the pot calls the kettle black
About a week ago I found this post on addicted2Salsa.com:
I have been watching the ‘Dancing with the Stars‘ show for a while now and I have grown accustomed to watching great ballroom dances and good non-Latin Latin dance routines. I praise the celebrity dancersprofessional dancers on the show are required to dance a specific genre of dance, such as salsa, and we come to find out that they don’t know what is real salsa dancing. Now, I do understand that there are different styles of salsa dancing around the world. My judgment takes this into account. However, when you slap on stereotypical non-salsa dance steps with house music and state that you are salsa dancing – that is a for their hard work and determination in learning something completely new to them. This is nothing against them because I truly admire their progress. However, I always have an issue when the whole different story. The video below is what gives salsa dancing an improper typecast compared to what you and I know and love.
My biggest gripe with the whole thing is the judges. While Carrie Ann Inaba is measuring entertainment value and Bruno Tonioli is measuring timing (you can see him hit the table when couples dance), Len Goodman is supposed to be judge who prefers traditional steps and music. Len usually criticizes couples when they don’t follow proper dance structure in terms of proper steps for the assigned dance, but last night was a different story. I have finally come to accept no judge or professional dancer in the show knows what is real salsa dancing.
See for yourself at the judges reaction and let me know what you think!”
Naturally I chuckled because this is an American Salsa website!
Here is my reply to which I am still waiting for a reply:
Pot calling the kettle black. With all due respect guys, the choreography on that video was not too far off from I typically see taught/danced in the American style (LA/NY) circles.
And to be perfectly honest, though less obvious visually, it’s the similarities of underlying philosophies that in my opinion bring the two -ballroom and American Salsa- close together: preference toward simple repetitive music, surface musicality, the “Salsatization” of other genres of music, and an overall homogeneous appearance.
Not everything is Salsa. In this case people are knocking on the ballroom guys for dancing Salsa to house music. That’s really not fair. How many times have you seen American stylists dance right over a Rumba Guaguanco drum pattern and completely ignore it? Or just as you begin to really feel that little Plena coming, you notice that no one is even listening. Turn patterns play over and over again.
This could be out of ignorance or preference. But in either case, you are moving your body in a way that is really unrelated to the DNA of what you are listening to and lots are guilty of this -not just these ballroom guys. In fact, I just watched a video on this site of a dance company perform a beautiful choreography with delightful elements of modern dance. However, their movements during the Rumba portion had nothing to do with Rumba, but the performance was still far better than what I usually see.
Be careful with words like ‘fake’ etc. This is a very gray area and depends on who you ask. The old Cuban guy will say it’s all fake. The Yoruba dancer might say that Cuban Orisha dance is slightly off the mark from its west African counterpart.
Evolution and authenticity can co-exist. In fact, nowadays, I feel that any kind of movement that is danced from an emotional base is AUTHENTIC. I don’t care if you are doing Mambo or Casino. If you are an emotionless dancer, you are just that. The steps themselves are completely empty without a soul to power them. Granted, there tends to be certain philosophical traits that I feel are more common with American stylists, and this tends to really move them away from dancing “authentically” especially in comparison to say Modern, Tango or even Afro-Cuban where emotion and expression take center stage. But it doesn’t have to be like this, it really depends on you and where YOU want to dance from. Do you want to be authentic or not? If so, don’t change your style, change where you dance from.
So to make an overly long post short, we should try not to knock on the next guy for being fake before taking a long look at ourselves. I have made this mistake in the past and have now realized that authenticity simply means human.
If you make an effort to touch others with your dance at a human level, everything else will fall into place.”
What gets me is that an American Salsa site -a really good site by the way- would even want to open that can of worms and call another Salsa style “fake”. Interesting.
Related posts:
- Malcolm Ex: The Not-So-Necessary Refining upon Black Movement in Salsa Dance
- should instructors teach steps before clave and music?
- musicality made simple: becoming aware of change.
- salsa. the good ‘ol american way.
Amen, I love your remark about emotional base.
It’s very true. Unfortunately, this means work and having to look deeper into yourself and your dance.
But if everyone was an amazing dancer, how would you define amazing?
