As discussed in the previous article there is a huge debate
on whether Casino as a dance should be allowed to be called such names as “Cuban
salsa”, “Salsa a la cubana” etc. To the beginner Casino dancer this may seem a
rather pointless pursuit of semantic purity but to the more advanced student
the significance of this discussion will already be clear.
I have heard of cases where people being asked to dance Casino
responded “sorry, I only dance Cuban salsa”. On the one hand, this level of
ignorance is quite embarrassing if they have spent a lot of time trying to get
good at something but fail to know what their hobby is actually called, on the
other hand, it becomes an even more serious problem if the person asking the
question does not realise that both parties are talking about the same dance
and walks away.
On the other side of the scale, I have seen students so
proud of their historical knowledge that they will not attend courses
advertised as “Cuban salsa”. While this might seem extreme, it happens
relatively frequently as the modern Casino dance field is completely
unregulated and non-standardised with a plethora of so called “cowboy”
instructors teaching the dance without having had much training or an in-depth
understanding of the dance. More advanced students therefore sometimes view
classes advertised as “Cuban salsa” to be an indication that the instructor
does not even know what the dance they teach is called or even worse, they have
that knowledge but choose to ignore it in order to appeal to the masses with
the catchy “salsa” term being thrown into their marketing strategy.
Finally, criticism has emerged on whether it is correct to call
something “Cuban salsa” when the vast majority of people practicing this dance
are not Cuban. While the name makes reference to the geogra
phical and cultural origin of the dance, Casino is an ever-evolving dance with new figures being introduced all the time from people all around the world. Therefore while the original idea came from Cuba, where Cubans were dancing a specific subset of today’s moves, it is now being danced by people with all kinds of nationalities in most parts of the world with new moves being invented predominantly outside of Cuba.
phical and cultural origin of the dance, Casino is an ever-evolving dance with new figures being introduced all the time from people all around the world. Therefore while the original idea came from Cuba, where Cubans were dancing a specific subset of today’s moves, it is now being danced by people with all kinds of nationalities in most parts of the world with new moves being invented predominantly outside of Cuba.
At Tiempo
España Dance
Academy we use the terms
“Casino” and “Cuban salsa” interchangeably. Whichever term we use, we are not
trying to make any political statements or mislead people with marketing
terminology that we know to be incorrect. While we are aware of the
aforementioned problems and respect people’s view regarding the originality
regarding “Casino” we strongly believe that this is a discussion of the past.
There might have been a time when arguing for one terminology or another would
have resulted in an internationally recognised name but given the usage
popularity in today’s world we have to accept that there are now various names
that can be used for this dance which are used frequently and synonymously.
I.e. while we prefer the term Casino for its historical purity we have to
recognise that most people will call the dance Cuban salsa which has entered
the English language as an acceptable term being mentioned in this form by various
dictionaries. For instance the wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salsa_dance_%28Cuban_style%29
shows that these words are now completely equivalent notwithstanding the
historical path they took to become part of the language.
