Los bailes tradicionales de
América Latina
The traditional dances of Latin America
TANGO
Tango is a partner dance and
social dance that originated in
the 1880s along the Río de la
Plata, the border between
Argentina and Uruguay. It was
born in the lower-class port
areas of these countries, in
neighborhoods which had
predominantly African
descendants.
It became most popular in
Buenos Aires and Montevideo,
the capitals of Argentina and
Uruguay.
TANGO
Tango is a dance that has
influences from African, Native
American and European culture.
Dances from the ceremonies of
former African slave peoples
helped shape the modern day
tango. The music derived from
the fusion of various forms of
music from Europe.
TANGO
When the tango began to spread
internationally around 1900,
cultural norms were generally
conservative, and so tango
dancing was widely regarded as
extremely inappropriate for
public display. This led to a
phenomenon of culture shock.
Additionally, the combination of
African, Native American and
European cultural influences in
tango was new and unusual to
most of the Western world.
TANGO
In the early years of the 20th
century, dancers and orchestras
from Buenos Aires travelled to
Europe, and the first European
tango craze took place in Paris,
soon followed by London,
Berlin, and other capitals.
Towards the end of 1913, it hit
New York City.
Today, there are many
variations of this dance around
the world.
MAMBO
Mambo is a Latin dance of
Cuba which was developed in
the 1940s when the music genre
of the same name became
popular throughout Latin
America.
Dámaso Pérez Prado was a
Cuban composer and pianist
who popularized the mambo. He
moved his music from Havana
to Mexico, where the mambo
music and the dance were
adopted.
MAMBO
The original mambo dance was
characterized by free and complicated
foot-steps. Cuban dancers would
describe mambo as "feeling the music",
in which sound and movement were
merged through the body.
However, this Cuban dance was not
accepted by many professional dance
teachers. Professional dance teachers in
the US saw this approach to dancing as
"extreme", "undisciplined", and therefore
thought it was necessary to standardize
the dance to make it more appropriate
for the social and ballroom market.
SALSA
Salsa is a dance that was created fairly
recently with the mixture of many
different styles and musical techniques
that all came together in Cuba, land that
was home of the many Latin dances and
music styles.
After achieving popularity in Cuba,
visiting musicians from United States
soon became intoxicated with this
awesome music and dance style, carrying
it back to the states, where they started a
popular age of Latin music domination.
SALSA
It was primarily developed by
Dominicans and Puerto Ricans living in
New York in the late 1960s and early
1970s.
Different regions of Latin America and
the United States have distinct salsa
styles of their own, such as Cuban,
Dominican, Puerto Rican, Colombian,
L.A. and New York styles. Salsa dance
socials are commonly held in nightclubs,
bars, ballrooms, restaurants, and
outside, especially when part of an
outdoor festival.
