Hi all,
I have a few questions for you that I'd love to know the communities thoughts on. First I state the questions and then I talk a little bit about the experience that made me want to talk about it in the forum.
1) Have you experienced having Cuban (and maybe non-Cuban) instructors tell you their style of dancing is the authentic one, while it wildly differing from what you've seen/learned in other parts of the world/city?
2) What do you make out of it?
3) How do you know who is making stuff up and who isn't?
My personal experience in different cities of NA ( = Mexico City and west coast USA and Canada) is that there is usually a "dominant" school of Cuban dancing, usually led by a Cuban, which claims to dance "the way it should be and the way it is in Cuba". Unfortunately, this view of what the dance ought to be wildly varies between cities and sometimes even between instructors in the same city --when there are.
I had made my peace with the situation attributing things like backstepping or the "polygonal style" of dancing to the commercialization of "Cuban salsa" in the 90s. However, recently I attended some classes where, among other things, they said the correct way of doing guapea (what they would call basic step in open position) is to have the arm tension (when the right arm of the lead meets the left arm of the follow) happen during the "strong side of the clave" or the "3 side" of it. This statement came with the usual speech about how the instructor in charge is the local authority because they're Cuban and that this is the way it's done in Cuba. Although I've seen people dance like this before, most of the people I've seen usually get to the arm tension during the "2 side" of the clave, i.e., in the fifth count. Any thoughts on this?
I have never danced in Cuba, so my knowledge about casino and timba is all second-hand, and the lack of professional Cuban dancers outside of the island makes things hard to pin down. What I've learned so far is from instructors (Cuban and non-Cuban), YT videos, and some blogs like "sonycasino". So I'd like to know what the opinion of other more experienced dancers is.
---
Hopefully my rant has enough structure for it to generate a good discussion. It was hard to try to synthesise thoughts I've had for months in just a few paragraphs.
Cheers!
I have a few questions for you that I'd love to know the communities thoughts on. First I state the questions and then I talk a little bit about the experience that made me want to talk about it in the forum.
1) Have you experienced having Cuban (and maybe non-Cuban) instructors tell you their style of dancing is the authentic one, while it wildly differing from what you've seen/learned in other parts of the world/city?
2) What do you make out of it?
3) How do you know who is making stuff up and who isn't?
My personal experience in different cities of NA ( = Mexico City and west coast USA and Canada) is that there is usually a "dominant" school of Cuban dancing, usually led by a Cuban, which claims to dance "the way it should be and the way it is in Cuba". Unfortunately, this view of what the dance ought to be wildly varies between cities and sometimes even between instructors in the same city --when there are.
I had made my peace with the situation attributing things like backstepping or the "polygonal style" of dancing to the commercialization of "Cuban salsa" in the 90s. However, recently I attended some classes where, among other things, they said the correct way of doing guapea (what they would call basic step in open position) is to have the arm tension (when the right arm of the lead meets the left arm of the follow) happen during the "strong side of the clave" or the "3 side" of it. This statement came with the usual speech about how the instructor in charge is the local authority because they're Cuban and that this is the way it's done in Cuba. Although I've seen people dance like this before, most of the people I've seen usually get to the arm tension during the "2 side" of the clave, i.e., in the fifth count. Any thoughts on this?
I have never danced in Cuba, so my knowledge about casino and timba is all second-hand, and the lack of professional Cuban dancers outside of the island makes things hard to pin down. What I've learned so far is from instructors (Cuban and non-Cuban), YT videos, and some blogs like "sonycasino". So I'd like to know what the opinion of other more experienced dancers is.
---
Hopefully my rant has enough structure for it to generate a good discussion. It was hard to try to synthesise thoughts I've had for months in just a few paragraphs.
Cheers!
