While Spain has influence Latin America in numerous ways - language, religion, architecture, festivals, etc. - salsa presents us with the opposite situation. The upbeat tempo and energy of salsa enjoys great popularity in Spain. With this fun school activity you can learn the steps and beats thanks to a salsa dance lesson!
While by no means entirely Cuban, Cuba is generally considered the heart of salsa culture thanks to its cultural and geographic situation as the convergence point for European, Latin and African cultures. Salsa can be fittingly described as a melting pot of Latin and Afro-Caribbean music and dance that, believe it or not, continues to evolve every day. While there are solo forms, salsa is generally an energetic partner dance. It can also be either choreographed or improvised.
It's quite similar in style to mambo, in that both involve a pattern of six steps danced over eight counts of music. Salsa, however, boasts more turns and has a side-to-side feel, while mambo generally moves more forwards and backwards. The basic pattern of salsa consists of left-right-left-pause, then right-left-right-pause, and so forth. The pause is generally used to add some sort of personal touch, like a kick, a stomp or an energetic hand gesture. It tends to be a fairly stationary dance, without a lot of movement from one side of the dance floor to the other; instead, the dancers convey the high energy of the dance with their legs and upper bodies.