“Dile Que No” literally means “tell him no” and it is one of the most fundamental moves in Cuban salsa. The name of the move describes the fact that the follower effectively dances from the right hand side of the leader to his left hand side so it is as if she was to say “no, I do not want to dance with you anymore”. This is contrasted by a move called “Dile Que Si” meaning “tell him yes” which will be described in a later post.
Cuban salsa is structured in such a way that at the end of most moves the follower will end up at the right hand side of the leader so a Dile Que No is necessary to get back into the basic Casino position. As this is such a fundamental part of most moves, Dile Que No is implied rather than called most of the time. I.e. when the move Sombrero is called then at the end of the move everyone will do a Dile Que No without this being called specifically. However, contrary to Paso Casino, which is never called, there are actually situations where it is necessary to call Dile Que No in a Rueda. For instance, when changing from the Tiempo España formation into the Casino formation the caller can say Dile Que No or alternatively Se Fue which will be discussed in a later post.
When dancers switch partners in a Rueda they effectively do a Dile Que No to the next person in the circle, a move that is known as Dame and has already been described in a previous post.
It is therefore easy to see that Dile Que No is the second most frequent set of steps executed in most Cuban salsa dances after Casino and therefore suffers from the same problems. I.e. as every dance school around the world which teaches Cuban salsa has to teach this move, it is one of the moves that has a lot of variations internationally. Moreover, it is often incorrectly described as “Cross-body lead” in many regions where Cross-body salsa is popular, resulting in the leader and follower doing a set of steps that are closer to say LA style salsa than Casino. This is made worse by the plethora of instructional videos freely available online which incorporate some of these common mistakes i.e. leader and follower not being aligned correctly at the start of the move by not facing in the same direction, follower taking a shortcut to get to the other side of the leader by stepping across in a line rather than going forward first and then changing directions etc.
Since contrary to Paso Casino, Dile Que No is not always implied, there is indeed a hand sign for Dile Que No even though it is rarely used. Di Le Que No Con La Mano Izquierda involves the cantante pointing the index finger of their left hand in the air and then moving it from side to side as if to say “no” to a child. Like some of the previously discussed moves, the side to side motion is usually executed twice for emphasis but this will change from caller to caller. Ultimately, the amount of times the finger is moved from one side to the other by the caller has no significance in terms of how the move is executed.
To see a video of the move Dile Que No as well as the hand sign, please click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yr9TLld31gQ&list=UUu_MbF5v5N-PNPm_9WCrefA&index=1.
