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Heh, interesting that you would highlight Victor for this :) and I can see how this video could be ambiguous! Having taken some twenty classes from him -- Victor leads girls to back-step all the time (and back-steps himself a lot). He actually has a very linear-influenced fusion style that is...

In Cuba, the forward lean is definitely more common among men, but to some extent many women do it as well. One of my teachers, a female professor at the Instituto Superior de Arte, dances casino with a very pronounced forward lean. She said it's an Afro-Cuban influence (Afro-Cuban dance being...

There's a big difference between not slouching and standing up straight. I used to slouch a bit and taking Cuban modern dance classes (which have a strong ballet base) helped a lot with that. But after spending a year in Cuba I now tend to dance inclined forward, not standing up straight...

You should be able to get it on Amazon, yes! (I'm not linking here so that I'm not using SF as an advertising platform.)

Thank you, guys! ;) if you like the book, please tell your salsero and reader friends!

Hear, hear. Spent 8 years in the US, 4 years on an H1B (for which there is a lottery because of limited space), paid several hundred thousand dollars in taxes, never got a green card. . . America has one of the most dysfunctional immigration systems in the world. On the topic of the thread...

I wonder about that too :) I really love googling random references in books and finding awesome songs/movies/books, though -- so I decided CAT KING would have a lot of cool stuff to discover!

(heh, it seems I managed to post the same link twice. . . too late to edit now)

Spent 9 months in Havana, came back in June. If nothing has changed, La Gruta on Wednesdays is still good, as is 1830 Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday nights. I also love Le Select in Miramar Friday afternoons between 5 and 9 but it gets crowded -- no place to sit. It's mostly Cubans, though, which...

My salsa & Cuba novel THE CAT KING OF HAVANA is finally out!!! This book is my love letter to salsa dancing. I hope it will thrill dancers and entice newcomers to our world. Thanks so much to all the SFers who helped me write this one! And everyone else -- I'd love to hear your thoughts if...

It depends on what you mean by "half-way decent". I've been at it for 3-4 years, more or less. . . including one year of intensive study in Cuba. Don't have any good videos of guaguanco or yambu up, but here's one of columbia (my second time ever dancing columbia in public, at the home base...

Folklore specialists might specialize in folklore (rumba & other Afro-Cuban dances) but it is pretty rare to find someone who would dance _just_ Afro-Cuban dances -- in fact, I can't think of anyone I know. Even the dancers of the Conjunto Folklorico, the country's premiere folkloric group...

(oh and I lived in Cuba for a year with the express purpose of studying dance. . . I still needed great teachers to explain things to me. . . after a certain age, except for the really talented, "watch and copy" is very difficult when it comes to such complex movement)

The "watch and learn" method might work if you were to live in Cuba for a long time and go dance a lot of rumba, but unless you are _extremely_ talented, you will never become a very good rumba dancer by primarily watching YouTube videos and DVDs. It just won't happen. Immersion since childhood...

For me the key to figuring out yambu was going super slowly/dancing to very slow music and learning to fill all the musical time with smooth continuous motion and the proper rumba cadence which can't really be explained verbally all that well. . . of course, you can do sharper accents, but in...

Thanks, kbitten! No Spanish version yet but I hope there will be one. Do you have any suggestions of particular artists or any contact info? Please PM me if you do. I've contacted 2-3 reasonably well-known musicians and dancers so far, but don't have a lot of contacts.

Thank you! That would be great; I will figure out printing/design issues and let you know once I have something! If any other SFers might be willing to distribute some flyers at local socials or congresses, please send me a message!

Thanks once again to all the SFers who helped with my novel! The title has changed to "The Cat King of Havana" and it is coming out on Sep 6. I just launched the book's website, which features not just salsa videos, but also cat videos (including one that our very own Sabrosura said really...

Good way of putting it, kbitten. The follower can have intention forward even with a (small) step back. Especially in couples dancing that's enough. At least the way I lead Cuban salsa a lady stepping forward on 1 might just run into me. Actually I specifically lead her to step back with a hand...

Sure, very similar. Although, she stepped farther than in son and without the characteristic lateral movement.