Salsa and tango are different dances, but they both come from warm countries in which African, Cuban and Spanish cultures flow together. And both originated in the street, so they both have a down and dirty improvisatory aspect.
Salsa, which has its roots in Cuba, and tango, an Argentinean dance, had their heyday in the early 20th century, fading away when jazz and then rock 'n' roll stole their thunder. Today, however, the two are coming back, and have come into vogue right here in Ukraine.
Salsa, which has its roots in Cuba, and tango, an Argentinean dance, had their heyday in the early 20th century, fading away when jazz and then rock 'n' roll stole their thunder. Today, however, the two are coming back, and have come into vogue right here in Ukraine.
Pungent Sauces
"Once you jump into the ocean of salsa, there are waves and waves of opportunities within the dance to invent your own styles," says Powell Reinaldo, a 36-year-old sales manager cum dance instructor in Kyiv. "And rather than show off a complex set of figures and moves, it's more important to have an inner sense of dance; to be able to abandon standards, and improvise and master a sort of dialogue with your partner. It's very artistic."
Having danced since the age of five in his native Cuba (where he became a huge fan of Michael Jackson), Reinaldo attended military college in Ukraine. He started to teach break dancing and Latin dance while a student here. At a 1995 dance party he met Yulia Gannochko, his attractive dance partner, and together they founded Kyiv's Salsa Club four years ago.
"Salsa is like breathing for us; it's essential for our lives, even though it's just our hobby," Gannochko says. An economist by profession, the 26-year-old Gannochko is nothing if not enthusiastic. "We like salsa because of the music - it excites, it's joyful, it perks up the mood and adds spice, pizzazz and sensuality to everything," she says. "And above all, salsa is a social dance that allows you to meet new people and make friends anywhere."
Classes typically consist of between 12 and 15 people and are held twice per week, lasting between 75 and 90 minutes each. The cost is low, no more than Hr 15 per lesson, and there's no need for a beginner to buy a fancy outfit or shoes: running shoes and jeans are fine so long as they're comfortable to dance in. And it doesn't take that long to learn. Most students at Kyiv's various salsa schools say they felt comfortable with the steps and moves after just 15 lessons, or about two or three months. The classes start with basic steps and quickly move on to elementary turns and moves. As dancers progress, more sophisticated moves and even acrobatics and tricks are taught (typically into the second month).
Reinaldo and Gannochko say that before studying salsa (the word means "sauce" in Spanish) it's preferable, but not essential, to have a partner. But salsa classes are a great place to meet one, especially for men: there are far more women doing salsa in Kyiv than men. And choose someone you can trust as a partner, since so much of the dance is about reacting to each other.
Besides leading their regular classes and performing at nightclubs (Mambo, Fiesta, Caribbean Club and River Palace among them) and parties, Reinaldo and Gannochko are organizing the International Salsa Festival on May 1-4 to unite 150 salseros and salseras from Russia, Belarus, Estonia and Ukraine. At the end of May they'll host the fourth annual "Arriba La Salsa" competition at Avalon nightclub.
You know the cliche image, even if you don't know some of the vocabulary:
Crimson light; a red rose between the teeth and the sound of a bandoneon (an Argentine accordion); a tanguero fixing his gaze on a maiden, who returns it with a glance. Then the two approach each other from opposite corners of the hall before the drama really begins.
Then the dance itself, its postures familiar from a hundred tourist advertisements for Latin countries: the heads are kept close together, the torsos facing each other, the knees flexed, the legs elongated as they slink through their stylized movements. The dancers glide from one foot to the other as they draw a circle and cut the air in accordance with tango's basic eight-count steps.
"The Argentine tango is a contemporary dance, a connection from the inside, and a modern conversation between two equal human beings," is how the dance is described by a local aficionado, German-born architect Reinhard Coppenrath, who has been doing the tango for five years.
Tango classes cost the same as salsa lessons; many ballroom dance schools in Kyiv teach tango as part of their repertoire, too.
Where tango differs from salsa is, its practitioners say, in its emotional depth. There's an expressiveness to it that salsa doesn't try to match.
Beginners learn not only the footwork, but the smaller things: the quick twists of the neck that snap the face toward and away from the partner, and the emotive swoops and glides. The steps are easily learned in a week or two, and so it's more the interplay between the dancers that develops with each lesson.
Like salsa, tango's a product of cultural miscegenation. Early twentieth-century immigrants to Argentina, who left Europe to work on the railroads, brought with them their own music and dance traditions, and before long, dances like the polka, the waltz and the mazurka were mixed together with the Cuban, Creole and African moves already visible in Argentina. Add to this a bit of the air of menace that haunted rowdy communities of predominantly male immigrant workers, and a healthy dose of passion ("tango" comes from the Latin word "tangere," to touch), and you have the tango.
"Tango is a product of the grief, nostalgia, and anguish of men who left home to come to Argentina at that time in search of a better life," explains 23-year-old Liliya Nahorna, an actress who helped popularize Argentinean tango here after she had to learn the dance for a role.
Though Argentinean men often had to practice the dance in the streets with other men - worker communities were short on women, which might have helped up the passion level in tango - the dance became strictly co-ed after it was imported to Paris by rich Argentines. What had started out as a working-class dance, a sublimation of working-class sexuality and violence, became a high society pastime for rich Europeans looking for a passionate thrill.
Today Nahorna runs her own tango school. Husband and wife team Ihor Rubashkin and his wife Olena Lazovych run another, which opened just this January.
With the goal of building a solid foundation for tango in Ukraine, these dancers often perform at various clubs, Strike bowling club among them. They also plan to invite such famous tangeros as the Dutch Benna Barto and the Argentine Pablo Veron to showcase tango in the theater and elsewhere.
Tango, Nahorna says, "absorbs you and carries you away. For me it's hard to live without it, even for a second. It's like a drug."
Tango School
(in the New Theater on Pechersk)
3 Shovkovychna.
Liliya Nahorna, instructor: (8050) 721-1519;
lili-tango@mail.ru.
Tango School
(in the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture Center)
15/12 Pylypa Orlyka, 291-3671.
Ihor Rubashkin and Olena Lazovych, instructors.
Lanka Pub
127 Saksahanskoho, 220-6335.
By Julia Filippovskaya, Special to the Post
Apr 21, 2004 02:36
Salsa and tango are different dances, but they both come from warm countries in which African, Cuban and Spanish cultures flow together. And both originated in the street, so they both have a down and dirty improvisatory aspect.
Salsa, which has its roots in Cuba, and tango, an Argentinean dance, had their heyday in the early 20th century, fading away when jazz and then rock 'n' roll stole their thunder. Today, however, the two are coming back, and have come into vogue right here in Ukraine.
