Dancing Salsa in Miami... 
The Fascination and the Challenges... 
By Edie, The Salsa FREAK   August, 1999

I--Edie  gave a free "mini-workshop" at Club Mystique in Miami Florida. Over 200 people showed up to see our strange and different, "L.A. Hollywood Style" Salsa they've been hearing so much about recently. With only one week’s notice, we were shocked that so many curious Miami Salseros actually showed up! Thanks to Luis Maqueira and his group of Miami mavericks who put this whole thing together, we were able to hold a special "free" workshop to those interested in trying different steps and a style that they’re not at all accustomed to.  Special thanks as well to Jacira Castro, Miami's World Correspondent for Salsaweb Magazine, for working hard at getting names and emails at the door for future events and workshops like this one.

Luis Maqueira told us that during the workshop, he recognized top instructors and dancers from virtually every dance school in Miami. Most of them were... "curious" to see what the whole ordeal was. Luis Maqueira went on to say that it's not normal for Salseros from out of town to come into Miami and do workshops - in fact, he's never seen it happen before.

Miami has their own way of dancing Salsa. It is different from anywhere in the world. The only thing that comes close is Cuban style, but even native Cubans move and dance differently than Miami - trained Salseros.

Miami Salseros are very heavy into Casino Rueda, which is what the majority of the Salsa schools teach. Casino Rueda is partner dancing with a group of Salseros in a circle. The men trade off the women during the dance, while a designated Caller (man or woman) yells out each consecutive move. It is fun to do, and fascinating to watch. The calls are names of moves that can range from a single count of four, to several measures of the music (Side Note for the Analytics: A four-count is half a measure of music, and an eight-count is a full measure of music). The Caller is usually wearing a microphone, but often times must yell out or hand signal each move. The dancers must never look their partners in the eyes. They are trained to watch and listen carefully to the Caller, and in louder clubs, the Caller’s hand signals. There are hundreds of turn patterns. Each school in Miami teaches the basics, then develops their own calls as the students advance. If you’re not trained at a dance school or group class given by a dance school, you’re left in the dust to watch.

At virtually every club in town, a Casino Rueda starts off the evening.  The circles get so huge, that they form circles within the circles.  Having over 100 people in a typical Rueda is very normal for Miami. It's their tradition.  It's what they're good at.  The Rueda formations in Miami are some of the most complex I've ever seen.  The speed is incredible.  When performing, nothing is choreographed.  I took note at the International Salsaweb Convention last May, that even during the performance, each move was called out by the caller.  Nothing was rehearsed.  It is amazing to watch that many people in sync with each other.  Dancing Rueda in Miami is a blast!  It's fun to watch, but twice as fun actually doing it. 

Learning to Call is an art in itself. Indira, an instructor from the Salsa Lovers Dance Studios showed me the hand calls. It’s like learning how to speak with your hands to a deaf person! It was fascinating watching her lead a group of fifty or more people simply by watching her hand signals.

Miami is the Mecca of Casino Rueda. People from all over the world come here to learn the standard calls. Salsa Lovers Dance Studios and Dance Dreams have excellent videos ranging from beginning to advanced on most of the Internationally Standard calls taught at each school in Miami. Throughout my travels, I’ve noticed that in different parts of the world, every city varies in its Rueda calls, but the basics are pretty much the same. What is frustrating (especially for the man) is trying to participate in a Rueda in a different city or country, and not understanding the calls or knowing the moves. Salsa Lovers Dance Studios alone has trained over 18,000 Salseros on the Universal standards. Their excellent video series is available at http://www.salsaweb.com/ruedavideo/. If you’re from a different country, we highly recommend learning and mastering the Internationally Standard Rueda calls so you can understand and participate in virtually any basic to intermediate Rueda you are a part of. This is the only way we can unite and dance Rueda with each other – to the same language so-to-speak.

There are Italian Ruedas, German Ruedas, and even New York Ruedas. Each one is beautiful, but the down side is that each country has its own language – which isolates groups only to their indigenous regions. Having your own isolated Rueda Calling language is sad and very limiting during World events like the International Salsaweb Convention and Congresses. Your group ends up only dancing with each other. Outsiders don’t know your Calls and therefore don’t feel welcome to join your Rueda circle. Likewise, you can’t really invite outsiders into your own circle…

Your group may as well have stayed home.

Learn the International Standards– which are in Spanish, the Universal language of Salsa.

The Miami Salsa Scene Issue …
"Out-of-Towners" in Miami… There are issues? You mean in Miami? The Capital of Salsa? With the biggest Salsa scene in the world? So what’s the "issue" Edie? Hm?

Just as outsiders who don’t know the calls are not welcome into a Rueda circle, outsiders from out of town don’t feel welcome at the clubs.

Yup, I’m here to tell you, that the Miami Salsa scene
is quite different from the rest of the world.
Here’s why.

Ever since Salsaweb’s inception in 1997, I’ve had countless emails from travelers all over the world who have gone to Miami, only to be disappointed that they are consistently turned down when asking a woman or man to dance. I didn’t want to believe it, until I actually went there last year, stayed a month or so, and tried asking several men to dance at various clubs after not being asked to dance for about 30 minutes. I asked guy after guy. After the fifth "turn-down", I started believing my readers. And I RARELY get turned down ANYWHERE in the world I’ve traveled. If it weren’t for Jacira Castro (Salsaweb’s Miami World Correspondent) and Gal Ben-David, who introduced me to several of their friends during my stay last December, I would have sat out most of the evenings.

If you’re travelling to Miami and have never taken a Rueda "Miami style" class, and only plan on staying a night or two, Bring Your Own Partner (BYOP). You’ll get your fix, avoid the frustration of being constantly turned down and not understanding their unique dance style.

If you’re on an extended stay in Miami and are alone, I highly suggest you look up one of the local dance schools, and learn their way of dancing. More importantly, get to know your fellow peers in class so you’ll have people you know at clubs that won’t turn you down.

Miami Dance Style…
The Miami style comes from Cuba. However, it is not typical Cuban. There are many Cubans who dance on Two, and move entirely differently. They do more solo dancing in Cuba than Miami. In Cuba the man will let the woman’s hands go for a while. In Miami, this is a rarity.

Eye Contact…
Another thing that astounded me was that the men rarely look at you while dancing. In fact, I rarely got a glimpse of their eyes at all during the dance. My theory is that they learned Rueda first, where your eyes must be fixed on the Caller. Because of that, when they get to partner dancing, they are not trained to have eye contact. So don’t expect any eye contact. There is nothing wrong with this, there is nothing right with this either. It’s just something to "not" expect.

Ladies….
As a woman, another very important thing for you to remember to get you through the evening in one piece is spaghetti arms. If you’re a woman dancing with a Miami Salsero, you must have spaghetti arms. This is completely opposite from what the rest of the world is taught. Miami Salseros put women into the most amazing arm knots I’ve ever seen in my life. They are very intricate and difficult to learn. Some men only look for the "loosest" and longest-armed women to actually get through some of the moves they learn. When I first tried dancing "my" standard tension-arm style, both of my arms almost broke during a complex behind-the-back move a Miami Salsero did on me. My shoulder muscles were strained and hurt for two days. A hard lesson learned about the spaghetti arm rule in Miami.

Men…
For the man coming in from out of town, it’s a different story. A couple of women who saw my partner performing and teaching the "LA Hollywood Moves" workshop with me were eager to dance later on with him. Now I don’t know if it was his teaching, his dancing, or his good looks, but whatever it was, they were DEFINITELY interested in a "taste" of what his lead was like. The women looked fine dancing with the local Salseros they knew. They asked my partner to dance, and he gladly accepted. Here’s his story…

"Before we even started dancing, the minute I held their arms, they felt droopy and weak (spaghetti arms). The tension in the arms that I was accustomed to, and trained to expect was simply not there. I started in a basic, and by the fourth step, we were already off. The more I danced with them, the more I got lost. It was like speaking a completely different language. After the night was over, I got to speaking to Thomas, a local instructor from the Salsa Lovers Dance Studios. We were trading moves when he and his girlfriend helped us figure out the secret of how to lead a Miami Salsera. They explained that they step on every beat of the music. It was the tap-step on the Four and Eight count that was throwing me off. There is nothing wrong with this style, however, I can see why it would be extremely difficult for others to dance with Miami Salseras from different parts of the world."

The best thing for a man to do is take a few classes "Miami Style", master the Tap-Step on the Four and the Eight, and learn a few complicated arm-knot turn patterns. With a little added sultry sabor, you just may get away with looking like a native…

 

The Mavericks of Miami, going against the grain…
There is a small group of Miami Salseros (I like to call them Mavericks – because they’re taking risks) who have decided to experiment and try new dance moves and tricks not usually attempted in Miami clubs. They’ve taken all the Rueda classes one could possibly take, have past the highest advanced levels any school could teach them, and they’re now swimming upstream; against the current of the norm… and the locals are now curious… to say the least.

This group is the brainchild of Luis Maqueira. They organized our L.A. Style Hollywood Salsa workshop at Club Mystique’s prior to World Salsa Cruise trip. This group of individuals are going beyond Miami style. They’re taking moves from New York, and L.A., and incorporating them to Rueda and their own partner dancing. The first time Luis Maqueira flipped a girl, he wrote me telling me he was so excited about it, he couldn’t sleep that night.

Last year, Luis Maqueira took my "L.A. Style Hollywood Moves" workshop. When they saw how I danced, the style and the moves, and then took a look at Salsaweb’s Cool Moves video series, they were determined to try out the tricks, dips, and fancy turn patterns.

Against the Odds, Against Their Peers
Against pressure from other Salseros, including some local instructors, they started practicing with whomever they could find, wherever they could. After many bruises, falls, and a near concussion, they mastered moves only attempted by top Salsa dancers in Los Angeles. In their excitement they started applying these daring and complex moves not only in partnering, but into their Rueda calls.

Once a Salsero gets to the advanced levels, they can only dance with other students from their own school. They can’t participate in each others Rueda circles. This segregates the Salsa community by default. It is rare to attend another school’s party, it is rare to dance an advanced Rueda with another school. Social dancers are stuck doing Ruedas to the same basic beginner/intermediate levels at nightclubs. After a while, this gets monotonous. It is for this reason, Luis Maqueira and his friends decided to start experimenting new moves and turn patterns amongst each other.

With most of the instructors in Miami basically teaching the exact same thing (except at the advanced Rueda levels), Luis Maqueira predicted that the instructor or dance school who starts being innovative by teaching and applying new and creative partnering moves will be the most successful. As I’ve advised dance competitors in the past, the same rule-of-thumb applies to competing dance schools, and life, in general:

You’ve got to be just 10% more innovative,
10% more creative,
10% more hungry,
and have 10% more energy than the next guy,

…to make all the difference in the world.

Another example of innovation in Miami is an instructor by the name of Jami Josephson. Jami recently moved from New York to Miami and started teaching New York style Mambo. Her dedicated following is getting stronger and more popular every month. Jami, a former American Latin Ballroom Champion, has captured the hearts of many former New Yorkers who have relocated to Miami, and haven’t gotten used to the local Reuda and Cuban dance style yet. She wants to maintain the traditional Mambo style from New York, and have it grow so people can dance comfortably together in local clubs without having to learn each other’s styles. Jami, a beautiful woman, and an former top Latin competitor, has an excellent Salsa video series out right now, which can be located at www.learn2salsa.com. She teaches at the Hollywood Dance Studio or Dancesations in south Florida.

If you are interested in learning new and exciting ways of dancing Salsa in Miami, contact Luis Maqueira at Arcointl@aol.com. Luis Maqueira is not an instructor, has no classes, and doesn’t teach privates. He and his friends will however, work and challenge you, simply for the fun of it all.

Besides, that’s what dancing Salsa is all about… Remember?

 

A Salsera's own adventures in Miami...

Edie,
I just want to thank you for the information about Miami style of salsa.
The info. totally prepared me for what to expect. I copied all the info.
about Miami and used it as a guide. I went with a good friend of mine
that also salsa's. I told her the let down. We had visioned lots of salsa
clubs with many Cuban's dancing the night away.

Wrong! 90% of your feed back was absolutely right on. I went to six
different clubs, some suggested from the Miami club guide. First we stayed
a couple of days in Orlando and hit the Latin Quarter'. This place is
very ''tourish" but we had fun and danced. Guy's were impressed with my
L..A style and complimented me, I was proud to say I was from L.A and
that's were I learned. After the stay in Orlando we headed to Miami. We
stayed in a hotel on south beach and decided to check out another tourist
club, because we were tired from the night before. We hit two clubs
Cleveland's and Mango's.....a lot of fun!!! I got to dance but, the funny
thing was I wasn't having trouble like I thought (according to what I read)
but that was because I later found out he was from L.A (thinking he was a
local)!!! Ha, ha , duh! Then at Mango's I had a blast. It is like
walking in a jungle. The bartenders and staff where dancing everywhere
even on top of the bar!! They had a great salsa band that night. I got to
dance but not for long because this guy was absorbing my time by talking to
me, he was cute so I gave him the exception because it wasn't a real salsa
type of crowd.

The next day we hit the famous 'Club Mystic' recommended on the list.
This is were the reality hit about the Miami style. I went with the
intentions of 'observing', and that I did. Very interesting........yep, I
saw those spaghetti arms flying in all directions, I saw those groupies.
They were teaching a class and it was packed. Salsa-Casino was teaching.
Everyone seemed to be having fun. Me and my friend realized there is no
way we can learn that in a couple of days.

Miami style is the complete opposite of L.A style; we would have to
recondition ourselves and attitude to dance Miami style. First off I
realized how 'showy' L.A is and how we are more into 'indiviualism' (look
at me!). They do dance for fun, no show off's just fun. I love the idea
behind it but living in our town (L.A) it doesn't benefit us unless we
start a new trend.....which I wouldn't mind starting. The guy's are not
that friendly, but I didn't care because I just went to observe. It is
very clicky...but, that didn't scare me away....the next night we went to
'The Starfish club'.....it is considered the best and was rated A- (by the
Miami critics).

Okay, scene 3 different club different night....same crowd. I
noticed a lot of people from the night before. I saw some of the
instructors from Salsa-Casino. I was in a friendly mood so I was talking
to some people and checking it out. I noticed this one girl danced
different from everyone else....she kind of danced like us (L.A), I talked
with her and she said this is the best club for salsa, I told her she
danced good. She replied that she tries to be different....and that
everyone dances like the were 'cookie cut'.....very true. The club
atmosphere and decor wasn't impressive for being rated 'A-', that's because
we are spoiled with the Mayan, Bolero and others. Another girl stated this
was the best club. I thought they would love L.A's club's if they think
this is the best. So, after a while of torture, waiting for someone
to dance with (I knew this was going to happen) I got brave and asked one
of the instructors to dance....he seemed 'dancer friendly'. I asked him
and he smiled and said yes, then I warned him I couldn't dance like him and
threw in the..."I am from L.A", so hopefully he knew where I was coming
from and wouldn't break my arms. It went okay, I had to hold back my
style. You could tell he was getting a kick out of trying see what the
hell I was doing, it was comical...his name was Benny by the way. Then I
asked another and he said yeah, but didn't proceed, then I asked another.
The other guy accepted and I was on.....oops!! big mistake! I felt like
an ass! After dancing with him I almost ran out, I was so embarrassed!
But I thought no one knows me any way. Oh yeah, I forgot....there was
this couple dancing like us (l.A style) I wanted to ask the guy to dance,
but he didn't know English...I meet his partner and I told her that they
danced good. I told her where we were from and she got excited and said
that they saw Salsa Brava in Paris (where they are from), and got the video
and that's where they learned their style....in fact they won a salsa
contest in Paris and they won tickets to see Oscar D'Leon in Miami, that's
why they were in town and they also heard about this club through Salsaweb.
After that we went to Club 609 til 6am; meet and danced with some
traditional Cuban salsareo's........now I could dance with them.

My advise to everyone who goes to Miami with the intentions that they are
going to get some good salsa experience... is not to go thinking that.
Just go to have fun and if you want to dance bring a partner or go to local
or tourist clubs. The Miami salsa club list is created by the
professionals(correct?) and if you don't know how to Rueda you better
learn and be very outgoing to fit in. Make some friends through salsa
web before going to any different state, that is where you will get a real
feel for what is out there.

I love Miami and I wouldn't mind moving but to ME L.A is the best of best
for salsa. After this trip I appreciate being a salsera from L.A.
- Sandra