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About LATIN Dances

Ballroom examples include the cha-cha-cha, rumba, sal-sa, samba, mambo, danza, merengue, tumba, bachata, bomba, plena, paso doble Jamaican Daggeren and bole-ro.[citation needed] Some also consider tango and Ar-gentine tango in this list. Perreo is a Puerto Rican dance associated with Reggaeton music with Jamaican and Caribbean influences. The International Latin dances of Dancesport(recog-nized by the WDC, WDSF, IDSA, and IDU) are Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba, Paso Doble, and Jive. Latin folk dances of Argentina include the chacarera, gato, escondido and zamba. Typical Bolivian folk dances are the morenada, kullawada, caporales and the recently created tinku. In Colombia one of the typical dances is the cumbia.

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Salsa is not easily defined. What is Salsa? A sauce, a rec-ipe, a dance? Who invented salsa? The Cubans, Puerto Ricans? Salsa is a distillation of many Latin and Afro-Car-ibbean dances. Each played a large part in its evo-lution.

Salsa is similar to Mambo in that both have a pat- tern of six steps danced over eight counts of music. The dances share many of the same moves. In Salsa, turns

have become

an important feature, so the overall look

and feel are quite

differ-ent form those of Mam- bo. Mam- bo moves gen-eral- ly forward and back- ward,

whereas, Sal- sa has more of a side to side feel.

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SALSA

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Tango dance originated in Río de la Plata, and spread to the rest of the world soon after.

Early tango was known as tango criollo. Today, there are different types of tango dance such as Argentine tango or Uruguayan. Popularly and among tango dancing circles, the authentic tango is considered to be the one which is closest to that originally danced in Ar-gentina and Uru- guay. In 2009, Argenti-na and Uruguay suggest-ed

that the Tan-go be in-

scribed

onto the UN- ESCO In-tan- gible Cul-tural Heritage Lists and in Oc- tober of the same year UN- ESCO ap-

proved it.

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TANGO

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The Cha Cha is a vibrant, flamboyant and play-ful dance. The light and bubbly feel of the Cha Cha gives it a unique sense of fun for dancers throughout the world. The Cha Cha requires small steps and lots of hip motion (Cuban motion), as it is danced in 4/4 time. The fourth beat is split into two, giving it the charac-

teris-tic 2,3,4 &

1 rhythm. Therefore,

five steps

are danced to four beats as in the “One, two, cha cha cha”

rhythm.

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CHA-CHA-CHA

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The name ‘Paso Doble’ in Spanish means ‘Two Step’(Smith, 1971, 416), and may be distin-guished from ‘Paso a Dos’ which means ‘Dance for two’. “Two Step” refers to the marching nature of the steps, which may be counted ‘1,2’ for ‘Left, Right’. This may be contrasted with its description as the ‘Spanish One Step’, so called because only one step is taken to each beat of music (Burchfield, 1976, III / 293). The Paso Doble was one of many Spanish folk dances associated with various facets of Spanish life. In particu- lar, the Paso Doble is based on the Bullfight. It portrays the Torero (the male dancer) and his cape (his partner), and is danced to the char- acteristic march music used for procession at the beginning of a corrida. Bullfights date back to ancient Crete, but only in the 1700s were they held in Spain (Pitkin, 1996,30). The dance itself became popular amongst the up-per classes of Paris in the 1930’s, and acquired a set of French names for many of the steps (Lavelle, 1975, 77). The dance has still

only lim-ited popularity

amongst English speaking society. The only places in Sydney where it is played regu-larly at social dances are

the Italian and other European clubs.

The competi-tion version

of the Paso Doble is danced with a high chest, the shoulders wide and down, and with the head kept back but inclined slightly forward and down, (“keep watch- ing that bull” urged my latin teach-er). The weight is forward,

but most forward steps have heel leads. Often it is choregraphed

to the tune ‘Espana Cani’ (the Spanish Gyp- sy Dance), which has three crescendos in the music. These highlights are usually matched in the choreography by dramatic poses, adding to the spectacular nature of the dance.

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PASSODOBLE