Some like it hot: Salsa is spicy, sexy, and making waves in dance

Dance Magazine, June, 2004 by Sally Sommer

Ask any salsero and they will tell you salsa is more than a dance. It is life, the motion of intense rhythm, being in the beat and on top of things. Today's salsa is unquestionably shaping tomorrow's social dances. The passion for salsa is worldwide: It is danced throughout Europe, South America, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and China--with as many variations as there are people dancing it. There are so many conferences, congressos, classes, and clubs that a salsero can be busy 24/7.

Salsa is an addiction. So claims Juliet McMains, a professional ballroom competitor and teacher, dance scholar and assistant professor at Florida State University, and a devoted salsera. "As a dancer, you are looking for a dance where you, the music, and your partner can lose all boundaries. Where you become danced by the music, where you cannot tell who initiated what--ending in a space that is outside any intellectual discourse."

However salsa can begin with an argumentative discourse. It goes like this: "Do you dance on the '1' or the '22'?" (meaning do you step out on the "1" or the "2"?). Whichever count is stepped on determines which beat will be held, since salsa has six steps to eight counts.

Beware the answer. It can make of break a potential partnership. It can determine the logo on your T-shirt. It determines whether or not yon can flip the "V" (the old victory sign) with two fingers. It will stereotype and geographically situate you: The "2s" are New Yorkers; the "1" are from Los Angeles and Miami. Passions run high but, in the end, as one of the great salseros stated, "It's all bullshit." What distinguishes the best salseros is that they know how to do a "1" of "2." They choose depending on the music, the musicians, the clave, their mood, and what their partner prefers.

In part, the argument traces the dance's history. Salsa (literarily meaning "sauce," a spicy mixture that gives flavor, sabor) is the perfect dance for the twenty-first century because it is the product of the fusions of peoples, languages, music, movement, and styles that define the times. Salsa was--and is--multicultural, multinational, multi-musical and multiracial.

Originally cooked up in New York City in the 1960s and '70s, salsa incorporated ingredients from the music and dancing of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the wild New York City, jazzmen in love with the Latin beat. The steps, styles, and rhythms are rooted in African-Cuban rumba and mambo (here's the history connection: Mambo steps out on the "2"), Puerto Rican bomba and son, and Dominican merengue, which got stirred together on city sidewalks and clubs by the free-styling jazz dancers and musicians. Exuberance and improvisational playfulness were the catalysts that fused the elements. But the technical skill of the players tempered salsa, making it both strong enough and simple enough to absorb all kinds of influences.

The initial popularity of salsa lasted flora the 1960s through the height of the disco craze, when salsa got recast and pushed to the background by the Latin Hustle, New York Hustle, L.A. Hustle (and lots of other Hustles). It receded during the 1980s, and burst out in the 1990s, when interest in the Lindy Hop and its cousin, the Hustle, merged with the rise in Hispanic immigration to the U.S. and Europe.

Part of its popularity has to do with the fact that the dance celebrates sexuality in a nice way. Instead of the humping, bumping, freaking, and grinding of simulated sexual intercourse, salsa is light-footed and mores across the floor. In the couple-salsa, and most always in the circle-salsa (casino style of rueda), the man leads. Salsa is about give-and-take, and partners must remain attentive to each other. A good leader is like a good lover rather than like a boss.

Salsa is gloriously feminine, and its sassy danceable rhythms can convert even an uptight girl into a hip-swinging hussy. Big, plump mamacitas are respected and admired. Their outfits and hip tremors might undo lesser women, but they do not hang back. Instead, bolstered by sexy attitudes. proud mamacitas enjoy their weight, volume, and style.

Transformation is at the center of the dance. Normally shy and reserved, McMains changes when she hits the floor. At one party she was passed from one salsero to another to determine which young cub could match her style and energy. She was a lioness. Tossing her head, flicking her hips, laughing, turning, she fluttered her hand past face, torso, hips, smiling and outlining what she has to offer. Slipping through fast footwork, she circled and challenged her partner, even while following his lead. Technically quick and sure, she improvised elegant, witty gestures and phrases ("shines") that complemented and topped her partner. One after another the young cubs got sweaty and tired. But McMains effortlessly surfed the rhythms shaping music into movement. "Salsa is fun," she says. "And because it is not a competitive dance form, it is not about measuring things against pre-established norms. It is about creativity."