One of the most amazing aspects of Casino dancing in my opinion is the sheer amount of flexibility it offers to its dancers. Any other dance form I have ever tried is very rigid in the number of partners it requires to be executed. Some dances are performed by one person on their own, some dances require exactly one male and one female dancer to dance together and few dances require a larger group of people to come together. By contrast, Casino lets us dance with as many partners as we want with no strict rules around males having to lead and females having to follow. I.e. it is common to see people of the same sex dance together, for women to lead and men to follow or even for one person to dance with various partners at the same time.
Generally speaking in Casino the dancer can be on their own (“suelto”) with a partner (“en parejas”) or in a group with other dancers (“Rueda”). This allows dancers to always find a way to dance when they want to rather than having to stay on the side-lines and watch other people dance until they find the relevant number of people willing to partner up.
The “en parejas” form of Casino requires exactly two people, whereas the Rueda form requires at least 4 people with no upper limit (technically a 3 person Rueda is possible with one person dancing on their own, however much of the look and feel of the dance form is lost with such a small number of people and many Rueda moves cannot be performed in this situation so 4 people is usually quoted as the minimum number of people for Ruedas). Therefore, there seems to be a gap for the situation where exactly 3 people want to dance together. However, this is resolved by something widely known as trio de casino, a dance form that allows one leader to dance with two followers at the same time (un hombre con dos mujeres) or the lesser known variation where two leaders will dance with one follower (una mujer con dos hombres). While the second variation is usually limited to two leaders, it is not uncommon to see the first variation as a cuarteto or even a quinteto de casino that include one leader dancing with three women (un hombre con tres mujeres) or even four women (un hombre con cuatro mujeres). This form in particular is challenging to learn and difficult to execute properly such that it is often seen as the ultimate goal for leaders to be able to master their signals to such perfection that they can lead multiple people at the same time without there being any confusion among the followers. However, it should be noted that the look and feel of this variation is quite different to the standard Casino partner dance so not every follower may be interested in joining this dance form and it should never be assumed that they are willing to join a trio de casino just because they have agreed to dance. I.e. some leaders will ask a follower to dance and then move on to ask another follower to join them, however, this is generally considered bad form. Instead, a leader should ask both followers from the start whether they are willing to dance a trio de casino with them. In other words, this dance form comes with its own set of moves and etiquette despite being fundamentally connected to the standard en parejas form of the dance.
