The backstep in Casino (or "Cuban Salsa")

[TSC]

the practice is encouraging some opportunistic individuals to make a lot of money by selling people what they want to see instead of real Cuban dance.

Exactly this is my problem with what you're saying. There is no one "real Cuban dance". What Havana's dance teachers are teaching -- many of them my friends, genuine dance fanatics, who would be offended to be called opportunists (they are trying to make a living like anyone else) -- is real Cuban dance. Just as the very traditional casino you're talking about is real Cuban dance. It's not just commercialization. It is a dance they love, a dance they dance in their spare time and in many cases have devoted their whole lives to. It should not be dismissed.

If you want to claim one style should be called casino and the other Cuban salsa -- fine with me. But this kind of judgmental dismissal of a dance style because it doesn't fit with your preconceptions of what Cuban dance should be is not ok (as you put it -- it's like that expectation of "their personal diamond in the rough - a passionate people with magical things that exist nowhere else").

 

[khabibul35]

Exactly this is my problem with what you're saying. There is no one "real Cuban dance".

Fine, bad choice of words. Of course there's no such this as one "real" dance. But my point remains, there's a folk dance well beyond the confines of dance studio and clubs like 1830 and all of its connected personnel that is getting lost in the shuffle. In my opinion, it's more "real" in the same sense that there's a Cuba that exists in Havana Vieja, Vedado, the beaches at Varadero, etc. and something completely different outside of those places that we often don't get to see. That Cuba is far from homogenous but one could make a good argument that those places that are not influenced by tourism, are more "real" - not in the sense of concreteness but in the sense of representing Cuban culture.

That Havana's dance teachers are teaching -- many of them my friends, genuine dance fanatics, who would be offended to be called opportunists (they are trying to make a living like anyone else) -- is real Cuban dance.

Here, I'll outright disagree. It's their own personal dance, that comprises one part Cuban culture and one part their own personal aspirations. They are Cuban, but they cannot represent the people and the dances of Cuba in the broad sense. And as far as teachers go, there are good ones and there are bad ones - some happen to be opportunists. Any teachers would be insulted at being called a bad teacher, but some really are! Same with the opportunists...

As far as being "real". I'd say it's more like "the Cuban dance of X as taught by Y, who is a real Cuban" than a "real Cuban dance of X" taught by Y. Like I said, it was a bad decision to use the word "real", but the fact that they get such a loud voice at the table compared to thousands of Cubans who dance something but don't teach it, well, one should consider that it's not necessarily representative.

 

[TSC]

There are certainly many opportunist "dance teachers" in Cuba who're frankly bad at salsa and have no business teaching anyone. . . Then there are many highly skilled and dedicated individuals who simply dance & teach salsa the (nontraditional) way they like. Which has very little to do with opportunism and more to do with experimentation, with borrowing from other influences, mixing & matching to evolve their style & find something new, etc.

Cuban salsa is undergoing a period of intensive fusion & transformation, and as with most such transformations it may initially be limited to a comparatively small portion of society and as such said not be entirely representative -- yet. But from what I've seen the phenomenon is spreading from the avant-garde, so to speak, to enthusiast dancers and amateurs living in urban areas, from whence it will likely spread to the wider countryside. Just because it isn't ubiquitous yet doesn't mean it's not a genuine Cuban dance form (it may or may not be genuine casino, but that's a different semantic discussion).

In any case, I'm bowing out of this argument for the time being because it is very difficult to back it up with independent facts or evidence. Due to the near complete absence of the internet in Cuba, pretty much everything that gets uploaded is filtered through a tourist's POV (even in the "street salsa" playlist you updated, several of the dancers are teachers or dance pros -- just ones who happen to have a more traditional style). If we are in Cuba at the same time someday, we can visit a number of touristy and non-touristy dance spots and compare & contrast.