Dance Styles

Latin Madness offers many great dance styles – focussing mainly on Street Latin for the party atmosphere and well rounded moves.

Salsa

Salsa is normally a partner dance, although there are recognized solo forms, line dancing (suelta), and Rueda de Casino where groups of couples exchange partners in a circle. Salsa can be improvised or performed with a set routine. Salsa is popular throughout Latin America, and also in the United States, Spain, Japan, Portugal, France, Eastern Europe and Italy. The name "Salsa" is the Spanish word for sauce, connoting (in American Spanish) a spicy flavor.Salsa also suggests a "mixture" of ingredients, though this meaning is not found in most stories of the term's origin.

Zouk

The transition of Zouk started in 1973 ( on the island of Guadeloupe) by Exile One- a group from Dominica that combined Calypso with the Haitian Cadence-rampa (a derivative of Compas) and the American Funk,a style of music call Cadence-lypso. Exile one moved to Paris,France being signed to Barclay Records- the first West Indian group performing in Creole to be signed to a major recording company, which started global interest in creole music. Aside from Exile one, Grammacks and the Midnight Groovers are groups of Cadence-lypso, which has layered a solid foundation for Zouk a la Kassav. Kassav consisting of members from Martinique and Guadeloupe started Zouk ( in the studios of Paris,France) during the early to mid 80's, claimed to be the merely matural progression of the Cadence-lypso as popularized by Exile One and Grammacks. Zouk popularized by "most significantly" Kassav, Exile One and Grammacks has been experimenting with the Haitian Compas and Vice versa, Biguine, Mazurka, Quadrille, Kadans and Gwoka of the French Antilles, as well as more contempory caribbean rhythms such as Salsa and Reggae.

Merengue

Merengue is a style of Latin American music and dance with a two-step beat. Partners hold each other in a closed position. The leader holds the follower's waist with the leader's right hand, while holding the follower's right hand with the leader's left hand at the follower's eye level. Partners bend their knees slightly left and right, thus making the hips move left and right. The hips of the leader and follower move in the same direction throughout the song. Partners may walk sideways or circle each other, in small steps. They can switch to an open position and do separate turns without letting go each other's hands or momentarily releasing one hand. During these turns they may twist and tie their handhold into intricate pretzels. Other choreography is possible. Merengue was made the official music and dance of the Dominican Republic by Rafael Trujillo. Some say merengue derived from the "paso de la empalizada" (pole-fence step). There are also legends about a limping war hero (or El Presidente of a banana republic himself, in some versions) who had to step in this way while dancing because of wounds, and polite (or clueless) public imitated him

Bachata

Bachata is a style of dance that accompanies the music of the same name. It has its origins in the Dominican Republic. The dance is a four-step beat achieved with a walking Cuban hip motion, and a unique “pop”. The dance is performed both in open position and in closed position depending on the setting and mood of the partners. Similar to Merengue, dips are not original to the dance and turns are done infrequently. The male leads the female with subtle communication using pushing and pulling on the hands to guide the direction in which to move or to hint on upcoming turns. The female may also provide communication using her left hand to indicate whether she is comfortable or not dancing in a closed position.

Cha-Cha-Cha

The modern style of dancing the cha-cha-chá derives from studies made by dance teacher Monsieur Pierre (Pierre Zurcher-Margolle), who partnered Doris Lavelle. Pierre, then from London, visited Cuba in 1952 to find out how and what Cubans were dancing at the time. He noted that this new dance had a split 4th beat, and to dance it one started on the second beat, not the first. He brought this dance idea to England and eventually created what is known now as ballroom cha-cha-cha. The validity of his analysis is well established for that time, and some forms of evidence exist today. First, there is in existence film of Orquesta Jorrin playing to a cha-cha-cha dance contest in Cuba; second, the rhythm of the Benny More classic Santa Isabel de las Lajas written and recorded at about the same time is quite clearly syncopated on the fourth beat. Also, note that the slower bolero-son ("rumba") was always danced on the second beat.