In the last post of this series we discussed a number of
factors that puzzle Spanish speakers when they analyse Casino names.
Another factor that distorts the meaning and grammatical
structure of these names is that, similar to a “Chinese Whisper”-like process,
commands are often misunderstood by dancers particularly in non-Spanish
speaking countries. This has often led to the move names being further changed,
as Casino students eventually go on teaching the move to others with the name
of moves being passed on as they were understood rather than calling them
accurately. Since there have been little documentations, standardisations or
general guidelines around Casino move naming conventions, it is nearly
impossible to say that one move name is “wrong” and another one is “right” even
if one of them is more closely related to Spanish grammatical rules.
What is even more curious is the fact that some moves which
are not derived from Spanish words to begin with are sometimes changed
repeatedly until they are associated with a Spanish word. I.e. many Cuban salsa
moves are derived from baseball motions and terms as baseball is among the most
popular sports in Cuba. As this sport is American, these terms tend to be
English by nature rather than having an equivalent word in Cuban Spanish which
can be observed in some of the Casino move names such as “Fly”, “Rolling”,
“Baseball”, etc.
Taking the move “Rolling” (aka Suelo which is the name
chosen for the Tiempo España Dance Academy syllabus) as an example where
dancers clap low on the 1st beat in Rueda, this move is sometimes
called “Roli” in certain Rueda groups as an abbreviated form of the original
word. Over time “Roli” has been understood as “Rodi” by various students such
that this has become another common name for the same move. Since the word
“Rodi” has little resemblance to the original word “Rolling” and actually
sounds more Spanish than English the etymology of this neologism is often
mistakenly assumed to have originated from the word “rodillas” meaning “knees”
in Spanish and signalling the fact that we clap in the area below our knees.
Therefore, one of the few English words that were used for a Casino move has effectively
evolved to a word that is taken to be derived from a Spanish word as a result
of the constant name shortening and changing process that Casino move names
undergo.
Furthermore, due to the evolution of Casino move names as
discussed above, most aspects of Spanish grammar are no longer applicable in
Casino which often means that various versions of the same name are acceptable
even if it sounds wrong from a purely Spanish grammatical perspective. I.e.
many Spanish speakers question the fact whether the move “Setenta Complicado”
should not instead be called “Setenta Complicada” as they insist that the
adjective should agree with the noun in terms of gender. However, both forms
are acceptable in the salsa community as gender agreement is no longer relevant
when naming a Casino move. I.e. Originally this might have been described as
“el paso complicado de Setenta”
which was shortened to “Setenta Complicado”
or it might have been described as “la versión complicada de Setenta”, shortened to “Setenta Complicada”. Similarly, it might have started for instance as “Setenta
Complicada” but over time became
known as “Setenta Complicado” in
some regions simply due to people not hearing the commands accurately. Whatever
path was taken, today it is not necessary for Casino move names to agree in
terms of number, gender, grammatical case etc.
To avoid confusion, all the adjectives in the Tiempo España
Dance Academy syllabus are kept in their masculine form.
While the word order of Casino moves is actually extremely
important it does not need to follow the word order of the Spanish language for
similar reasons as explained above. Rather, word order with respect to Casino
naming conventions has evolved into a structure in its own right where
depending on the place of the word an entirely different set of steps are
executed. For instance, “Dos Vacilala” in Rueda would instruct the dancer to
perform the move Vacilala twice, whereas “Vacilala Dos” would instruct the
dancer to perform the specific move “Vacilala Dos” i.e. leading to such
epanalepses as “Dos Vacilala Dos” meaning “perform the move Vacilala Dos
twice”.
Similarly, “Setenta Complicado Moderno” is the modern
version of the move “Setenta Complicado” which is entirely different from the
move “Setenta Moderno Complicado” – the complicated version of the move
“Setenta Moderno”.
