As it is so fundamental to Cuban salsa the move is common in any country across various dance schools leading to a lot of small regional variations having been developed internationally in terms of how this move is led and executed. Similarly, the move has been called by various names which are completely unrelated, thus making it often hard for dancers to understand that this move is being called when they join a new Rueda group. Some of the common names that may refer to this move are: Lento, Vacilala, Di Le Que Si, Hecho, Dedo & Pimienta.
Some of these names are particularly confusing as they can refer to different moves entirely depending on the Rueda group i.e. while Vacilala always describes this move in terms of the lead and the steps and body position of the leader and follower, there is no consensus internationally on whether the leader should keep the follower’s right hand or release it. It does however, seem much more common to describe the version where the leader releases the follower’s hand as “Vacilala” and there are less alternative names for this particular move so this is the reason we have chosen to always denote the version without hands as “Vacilala” (see the earlier post on this subject in this blog series) at Tiempo España Dance Academy to avoid ambiguity.
Similarly, the move name Di Le Que Si can mean a lot of different things internationally with one interpretation being the move described in this post so to avoid ambiguity we will never call this move by the name Di Le Que Si and instead reserve this name for a particular move that has no alternative names. Finally, referring to this move as “Dedo” seems to be a mistake rather than an acceptable synonymous title. While it is true that the move Dedo starts with the move described in this post, there are usually another 2 8-counts to Dedo so it is a much longer move than the fundamental move we are analysing here. It seems that this description is simply a mistake of some Rueda groups having forgotten the final parts of Dedo rather than denoting an acceptable synonynm of the move.
While it is possible to hear any of the terms discussed so far in Ruedas where the caller tries to get their students to perform the move discussed in this blog post they do more commonly refer to different moves entirely which is why they all have different associated hand signs. This leaves us with the terms Lento, Hecho and Pimienta (as well as possible other names that I am not aware of) for the move which seem to be equally popular internationally although Hecho is usually seen as the original description of the move. To my knowledge, out of these three names, the only term that has an associated Rueda hand sign is Pimienta although it is common to see people calling Lento or Hecho and signalling Pimienta i.e. the Pimienta hand sign has simply become the de facto standard hand sign for this move irrespective of the title by which it is being called. It is for this reason that at Tiempo España Dance Academy we have chosen to call this move by the name Pimienta as to our knowledge it is the only non-ambiguous name for the move that has an associated hand sign.
To see a video of the move Pimienta Con La Mano Izquierda as well as the hand sign, please click on:https://youtu.be/oA0Csn7pH9s
