Mambo Night

Salsa and Mambo

Just a bit of terminology

To say the truth, salsa is a generic term, invented to cover all Afro-Cuban music. The proper word to name the dance is mambo.


But in this life things rarely go right all the way. Now the word salsa is too often used to name all the dances that have Afro-Cuban roots in them. It means that in fact salsa as a dance should include mambo, cha-cha-cha, rumba (either bolero and yambu & guaguanco & columbia), but exclude merengue and bachata.

It seems that almost no one is dancing the classic mambo (Perez Prado style) now...

Why "on 2" ?

Why did I choose dancing it in "Eddie Torres style"? Well, it is not easy to explain. Maybe, the most important reason was that "flowing" character of "New York" dance that suits me most. Of course, you can dance "on 1", that is "Los Angeles" style in the same way. In fact it is what I do quite often. But there is one more argument - dancing on 2 - is dancing to clave.

There is one more reason. Dancing on 2 leaves a bit more time for ladies to prepare for turns or spins. Usually if anyone can do two spins while dancing "on 1", it means she can do three spins "on 2", and even more dancing chachacha.


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