Listening to Frankie Ruiz, La Leyenda, disc 1. As “La Rueda” unrolls, I find myself thinking that salsa is really an ingenious dance, really perfect for the music it goes with. In its “street” form (as opposed to its performance form), it’s so subtle — step and center, step and center. No big strutting steps, very subtle sexual hooks put into your partner… well, this is as I’ve danced it with kids my age who’ve mostly learned it from friends, which is what I take to be the street form, and I haven’t spent as much time in salsa clubs as I have doing swing or tango… I’m going on a hunch here; bear with me.
Think about it: if you danced to follow those flamboyant horns, or with the vocals, the dance would be totally over the top. But you usually dance with the drums, which tend to move forward with the piano and bass at a casual walking pace beneath the horns. It keeps the dance from becoming something ridiculous, like, say, ballroom quickstep. Or cheerleading moves.
And this is why the steps produced by Dance Dance Revolution are so garish and awkward as a dance form (while making for a really good video game). I can’t think of any other dance, actually, where you dance to the vocals, and yet DDR asks you to do it regularly, especially at the higher levels. Witness:
etc. I wonder if there’s a study of social dance which specifies rules like this (don’t dance to the vocals) the way linguistics does.
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