Activities

SIDE-ACTIVITIES: This edition includes not only activities linked to Cuban popular music and dance fields but also to theatre, literature and plastic art. For more information click here Side-activities.

SALSA: This stage teaches Salsa Cubana style, known in Cuba as Casino Cubano. This style was born in La Habana in Casino Deportivo Club. The music structure is the same as Son Cubano but with new sonorities and arrangements that add important novelties in the relation between music and dance. Nowadays Casino Cubano is performed all over Cuba and it is universally reconignized as the typical dance style of Cuban people.

AFROCUBAN DANCE: This Folk Dance stage presents the different dance styles of African ethnic groups that reached Cuba during the Spanish colonization. Among the most popular and well-known dances all over the world there are the Santeria’s Orishas ones, arised fron Yoruba tradition. This music style is characterized by Tambores Batà percussion. Each Orisha has his own dance style, a specific rhythm and different arrangements between singing and dance movements. Afrocuban music and dance performances, can have a ritual value, and can also be performed apart from the religious cerimonies as simple artistic and folkloric expressions. Recently many groups and institutions were born in Cuba to recover and keep alive Afrocuban music and dance traditions.


SALSA TIMBA: The Master Juan Formell thinks that Timba develops together with the changes of Cuban music in order to adjust itself to the gradual evolution of Cuban dance style. The structure of a music piece can be characterized by some rhythmical changes, enriched by some Afrocuban rhythms and by Cuban Rumba. All these characteristics bring performers to dance in a more spontaneous way, especially remarkably moving shoulders and legs.


RUMBA: Rumba is an Afro-Spanish music style, with the prevalence of African rhythms. Cuban Rumba is a collective party that can be performed in three different ways: Yambù, Guaguancò and Columbia.
Its music is totally formed by percussions and it sings about love, life and all human feelings. Rumba dance is characterized by a great spontaneousness and improvisation, therefore Rumba dancers should have a profound knowledge of rhythms and Rumba’s clave to correctly perform all different styles through body’s harmony, coordinating the movements of shoulders, pelvis, arms and legs.

RUEDA DE CASINO: Rueda de Casino is a way of dancing Casino (also known as Salsa) diffused in Cuba.
It is composed of a group of couples in circle that perform figures and exchange of couple, directed by a leader.
It is a sort of choreography because all the participants have to respect the leader’s orders.
This way of dancing Casino is passed down from generation to generation.
By practising this choreography, dancers transform figures and Casino movements, thus creating the Rueda de Casino.