Rueda Hand Signs (Part 14) El Matrix

I remember how impressed I was seeing this move for the first time. Having done and seen various Bayamo variations before I encountered this move made me think the move would end in one of the usual ways after seeing the start which looked to be just another move from the Bayamo family. To my surprise however, the ending was entirely different to anything I had seen previously and I have never come across this ending in any other move since.

While the key element of El Matrix may exist in other moves and has probably been done a long time before El Matrix was invented, it is definitely not one of the traditional Cuban salsa moves. Like so many modern moves it may not even have been invented in Cuba in the first place and even though it is relatively popular in the UK I have rarely seen it being performed elsewhere (also some evidence exists showing that it is known internationally to some extent). While the country or time of origin is unknown to me we can at least infer from the name of the move that it must have been invented some time after the film “Matrix” came out in 1999 which it clearly references.

In this movie, the lead character Neo makes a distinct hand sign every time he encounters one of his opponents he is about to fight where he points the index finger towards his enemy, the thumb away from the index finger roughly at a 90° angle and the middle finger slightly in the air. This signal is a key recognisable moment in the film which has become directly associated with the movie and is repeated throughout the trilogy. It is therefore no surprise that the hand signal for the move El Matrix was chosen to be the same as the signal made famous by the movie.

One of the key positions Neo uses to dodge bullets in the Matrix movie is a balancing act where he leans backwards with his head and torso but bending his knees so as to balance his weight on his toes. This move is one of the most famous aspects in the trilogy and certainly a contributing factor in making the movie an instant cult. The salsa move El matrix is not particularly special until the end as it simply starts like any Bayamo variation. However, the ending is what has given the move its name as it involves the leader ducking underneath the follower’s arms while using a stance that is very similar to the one Neo uses throughout the movie.

To see a video of the move El Matrix as well as the hand sign, please click on https://youtu.be/Q0tbi_NvlQM

How to Teach Cuban Salsa (Part 3)

Mainstream salsa seems to have become centred around learning more and more complex moves as it is the easiest way to get people excited, most certainly in the beginning stages. If after 4 weeks of class you have seen 20 moves you might feel like you have made huge progress even if you only remember 7 of them when you go social dancing, however, if you cannot lead or follow these moves properly and you cannot dance to the right rhythm let alone interpret the music then what you have effectively learned is executing a number of complex arm and leg movements while there is some music playing in the background but there is a lot more to dancing than just remembering the structure of moves.

I am the first to admit that there are a lot of things I still have to learn and I am not saying that everyone who goes to a salsa events has to know everything about the dance. However, I do think it is a shame that the majority of salsa schools I have been to do not explain the history, musicality, culture, etiquette etc. more often as I view it a fundamental part of Cuban salsa to have at least some background knowledge on these other aspects of the dance. Of course, it is not easy to find the right balance between all of these aspects and to give people enough of an exercise in class while playing enough songs for them to feel like they had an actual dance class rather than a lecture. While I have certainly tried my best to balance all these aspects in every class I teach there are always days when I feel like I talked too much or explained too little, where I have become too technical and people lose interest or where I have thrown too many moves at them and they struggle remembering them for the next class. However, while it might be difficult it is not impossible and I have found that a lot of students become interested in these other aspects of dancing over time as well. At the end of the day even if it means losing a few students who just want to do new moves the entire class I do think that teachers have a responsibility to give out at least a little bit of background information so that students do not appear completely ignorant when social dancing.

Salsa Statistics (Part 1) Introduction

Despite the fact that there is a vast amount of salsa songs out there and the dance forms associated with salsa music are among the most popular in the world, there is a surprising lack of data available with respect to salsa songs. While certain music platforms and search engines may provide more data than others, most promoters, DJs and dancers seem to be on a constant search for new music they can dance to and filtering out even relatively straight forward metadata such as beats per minute seems to be a much harder task than it would be for other types of music.
Most classes and parties I have been to have a collection of songs that has been tried and tested and which gets rarely updated such that many songs end up being vastly overplayed and I have been to many parties where the DJ’s reputation seems to increase almost instantaneously the moment they play some songs that the majority of dancers have not heard previously.

For songs coming from Cuba this is maybe less surprising simply due to el bloqueo – the United States embargo against Cuba which is responsible for huge aspects of Cuban culture and products still being hard to source outside of Cuba. Given that the music industry globally is dominated by American companies, the effect on Cuban music is multi-fold as it is not only difficult to find Cuban songs and their metadata outside of Cuba but in addition the laws associated with licenses to play Cuban music publicly and use them as soundtracks for videos or even just to play them on the radio are such a legal minefield in most countries that many companies will just stay clear of the subject altogether.
However, even salsa music from other countries have not yet entered the mainstream music market to the degree that there is enough money to be made in researching and categorising salsa music and most collections that can be bought are either small or lack details that would enable them to be sorted and filtered in meaningful ways.

Many questions I hear such as “What is the longest salsa song?”, “How many salsa songs are there?”, “How fast are salsa songs on average?” are simply left unanswered as there is no database available that would allow for these statistics to be analysed. We have therefore decided to use Tiempo España Dance Academy resources to try and create a database to this effect thereby increasing the quality of our classes and resources we can offer to our students. While this is a huge undertaking and may take considerable time to reach a size that can be used as a basis for meaningful statistics, we will publish our research via this series and update each post as our population grows. To get things started we have pulled the artist, title and length of 500 songs from our collection of salsa songs into a database. This is a very small subset of the salsa songs in existence and we aim to increase the fields of metadata available in this database over time but it serves as a starting point to at least gather some information from the songs we currently play. Here are rudimentary statistics on the database in its current form:

Average length of salsa song: 4:52min

Shortest salsa song: 02:29min

Longest salsa song: 10:03min

How to Teach Cuban Salsa (Part 2)

As discussed in the previous post it is not always easy to match the expectation of students to the content of Cuban salsa and while a few teachers seem to have found a good middle ground between what they want to teach and what students expect, this is very difficult to achieve. To give someone the complete picture of Cuban salsa means that learning moves should only be a small part of the class while all the other aspects of the dance such as the history, the culture, styling, musicality, training on leading & following, etc. should be discussed to the same extent. I have been to Cuban salsa classes where there are no Ruedas or students are never introduced to dancing contratiempo simply because a group of students does not like these aspects or finds them too difficult. Similarly, most dance schools I have ever been to never teach any of the more athletic moves even in very advanced classes because of liability concerns so unless people find a teacher who is willing to cover these in a private class it seems nearly impossible to get good training on this area of Cuban salsa.

Often, there is a huge trade-off between the commercial aspect of dance training i.e. giving students predominantly moves without teaching other factors and giving them complete dance training on Cuban salsa which includes many features that they may not actually be interested in but are nonetheless part of Cuban salsa. Many teachers I have met are simply restricted by the policy of their dance school and sometimes I have found that these teachers actually have a lot more to offer and I have learned some of my best moves and background knowledge in private classes where I gave teachers the freedom to teach me what they themselves were passionate about rather than demanding specific things.

Unfortunately, the commercial side of Cuban salsa is not to be ignored as at the very least teachers need to be able to pay for the venue cost, insurance etc. to be able to offer lessons. It is this point that seems to have made dance teachers who focus on other aspects of dancing than just the moves a dying breed and I will happily drive for hours just to get a private lesson with someone that can explain the rhythmic structure of songs correctly and how to execute simple moves to the right beat with the body movement matching the traditional way of dancing etc.