsa is a deliberate and posture-focused style of movement that feels surprisingly at home in VR. I never feel unwieldy when moving due to this, despite having a Quest 3 strapped to my head. 

Dance Reality has also added a new Challenge Mode with a new update that leverages the skills you’ve learned in regular classes in a new competitive format. In the Challenge Mode, players work through entire routines, racking up points for timing and accuracy. The cleaner your moves are, the higher your rank on the global leaderboard. To access this mode, players have to complete a series of classes to participate, with the initial barrier to entry requiring the completion of six basic lessons — a nice touch that encourages a considered engagement with the artful rhythm of Salsa.

The New Salsa Academy is available now on Quest.