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

Dance Magazine, June, 2004 by Sally Sommer

Sally Sommer is a dance writer, historian, and professor of American Dance Studies at Florida Stale University. She produced a film on club dancing called Check Your Body at the Door.

Salsa Postmodernized

Merian Soto, a Bessie Award-winning choreographer and an associate professor of dance at Temple University in Philadelphia, grew up in Puerto Rico, where there is now an annual salsa convention. Based in Philadelphia and in the Bronx, she has made a series of works that incorporate salsa. The following is a conversation between Soto and DM's Editor in Chief Wendy Perron.

Wendy Perron: When did you first become aware of salsa? Merian Soto: As a kid I used to dance something very much like the salsa with my dad, but it wasn't called salsa. My father was a suave dancer, and the slightest touch of his hand would make you go one direction or the other I felt like I was being swept away with him.

And what was it called? Guaracha. People also danced son montuno, merengue, and cha-cha cha. All those forms have been integrated into salsa. In New York in the '70s, with the Cuban embargo, you'd get the Puerto Rican musicians and exiled Cuban musicians mixing with Colombians.

When did you start putting salsa in your choreography? The first time I used popular forms was in 1975. I used a drumming vocal group from Cuba, and Puerto Rican bomba. When I started improvising I would always go into these rhythms. I knew that culture is written in the body.

When you made Deconstruction of a Passion for Salsa, you danced a salsa as though you were on the beach, didn't you? Yes, I grew up on the beach. I have fabulous memories of watching people dance under the palm trees by the water. There's a saying that the ocean brought salsa. The sea and the rhythms of the ocean--there is something about that that feeds the salsa. The beginnings of all that fusion comes with the Diaspora. Another piece I did was like a feminist deconstruction of a salsa song. For many years, the salsa lyrics were misogynist. So when a woman sang those songs, the meaning changed. I wanted to empower the woman. (Now salsa singers have cleaned up their act because they were so criticized.)

How do audiences to the work you've done with salsa? Salsa is a working-class form and it's not accepted as art. In Puerto Rico now it's become more acceptable because the government is trying to export it as a national identity. But for many years it was considered black music, working-class music, lower-class expression. When I took it on in the '70s, some reviewers said, "Oh they just walked on stage and danced around." There was no recognition of any kind of nuance of structure.

What do you look for in a dancer? I work with people who move easily through forms. Salsa is really fun, and you can tap into a sense of community. Because it is a popular form, it changes with the people. I can mine each individual's expressiveness, but it's hard to do unison in salsa.

Is there anything you can say about learning salsa? You've got to have the rhythm down. There's that one, step back, two, step-step in a syncopated rhythm. Once you can do that backwards, forwards, sideways, up and down, then you can dance salsa. In my work, you have to be willing to play with that, to go beyond what you've learned.