Danced in a circle
Rueda de Casino, Cuban salsa danced in a circle
A circle of couples, one caller, and everybody changing partners on the same beat. It is our main point of difference and the most fun you can have in a dance class.
What it is
What happens in the circle
Rueda means wheel, and that is exactly what it looks like from above. Couples stand in a ring facing inwards. One dancer, the caller, shouts the name of the next move over the music, sometimes with a hand signal because the music is loud. Everybody does that move at the same moment. Most calls send the followers, or sometimes the leaders, on to the next partner around the ring.
So you are doing three things at once: dancing with the person in front of you, listening for the next call, and keeping the shape of the circle. That sounds like a lot and it takes about twenty minutes to stop feeling like a lot.
It looks rehearsed. It is not. Every one of those people is improvising, in time, together, because somebody shouted a word.
The effect is that a rueda is a group activity rather than a set of separate couples. When it works, a room of people hit the same move on the same beat and everybody feels it. When it does not work, everybody laughs and the circle reassembles itself by the next call. Both of those are the point, and somebody always goes the wrong way. Usually more than one somebody.
The calls are in Spanish and they come fast. You are not expected to know any of them: we have written out the ones you will hear if you would like to recognise them before Monday.
Before you join the circle
- We assume a handful of Cuban salsa fundamentals – the basics of leading, following and changing partners.
- If you are not sure you have them yet, come to the 6:30pm salsa class first.
- Still open level after that: you do not need to be an experienced dancer.
Havana, and after
Where it comes from
The story usually told is that rueda started in Havana in the 1950s, in the casinos deportivos, the sports and social clubs that also gave the casino dance its name. Dancers there took the partner dance they already had and worked out how to do it as a group, in a circle, with somebody calling it. As they invented moves they named them, and the names stuck.
We pass that on with one caveat: it is club history rather than documented history, and you will find it told slightly differently depending on who is telling it.
What is not in doubt is that the naming culture is still exactly how rueda works.
Schools and cities still invent calls and still name them after whatever was funny at the time. A rueda in Havana and a rueda in Brisbane share most of a vocabulary and cheerfully disagree about the rest, which is part of why it travels: you can walk into a circle in a city you have never visited and mostly keep up.
Why it travels
- The calls stay in Spanish everywhere in the world.
- A shared vocabulary means strangers can dance together immediately.
- Every scene adds its own calls on top.
Open level, every Monday
Do I need experience?
The Monday rueda class is open level. It is not an advanced class and it never has been.
What helps is some basic Cuban salsa: enough to lead or follow a simple turn and keep time. In practice that means being comfortable with three or four of the foundation calls, and if none of those words mean anything to you yet, that is what the salsa class is for.
That is why rueda runs straight after the salsa class on the same night rather than on its own. If you are not sure whether you have enough, come to the 6:30pm salsa class first and then stay. Most people do exactly that, and it is the reason the two classes are back to back. If you have never danced at all, start with Cuban salsa fundamentals and give it a few Mondays.
Why we teach it
Rueda is the reason Cuban Soul exists in the shape it does.
In 2015 we both competed at the Rueda World Championships in Denmark as part of the Australian team, and placed 4th in the world. In 2013 Stephen was part of the professional team that won 1st place in the Australian Rueda de Casino Championship.
That is competition experience, and competition is not what a Monday night is for. What it means in practice is that the person calling your rueda has spent years inside the form, and that the class is teaching you the real thing rather than a simplified version of it. There is footage of both on our performance videos page.