Rueda Hand Signs (Part 15) Travesura

Travesura is the first move we are publishing online out of the moves we put together at Tiempo España Dance Academy. As discussed in the previous post (Cuban Salsa Evolution (Part 2)) it is a key moment for any dance school to progress from copying existing moves to a point where they invent and publish their own moves and the move Travesura is a good starting point for us to officially show this transition as it is one of the first moves we created.

While we have experimented with changing structural elements of Cuban salsa we will continue to gain experience before introducing entirely new concepts on our YouTube channel and while moves that we invent and publish from this moment onwards may seem different in terms of the combination of moves executed, the elements making up the new moves we are introducing continue to follow the traditional Cuban structure. Therefore, for moves such as Travesura, there should be no problem leading or following these moves for anyone who has mastered the basics of Cuban salsa well as all the signals and steps should be the same as required by the elements making up the move.

As far as we know there is currently no move out there that is a reflection of what we have called “Travesura”. It is of course possible, however, that someone somewhere has done a similar if not the same move before either creating it on the spot while social dancing or even teaching it under a different name. It is not our intention by publishing this move or any other new moves that we have created to take away credits from anyone who may have come up with this previously. In fact, given that there is only a finite number of ways that Cuban salsa elements can be connected, it is likely that we will eventually publish a move under our own name that has already been created elsewhere. That being said, we have reviewed many published moves and have gone to various Cuban salsa classes by different schools and have never come across a move that matches Travesura so it is our hope that it finds enough acceptance in the salsa community for this to be taught under this name in the future.

Travesura means mischief in Spanish which we thought was a fitting name: At the end of the move the leader brings their right arm over the follower’s head and then immediately their left arm over the follower’s head which is a common arm movement seen in a lot of moves (sometimes referred to as Puente). What is unexpected is the fact that straight away afterwards, the leader leads a Vacilala but moving the arms over the follower’s head again in the opposite direction i.e. leader’s left arm and then their right arm come over follower’s head. This is rather unexpected for the follower and it is not a combination that exists is any other move I have witnessed so the name Travesura makes reference to the leader doing something quite unexpected at the end which is emphasised by the double Ronde that is equally rarely seen when social dancing. We had the idea to call the move Travesura as the first time we experimented with this move we were dancing to the song Travesura by Enio and the name seemed to fit with what we were trying to achieve with the move.

We chose the hand sign for this move to be the thumb pointing towards the ear while shaking the open hand, a common symbol for mischief among children. To see a video of the move Travesura as well as the hand sign, please click on: https://youtu.be/ygEY9quTdXM

Cuban Salsa Evolution (Part 2)

Once the basics have been mastered the next stage for dance schools and Rueda groups is to start taking certain moves apart, figuring out what is effective about them and putting them back together maybe in a different order or by mixing them together with other moves. Small aspects may be changed i.e. adding alardes or using the left instead of the right hand or two hands instead of no hand but the important thing is that the overall structure of the elements are still followed making the final product a Cuban salsa move despite the fact that it may not have actually been invented in Cuba. This is a stage a lot of people try to reach too quickly using shortcuts that means they cannot fully explain how and why the move works the way it does and why it should be classified as Cuban salsa rather than anything else, let alone how it can be led on the dance floor to someone who has never seen it before. A famous idiom says “We must learn to walk before we can run” and the same applies here. It is difficult and highly skilful to create a new Cuban salsa dance move, and this comes after years of practice and for dance schools who promote their new moves they must first demonstrate that they have got the basics right that they use as a template for their creations.

I learned piano for many years and as much as I did not mind spending hours upon hours practicing classical music which was the standard for piano lessons at the time, I could not wait to get to practice other types of music. It took years and years of practice until I was finally allowed to play such things as improvisation solos in Jazz music- a journey that certainly seemed to take frustratingly longer than necessary at the time. In hindsight, however, remembering how much I struggled when my teacher would give instructions such as you can play a solo at this point using the mood of the song, staying within the same meter, using the appropriate progression given by the song to make the melody harmonious etc. it would have been an impossible task to achieve without my years of training in the fundamental aspects of the instrument and musical theory. The point is, I could have certainly pressed a couple of random keys on the piano if someone had told me in my third lesson to “freestyle” but it would have resembled white noise more closely than Jazz improvisation. Similarly, someone “improvising” on the dance floor after their third Cuban salsa lesson will not evolve the dance form but rather display very publicly that they have not yet mastered the basics yet.

It is this stage usually that decides whether a dance school, performer or promoter is going to grow or retract as moving into this category too soon is going to display gaps in the basics that will give the dance school a “cowboy” reputation that is very hard to lose. However, moving into this category at the time where the basics have been mastered, demonstrated and taught many times will make students trust and appreciate the skill and experience to the point where new moves are accepted with excitement as they will not only look new, creative and exciting on the dance floor but come with the added benefit that they follow the exact same fundamental model used for all the traditional moves such that they can be incorporated seamlessly into any social dance without there being any difficulty or misinterpretation as long as the move is led correctly.

I am very happy that our school has grown to the point where we are getting increasingly asked for some of our own material and after teaching and researching traditional moves for many years I feel excited to start publishing some of our own creations. While the vast majority of the moves we teach in class and display online will continue to focus on moves that are known internationally, we will start to introduce some of the moves we have invented from time to time such as the move that will be published next Friday.

Cuban Salsa Evolution (Part 1)

Cuban salsa is a constantly evolving dance form with new moves being invented somewhere almost every day. While it was a pure Cuban product for a long time it has now transcended national boundaries where dance schools around the world produce new moves on a regular basis. Since there is no regulatory body determining what can be classified as Cuban salsa and what is not acceptable in terms of structural changes, it is easy to come up with new moves but difficult to align all the various moves that are put under the Cuban salsa umbrella internationally. Just because someone creates a YouTube video and writes the words “Cuban Salsa” in the description field does not mean that the move displayed can be led and followed when dancing Cuban salsa socially. As a result, while a lot of YouTube videos try and claim to deserve that title, only few of them do and the quality of dance schools which publish some of their moves online can often be seen directly from the videos they publish.

Generally speaking, there are three stages to teaching Cuban salsa and establishing a Cuban salsa dance school which will be discussed in this blog series:

Initially, students need to learn the absolute basics which are moves that have clearly come from Cuba. Dance schools build a relationship on how well they teach these basic moves and how closely they follow the Cuban structure. While it is true that even within Cuba there are significant differences on how these moves are executed, it is for instance very easy to spot when a dance school teaches some sort of cross-body fusion, executing Enchufla on the spot, leading Exhibela on the 3 etc. That is to say, while styling and certain lead elements may differ to some extent, body position, timing and signals should be very closely related internationally and follow the Cuban template for the elementary moves as they are the building blocks of the dance. There is a fine line between changing small details of certain moves to evolve the dance and doing something that is simply not part of the dance and should be classified as a separate dance form altogether. A lot of people call themselves “fusion dancers”, “improvisers”, “freestylers” etc. hoping that their moves are picked up and copied by others as they are being seen as experts who have the ability to change aspects of the dance without affecting the form of dance. However, few people have the knowledge, skill and experience to really evolve Cuban salsa despite its apparent freedoms and while there is a plethora of videos and resources out there most Cuban dancers will only consult the most established schools with a track record for staying true to the fundamental structure of the dance. Even though many promoters and dance schools will try and entice people by showing how creative they are with a set of brand new moves, it is actually by showing that they have the ability to copy, recreate, teach and perform the fundamental aspects of Cuban salsa before that people will give them the credibility to be able to come up with new Cuban salsa moves.

Clave (Part 4) – Introduction to Son Clave

Son clave is the main clave used in salsa music and arguably one of the most popular rhythms to date. There is no way to know how old son clave is specifically and as discussed in the last post it has been known by various names across time and place. In Cuba the Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Música Cubana aka CIDMUC refers to son clave as la clave de La Habana due to its usage in Havana-style yambú and guaguancó. This has led to son clave also being referred to as Havana clave around the world. The sound is predominantly produced by clave sticks in Cuba while using the more traditional iron bell in Africa although other instruments are used internationally as discussed previously.

According to the metrical hierarchy of Lerdahl and Jackendoff son clave has a metrical complexity of 17 – 13 = 4. It is not a Euclidean rhythm but has desirable rhythmic oddity as Toussaint investigates in detail in his book “The Geometry of Musical Rhythm: What Makes a "Good" Rhythm Good?”. In this book he further researches some desirable properties of the son clave rhythm such as the fact that it is a rotation of its own shadow rhythm and has significant metrical ambiguity.

If we break the son clave pattern down into its elements we receive 16 distinct pulses meaning equally spaced points in time which are either sounded (called the onsets) or silent. There are exactly five sounded pulses which is why the son clave is categorised as a (5, 16) rhythm with 16 describing the number of pulses and 5 describing the number of onsets. The breakdown of this pattern is elementary with 16 pulses in the sense that with less than 16 equally spaced time points we would not be able to recreate the son clave pattern whereas a higher level breakdown would not be able to reproduce the clave pattern unless a multiple of 16 was used and such a detailed view would not be necessary to produce the son clave pattern i.e. no extra information would be obtained from a further breakdown. 16 equally spaced points in time are therefore the minimum number of pulses needed to produce the son clave. The question therefore arises: What is so special about the number 16 and why do humans seem to prefer this 5 onset pattern above all others?

These as well as other questions surrounding the popularity of the son clave will be discussed in detail in future posts of this series.