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"Our Grand Opening Is Here!!!" The New School Of Salsa In TallahasseeSalsa is usually a partner dance form that corresponds to salsa music. In some forms, it can also appear as a performance dance. The word is the same as the Spanish word salsa meaning sauce, or in this case flavour or style.According to testimonials from musicologists and historians of music, the name salsa was gradually accepted among dancers throughout various decades. The very first time the word appeared on the radio was a composition by Ignacio Piñeiro, dedicated to an old African man who sold butifarras (a sausage-like product) in Central Road in Matanzas. It is a song titled Échale salsita, wherein the major refrain and chorus goes "Salsaaaaa! échale salsita, échale salsita." During the early 1950s, commentator and DJ "bigote" Escalona announced danceables with the title: "the following rhythm contains Salsa." Finally, the Spanish-speaking population of the New York area baptized Celia Cruz as the "Queen of Salsa."Salsa 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 minutCuban-style salsa can be danced either "on one" or "a contratiempo" ---the latter is often referred to as "on two". An essential element is the "cuba step" (also known as Guapea), where the leader does a backward basic on 1-2-3 and a forward basic on 4-5-6. The follower does the same, thereby mirroring the leader's movement. Another characteristic of this style is that in many patterns the leader and follower circle around each other.The cross body lead is an essential step in this style too and is referred to as Dile que no. This move becomes essential in the more complex derivative of Cuban Casino leading to the many moves of Rueda, or wheel dance. Here multiple couples exchange partners and carry out moves syncronized by a caller.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 and its predecessors. There is debate as to whether Salsa originated in Cuba or Puerto Rico. 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.

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We welcome everyone to Our School we Focuses on teaching Casino Rueda.Rueda de Casino (Rueda, Casino Rueda, Salsa Rueda) is a particular type of round dancing of Salsa. It was developed in Havana, Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the famous group Guaracheros de Regla and one of its main choreographers and creators was Jorge Alfaro from San Miguel del Padron, a soloist of a comparsa.Pairs of dancers form a circle, with dance moves called out by one person, a caller (or 'Líder' or 'cantante' in Spanish). Many moves have hand signs to complement the calls; these are useful in noisy venues, where spoken calls might not be easily heard. Many of the moves involve the swapping of partners.The names of the moves are mostly in Spanish, some in English (or Spanglish; e.g., "un fly"). Some names are known in slightly different versions, easily recognisable by Spanish-speaking dancers, but may be confusing to the rest.While rueda is especially popular in Cuba and a number of places in the U.S., it can also be found in many other countries. Rueda has active groups in at least Norway, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Hong Kong, Spain and UK. At least in Germany, some of the calls are in German.Although the names of the calls are presently the same across the board, the different towns in Cuba use their own calls. This was due to the fact that when the pioneers of Rueda de Casino started, they wanted to keep others from participating in their Ruedas. Nowadays many local variations of the calls can be found. They can change from town to town or even from teacher to teacher. For example, if you learn rueda in London you will not normally be able to dance it with people who learned rueda from a different teacher. Furthermore, when a teacher runs out of calls but wants his class to keep going and make money, he often makes up new calls. This may decrease the fun of dancing rueda with people you just met, but makes for an expanding world of rueda.Credit to wikipedia Encyclopedia

My Blog

Searching for the Performer in You

Searching for the Performer in You - A Dancer's Journey by Angel Ortiz, New York [email protected] 2000  As you enter the nightclub, you begin to feel the music as it calls you to the ...
Posted by on Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:23:00 GMT

How to "fit in" and/or become a better salsa dancer

Dancing with others... how to "fit in" and/or become a better dancer... by Rose Lau aka Rose Knows...January, 2001 Let me share my experiences of how to "fit in" and/or become a better dancer s...
Posted by on Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:21:00 GMT

Leading vs. Following In Salsa Dancing

Leading vs. Followingby Tricia MeikleNovember, 2001 Why do I dance? ... Why do I breathe?~ Anonymous In the "battle of the sexes" it's hard to say who's on top. But when it comes to da...
Posted by on Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:17:00 GMT

The Origins of Casino Rueda

The Origins of Casino Ruedaby Nicole DaSilva, Soles Dance StudioDecember, 2001 I should probably explain my perspective on the word "style" when referenced to dance before I offer my thoughts on this ...
Posted by on Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:26:00 GMT

Losing Weight with Salsa Dancing

If you've been trying for months to lose those extra pounds and those love handles are no longer showing you any love ... If you're tired of the high gym memberships, the constant travel, the packing ...
Posted by on Thu, 09 Nov 2006 15:21:00 GMT