M is for Move

M is for Move!

Dance…what happens between the beats of music….making music visible….add a partner and WOW!  What a rush it can be.  Move….move…move to the music…move with your partner, move with the music…just move.  It is good from for the body and good for the soul.  Move.

Dance of the Day:  Mambo

A Latin dance originated in Cuba in the early 1930’s.  It was originally danced to “Mambo” music (seems obvious).  It was wild and free with no breaking steps or basic steps.  Over time the dance was moved to Mexico and then in the 1940’s to New York City where it was sanitized for market-ability to the ballroom community.  By the 1970s, the current version of the dance (2 quick steps and 1 slow in any direction) or alternately “rock” or “break” step, step was widely danced, but to salsa music not mambo music.  The difference between salsa and mambo?  Mambo “breaks” on the “2” and Salsa breaks on the 1.  In other words, Mambo is simply cha-cha with a single “slow” step replacing the chasse in cha-cha that is danced on the “4 & 1”.  Of note is that the cha-cha came first….it was altered to become the Mambo.