Salsa Dance
The Salsa Dance is danced on music with a recurring eight-beat
pattern, i.e. two bars of four beats. Salsa patterns typically
use three steps during each four beats, one beat being skipped.
However, this skipped beat is often marked by a tap, a kick, a
flick, etc. Typically the music involves complicated percussion
rhythms and is fast with around 180 beats per minute (see salsa
music for more).
Salsa is a slot or spot dance, i.e., unlike Foxtrot or Samba,
in Salsa a couple does not travel over the dance floor much, but
rather occupies a fixed area on the dance floor. In some cases
people do the Salsa in solo mode.
History of Salsa
Salsa music is a fusion of traditional African and Cuban and
other Latin-American rhythms that traveled from the islands (Cuba
and Puerto Rico) to New York during the migration, somewhere between
the 1940s and the 1970s, depending on where one puts the boundary
between "real" salsa dance and its predecessors. There
is debate as to whether Salsa originated in Cuba or Puerto Rico.
Then again, it is a debate, and there is the possibility that
it could have originated in both places or only one. Salsa is
one of the main dances in both Cuba and Puerto Rico and is known
world-wide. The dance steps currently being danced to salsa music
come from the Cuban son, but were influenced by many other Cuban
dances such as Mambo, Chá, Guaracha, Changuí, Lukumí,
Palo Montel, Rumba, Yambú, Abakuá, Comparsa and
some times even Mozambique. It also integrates swing
dances. There are no strict rules of how salsa should be danced,
although one can distinguish a number of styles.
- Cuban style
- Colombian style
- Los Angeles style
- New York style or Eddie Torres style
- Power 2 / Palladium 2 / Ballroom Mambo
- Puerto Rican style
- Rueda style
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