Rumba (Part 7)

Amidst the confusion surrounding the term Rumba in the 20th century one person who did try to clarify the concept by codifying Rumba based on what he witnessed on his travels to Cuba was professional dancer and dance teacher Pierre Jean Phillipe Zurcher-Margolle. He was born in France and studied engineering in Zurich but after losing sight in one eye he moved to England where he eventually became a professional ballroom dancer at the end of World War I. While he started off with other dances such as Argentine Tango he witnessed a demonstration of what the western world considered Rumba according to the American model in 1932 at which point he began to learn and soon teach this dance accordingly. He visited Cuba for the first time in 1947 and was surprised to find out that Cubans danced differently to what he had been taught and one of the first comments he received was that he was dancing out of time. He was cognizant of the fact that the dance he knew as rumba was not actually called rumba in Cuba but did seem to think that it was exactly the same as Son Cubano and was surprised by the differences. He actually remarked “The Ballroom Rumba in Cuba is known as the “Son”.” upon his arrival but when he could not reconcile all aspects he immediately began taking lessons while in Cuba and danced as much as he could writing down his observations upon his return to London.

Until Fidel Castro rose to power, he travelled to Cuba 2 more times in 1951 and 1953 and his observations led to the development of other dances in the western world such as ballroom cha-cha-chá picking up on some important differences between music and dance in Cuba that had previously been lumped into the category rumba. One of his biggest contributions was his observation of contratiempo in Cuba which led to ballroom rumba and cha-cha-chá starting on the “2” beat.

However pure his intentions, when Pierre set the groundwork for much of what international Rumba has become today after his first Cuba journey he had in essence just been on a 3-week Cuba holiday. While he certainly tried to re-introduce authenticity into ballroom rumba and did a lot of work to codify it, it is preposterous to believe he would have become an expert at Son Cubano after only a few lessons within a 3-week period in a dance that takes even talented Cubans, who grow up surrounded by the culture that defines Son, a lifetime to master. I.e. it would be similar to a dance teacher travelling to Cuba today and learning Casino for 3 weeks and then canonising a dance system based on this experience for the Western world. No matter how good this dance teacher would be the system would fail to capture the entirety of Casino. And in fact one of the elements that was removed in the codification of “Rumba” was improvisation which is the backbone of most Cuban dances.