Rueda Formations (Part 1)

Ruedas are often used as a fun warm-up for salsa parties even in the cross-body scene before starting a social event or a more advanced class. As it is a way to break the ice and for people to get to know each other it is often a vehicle to include everyone onto the dance floor which is a very nice idea with one major drawback: Ruedas at social events are overly simplistic and paint a false picture of the dance. I have met dancers who genuinely believed that the dance Rueda de Casino consists solely of the basic step and some very simple moves like Enchufla, Sombrero and Fly as every time they had been to an event, that was all they had been taught.

In reality, Rueda de Casino has thousands of moves and combinations that make it a very complex and immensely beautiful dance when studied and mastered at a higher level. One of the aspects, for instance, that is often overlooked is the concept of Rueda formations. Traditionally there are five structural formations that can be used to build a Rueda that feels complete in the sense that it has a defined and marked start and end point and is varied in the types of moves that are executed. These are in turn.

• La Entrada
• Tiempo España
• Casino
• Para el Medio
• El Fin

The formations la entrada (the entrance) and el fin (the end) start and end a Rueda respectively. They do not have to be included every time but help to give an overall sense of completeness and are certainly included in most shows and performances for aesthetic effects. Strictly speaking moves specific to the la Entrada formation should never be executed at any other point than the beginning of the Rueda and similarly the “el fin” formation should finish the dance although some schools have started mixing certain moves that would normally end the dance such as Sientala into the Casino formation.

Therefore, once we have gone from la Entrada into another formation we can never go back to la Entrada and similarly, once we have started the el Fin formation we cannot go back to any other formation. However, the other three formations are interchangeable i.e. we can go from Casino into Para El Medio or Tiempo España, we can go from Para El Medio into Tiempo España or Casino etc.