What is Well-Formed Casino?

Well-Formed Cuban Salsa is not only Casino that lives up to one’s own standards for how Casino should be danced. There must also be a systematic and comprehensive approach to the dance. We need some sort of shared Textbook, at least some handfuls of basic rules and principles underpinning our dance. We need to have an explicit model for how to dance the basic figures and for how to turn, etc.

Most dancers start as street dancers with a Happy-go-Lucky approach to social dancing. We have little focus on the finer technicalities of the dance. Even if we are educated in the most common dance schools – an organized way to learn street dancing fast – the typical Leader focus more on remembering figures and moves than on stepping them with well-formed precision.

The Follow is typically happy if she can follow the Lead and turn looking good. The Follow doesn’t care much about well-formed perfection. It is secondary, if the techinique dooms her to the eternal plateau or if it is a good foundation for taking her to the next level.

For most dancers, it doesn’t make sense to talk about well-formed dancing. If the dancers themselves don’t know what well-formed is in their own dance system, it is meaningless to judge them against their own lack of recommended ways to do things let alone standards!

Casino has never been a carefully crafted “academic” dance. It is raw, natural dancing with a low entry level, and most of us like it for that. On top of this chaotic, inconsistent, “everything goes” social dance, each one of us is free to build semi-academic approaches to the dance, trying to straighten it up and make high level dancing possible.

We need a system

First when we have a semi-academic approach to the dance, does it make sense to talk about well-formed dancing. That is dancing that live up to our own system for the dance. To have only One Big Textbook, one central authority, would make high level dancing much easier. But this is unrealistic for a social dance with a strong grass-root foundation and with a long and broad tradition of anything goes if it works.

For most of us Casino is not a dance among others, we can use for a limited, specific dance purpose. Cuban Salsa is not only our number one social dance but must likely the only social dance of substance we practice. The Casino dance must for that reason satisfy all our dance needs. And these need can be very different from person to person.

A little Brain Storm:

  1. Some people want Casino for party dancing or Night Clubs in the mating season. Others want it more for fitness or for socializing with friends.
  2. Some Leaders are proud of what they can do with the same five moves. Other Leaders are obsessed with constant development to take their dance to ever higher levels.
  3. Some focus on one elegant dance an hour, others aim at 10-20 dances in a row until exhaustion.
  4. Some prefer organized indoor dancing, other couples prefer to dance alone outside in the sun.
  5. Some prefer slow music, some fast or very fast music. Some are content with a DJ’s playlist, others prefer to dance to their own handpicked favorites.
  6. Some are in love with the process of learning at private Practica sessions. Others only do formal party socials were the dance is often not even the main thing.
  7. Forced by circumstances most social dancers mostly dance at events “like herrings in a barrel”.
  8. We are beginners, happy amateurs and even professional dancers. Some of us dances once a months others almost every day.
  9. Some of us want romantic dancing with a lot of flirtation, others focus on meditative flow dancing.
  10. Some of us sometimes go a little Wild and Crazy Dancing, others are always strictly Ball Room.
  11. Some put creativity, musicality and playfulness first. Others are obsessed with being well-formed.
  12. Some prefer an elegant and clean Casino, others are potpourri dancers or heavily into fusion.
  13. Some have Casino flows as highlights, others aim at culminating into Afro and Reggaeton.
  14. Some want to unlock the full potential of Casino. Others do Rape Enactment in every dance.
  15. Some love juvenile Nudo Clutter, acrobatic stunts and Macho bragging.
  16. We are all sizes, fitness levels and age groups from teenagers to 60-70+.
  17. Some learn from just watching, others prefer a methodical study process.

It is simply impossible to develop ONE BIG ALL INCLUSIVE DANCE SYSTEM that caters equally for the needs and preferences of most dancers. Many semi-academic dance systems is not only unavoidable but a blessing. For the dance style we mostly care about we really need a system that matches our dance needs and preferences as much as possible.

The main problem is not the lack of One Big Authoritative Textbook but that even local dance school based Textbooks hardly exist. Most dance schools don’t teach social dancing. They mostly teach Rueda de Casino and moves in the context of Rueda de Casino. How to dance socially is up to the dancers themselves: “But remember to start in Closed Position!”

We need to be more explicit about our Textbooks for social dancing, Textbook of individuals and of dance schools. We need to share them and learn from one another in one big “Public Domain” Community. It is nice to dance with partners that have more or less the same basic Textbook. Then it is possible also to talk about the dance and to discuss it. It takes qualified effort to take the dance to ever higher levels. To dance with dancers with other Textbook backgrounds is sometimes fun and rewarding but mostly for the social aspects.

The bottom line is: It is meaningless to call the dancing of other people not well-formed unless they are judged against their own system no matter how weak and tentative their Textbook.

Realistic Textbooks

It is very unlikely that many full-blown comprehensive Casino dance systems will ever develop. Most Leaders will develop their own primitive versions of what they like from X-number of other systems and they will get inspired from many sources even from the ones they mostly don’t like. The same for Followers.

Semi-Academic Dance Textbooks or Academic Dance Textbooks for that matter have an obvious build-in limitation. It is impossible to learn and internalize a Dance Textbook made by others without modifying it. You must own it as if you have made it yourself. You must have struggled with each part of it four hours, testing alternatives and variations in order to make up your own mind, and it is simply impossible not to modify and personalize the original system to your own needs and preferences, changing it quite a bit along the way.

In social dancing with a long and broad tradition like Casino, Cuban Salsa, many Textbooks are a matter of necessity. They will most likely be only in the making, half-baked or tentative. Learning social dancing is an on-going process. The Textbook most dancers actually believe in and follow is created as we learn and develop. There is always room for improvements, for trying out something new, for changing your mind about both basics and details and for growing as a dancer and getting more experienced.

Instead of full-blown comprehensive systems, we base our dance on our backgrounds from dance schools and workshops. Our dance is modified by our own “ideas”, “principles” and Rules of Thumb. And we always draw on multiple sources of inspiration. Like in many other human activities, self-study plays a major part. Each one of us develop our own Textbook for the dance. For some of us it has quite a volume, for others it is only one page long.

When more general “official” Textbooks do exist, they should include chapters for how to modify and adapt them for your own needs. For how to get rid of what you don’t like and replace it with something better even from another Textbook! They should include chapters about how to dance with dancers with other Textbook backgrounds. This includes “uneducated” street dancers or even with semi-compatible non-Cuban Salsa styles!

Why being well-formed?

Let us take Enchufla as example. In street dancing, any form for Enchufla that works in the situation and looks good is spot on. In my dancing there is a detailed manual for how to do Enchufla. Why? Because I am not only interested in the Enchufla at hand but just as much in all the possible Enchuflas in the future and for how Enchufla can underpin my dance seamlessly. I need an Enchufla that is as close to the optimized well-formed way to do Enchufla as possible.

I want an Enchufla that is perfect to start Enchufla Continuado. An Enchufla that makes it easy to continue into Coca-Cola both to the right and to the left. I want an Enchufla where X number of variations can be added to the last half of the figure seamlessly. I want an Enchufla that is easy to continue into multiple two dimensional Enchufla Dobles. I need an Enchufla that is so precise that it confirms that the Follow can also step a flawless Enchufla por la Derecha and “Enchufla from Rodeo”.

Street dancers only care about the moment. I care about laying the foundation for becoming a better and better social dancer. That is an uphill battle if there is no feedback process. And there is no feedback if there isn’t an exact model for the perfect and optimized well-formed Enchufla. There is no chance of getting closer and closer to the model if there is no model but only random, private and homegrown stepping.