In a parallel universe, possibly near you, there’s a bar full of couples immersed in ritualised sensual body movements and co-ordinated footwork to percussive music. They may not know each other’s names. They change partners to switch between salsa, bachata, kizomba, reggaeton and merengue. No strings attached, no sleaze, no complications. These and other Latin, Afro-Cuban and African social and street dances have been captivating Kiwis from all walks of life. Many have never danced before, let alone close up with a total stranger.
Does a form of foreign street dance offer a different paradigm for how we socialise – something that’s long been problematic with our binge-drinking culture and taboos around touching?
“It’s a real good feeling,” says 64-year-old Brett South, from Whanganui. “You forget about everything else. You’re in the moment. Since I’ve been dancing, my social life has exploded – I’ve got more and more friends through dancing.”
South, who quit hiking as a hobby to pursue salsa dancing 9 years ago, is among the 600 or so enthusiasts at the 18th New Zealand Salsa Congress. Held each King’s Birthday Weekend in Wellington, the congress is a highlight in the calendar of Aotearoa’s thriving Latin dance scene, which began in the mid-1990s. At that time, Auckland band Kantuta started playing music that stirred the latent Latino souls of a few Kiwis and lured South American migrants onto the dance floor to reconnect with their roots.
The movements are freewheeling yet subtly co-ordinated. It’s hard to tell who’s leading and who’s following. Learned step combinations with head flicks, shoulder rotations and hip-swings are embellished with individual style.
Technical & sensual
Social Latin dancing blends improvised and instilled moves. It can be technical and tricky, as much as it is sensual and spontaneous. This is no collective re-enactment of the raunchy Brazilian lambada, nor a scene from the movie Dirty Dancing.
The dance floor at Te Whaea National Dance & Drama Centre in Newtown is a melting pot, a broad church of punters from Invercargill to the Far North. Aged from teens to late 60s, they reflect the full spectrum of body shapes, sizes, gender and sexual orientations, nationalities and ethnicities. They’ve been dancing since Friday night, doing workshops all weekend. Some have unleashed dazzling choreographed team, couple and solo demos in a performance showcase of about 30 acts.
It’s the 16th such congress for Saione Greer, who might be described as the godfather of Latin dance in Aotearoa. He’s the MC and mastermind for this and other events such as the New Zealand Latin Dance Championships in November and Auckland’s Takapuna Beach Latin Fiesta in February, which attracts 30,000 visitors.
A hip-hop and break-dancer in his youth, Greer says he didn’t really enjoy salsa when he first tried it in 2004 because the music was unfamiliar. The graphic designer set about learning as much as he could before creating his own Auckland dance school, Viva Latino, in 2005 with his Colombian friend Mery Sofía Carreno. The name changed to Viva Dance as it became one of the city’s biggest multi-style studios.
Loneliness buster
The benefits of social/partner dance have been widely researched and include strengthening cardiovascular health, core strength, posture, balance, fitness and flexibility, bone health, preventing memory loss, and promoting good mental and emotional health and social connections. Social dancing feels like the ultimate stress relief.
“At the studio, I hear stories of people from all walks of life who come along to dance,” says Greer. “It takes them away from whatever [difficult] reality they are facing at that moment to just do something different.
“There are lots of reasons people learn to dance, but essentially, it’s all to do with social connection. We’re social beings. But more and more, we’re becoming disconnected. Latin dance, partner dance, is quite a different thing to just going to a club and dancing. First, you must connect physically with someone, which means you’re being vulnerable and sharing a moment with someone.
“With Latin social dance, you can go to a bar, and you won’t know the person, but if you’re standing by the dance floor, you have this unspoken agreement – you can look at each other, talk to each other, ask for a dance.
“For that moment, you’re both trusting, both getting and receiving something that doesn’t have to be sexual. It’s a pure enjoyment of music, dance and connection in a very pure, uncomplicated sort of way.”
Typically, men lead and women follow in partner dancing. These days in Latin social dance the roles are not so rigidly confined.
In the realm of salsa scholarship (yes, it is a thing, spanning medicine, health, gerontology, cultural studies and phenomenology), City University of New York researcher Priscilla Renta published findings that consider how salsa narrates a complex history, extending from colonialism to migration.
In her paper “Salsa dance: Latino/a history in motion”, published in the university’s journal Centro, Renta wrote that salsa “is often reduced to the one-dimensional exotic and erotic other promoted in US mainstream media and culture” where it is “stripped of its cultural politics – rooted in a history of slavery and colonisation in the Caribbean and Latin America – for mass consumption”.
Julian Zhu is among instructors offering workshops in bachata at the congress. An international award-winning Latin dancer, he created FEM Dance in Wellington, where he teaches salsa and bachata and trains teams for competitions and performance. By day, he’s studying for a master of technological futures degree to pursue his dream of designing sustainable housing for older people.
“Dancing is such a great language because we can all understand each other,” he says. “At a time when everyone is so conflicted by different ideas, mindsets and war, it’s nice to have something in the community that unites people. In my community, we have French, German, Chinese, Māori, Pākehā – such a mixed bag – and we all connect through 1-2-3, 5-6-7.
“Everyone has a different reason, but I think, ultimately, people are trying to find a way to connect with others. It’s not just dancing, it’s also the mentality of a tribe, of a community in a world where we’re looking for whānau.”
Dancing and macho memes
The Dancing with the Stars television talent quest put mainstream competitive dancesport versions of Latin dances – samba, rumba, and cha-cha – on our radar, with male sports heroes donning sequinned gear and discovering their hips. Ex-All Black Norm Hewitt won the series in 2005 with an epic paso doble. An award-winning 2018 Speight’s TV ad features a guy teaching his mate to dance for a wedding. It was applauded for turning the tables on trad blokey stereotypes, though it’s still about beer.
“I didn’t play rugby or sport, I didn’t drink or do drugs, so dancing was the only way to express my masculinity, my self, my soul, my essence,” says Zhu, who was teased for being a dancer as a kid. “It doesn’t make sense to me that the traditional version of masculinity is playing rugby, drinking a lot, and being a douchebag.
“If you look at the 80s, the most masculine dude was Prince. That guy wore makeup and high heels. You can make fun of this guy for wearing makeup, but he’ll steal your girl.”
Like food and air
From Gen Zers to boomers, Latin dance is a safe, accepting space, says Annie Giles, 61, a Blenheim-based businesswoman, salsa aficionado and pioneer in spreading Latin dance in the South Island. She was among the first whose love of Latin dance was ignited by Kantuta in the 1990s. When she heard the music, “I felt it inside my soul, I was drawn to it like a magnet. It has heart and soul, and I felt like I’d found home.”
Her 25 years of teaching Latin dance align with her appreciation of its authentic roots. “There are no textbooks for salsa – it’s a street dance, it comes out of culture. You’re born doing it, you’re not taught and it’s just natural, like food and air and working and living. So is dancing – it’s part of what they [Latinos] do. And it’s part of family social activity.”
Although Kiwis don’t have this built-in pathway into social dancing, they can discover it through classes, parties and festivals. Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch are home to several professional schools and studios that cater for social dancers as well as those wanting to perform and compete. Numerous bars, clubs and venues host regular social dancing most nights of the week.
Dance festivals are staged throughout the year in the main cities as well as Tauranga, Rotorua, Queenstown and Hanmer Springs. Regional centres – Palmerston North, New Plymouth, Tauranga, Rotorua, Hamilton, Queenstown and Dunedin – have professionally run schools that offer regular classes and workshops. Some are migrant Latin Americans who bring their extraordinary talent and experience to our shores.
One is Greydis Montero Liranza. Born in Cuba, she settled in New Zealand in 2002 after touring the globe as choreographer and principal dancer for the hit inter-national show Lady Salsa. She co-founded and taught at the Cuban Groove Dance Company in Auckland with former dance partner Vivio Ramos, who currently runs it.
Since 2004, Liranza has been the creative director of the Aotearoa Cuban Festival in Rotorua, where she has her own dance school. It’s a fiesta of Cuba’s rich cultural, musical and spiritual influences: indigenous, African and Spanish.
In Auckland, Sri Lankan-born dancer and impresario Augustine Dias organised all-comers salsa nights pre-pandemic and is planning to launch a charity to fund classes in areas where kids don’t have many options.
“Getting more young people into social dancing could really help with a lot of the issues kids are dealing with – depression, body acceptance, too much time on screens, and just having a safe space to express themselves, have fun,” says Dias.
Greer adds: “You can open up your world to new experiences, new friends, to challenge yourself and gain new confidence – all of these things come from dance. It’s a beautiful thing.”
Jade Pearce-Young, 26, has been learning to dance at New Plymouth’s Alegria Latin Dance. “I love the community and the music, and I enjoy being in a safe space that allows me to move my body. Dance makes me feel happy, and my social life has benefitted from meeting so many amazing people who dance.”
Says Zhu: “With technology and life changing now, I joke around with my friends, saying, ‘Thank god I secured my future by being a dancer as opposed to being an accountant.’ Look at Chat GPT. Thank god I can dance!”
Take your partner
Salsa
Salsa means “hot sauce”. The dance originated in Cuba in the 1920s from Afro-Cuban and Spanish guitar influences – a fusion of dance and music styles including Cuba’s traditional son music, as well as mambo, rumba, cha-cha-cha, and cumbia. Fun, fast and energetic, salsa is the most popular of social Latin dances worldwide. A partner dance, salsa is embellished with solo footwork and body moves called “shines”. It’s also danced in a circle as Rueda de Casino, where couples change partners and move to a caller.
Bachata
Arising from Dominican Republic shanty towns in the 1960s, bachata has evolved over the decades with new sub-genres such as sensual bachata. Its roots are in certain African rhythms as well as Cuban son and bolero music. It is slower and softer than salsa, and many consider it easier to learn. Sensual bachata lives up to its name as a more intimate dance characterised by stronger body waves, dips and circular body movements with pelvic and hip connection between partners to create a lyrical feel.
Kizomba
Kizomba is not a Latin dance, even though it’s practised alongside salsa and bachata in social settings. From Angola, its name means “party” or “celebration” in Kimbundu, a Bantu language. The focus is on close body connection to create a smooth, elegant flow of movement, with knee inflexions and leans, at times resembling tango. It has a slow, relaxed feel with grounded steps. Kizomba’s various styles include kizomba fusion and urban kiz. Kizomba music is derived from semba, a precursor to Brazilian samba. Traditionally, the music featured acoustic guitars, bass and drums, but it has evolved with Western influences to incorporate more electronic sounds and beats.
Zouk
Brazilian zouk evolved from Brazil’s lambada dance, popular in the 1980s and 90s. Known for fluid and graceful movements, zouk’s body rolls and head movements are executed to slower rhythms, unlike lambada, which is faster, and the feet keep moving. A French Antillean Creole term, zouk was first used on the islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique to refer to night-long dance parties.
Merengue
Merengue is a form of Haitian and Dominican dance and music, and is the national dance of the Dominican Republic. With European and Afro-Cuban influences, the side-to-side step pattern, with bent knees and hips moving and upper body kept still, is often referred to as the “dance walk”, though the tempo can be fast and frenetic. Stories tell of varied origins in the way slaves in chains moved to drumbeats, or as a tribute dance to a Dominican revolutionary hero with a wounded leg. It is now a Latin standard that most find fun and easy to do.
Reggaeton
With its complex history, reggaeton is an amalgam of dance and music styles formed in Panama in the 1970s where West Indian migrants fused reggae and dancehall styles from Jamaica with local music. It spread to Puerto Rico, where it was infused with Latin American, Caribbean and hip-hop music, then seeped into mainstream pop culture in the US. Known for its fast footwork, body isolations and often somewhat aggressive or raunchy movements, reggaeton isn’t a partner dance, but is danced in pairs or groups. Its popularity culminated in Luis Fonsi’s 2017 hit song, Despacito.
Jennifer Little is a Taranaki-based writer who discovered the joy of Cuban salsa 16 years ago.