Our dances

Cuban salsa draws its roots from Cuban son, blended with mambo, cha-cha-chá and the Afro-Cuban rhythms of the rumba. The word “salsa” itself became popular in the 1970s in New York, where the Latino communities fused these Cuban styles with jazz and other Caribbean influences, notably around the Fania Records label.

What we teach is, more precisely, “Casino”: a partner dance born in the social clubs of Havana (such as the Casino Deportivo) in the 1950s, often danced in a circle — the rueda de casino — where the figures follow one another through calls and responses. Unlike “line” salsa (LA or New York styles), Cuban salsa is danced in a circle, with body movement closer to its Afro-Cuban roots and plenty of room for improvisation.

Born in the countryside and working-class neighborhoods of the Dominican Republic in the mid-20th century, bachata draws on the bolero, Cuban son and the guitar traditions of the Caribbean. Long nicknamed “música de amargue” (music of bitterness), it was scorned by the Dominican elites for decades before earning its credentials in the 1980s-90s thanks to artists like Luis Vargas and Antony Santos, then gaining international recognition with Juan Luis Guerra and Aventura.

The traditional dance is performed in a close embrace, with a lateral basic step and a slight hip movement punctuated by a characteristic “pop” on the fourth beat. Since the 2000s, so-called “sensual” or “moderna” bachata has introduced more fluid movements and lifts inspired by ballroom dancing, popularized notably in Europe.

Kizomba (“party” in Kimbundu) was born in Angola in the 1980s, by slowing down and softening the semba — the traditional Angolan partner dance, itself an ancestor of Brazilian samba — through contact with zouk, the genre born in the French Antilles. The result is a dance that is slower and more grounded than the semba, danced in a close position, where connection and weight transfers take precedence over spectacular figures.

Since the 2010s, derivative styles such as “urban kizomba” or “kizomba fusion” have spread widely across Europe, carried notably by the Cape Verdean communities of Portugal — not without sparking debates among purists who are keen to distinguish these evolutions from traditional Angolan kizomba.