Salsa : Exotic Dance

Street Cha-Cha & Merengue - An Overview
Street Cha-Cha is a great introduction for ‘On 1’ Salsa dancers who would eventually like to learn how to dance New York Style Salsa.

As mambo music and dance developed, musicians experimented with new beats and tempos. Triple mambo was created by tripling one of the beats very rapidly. When you dance to this fast rhythm, the scraping and shuffling of the feet produces a sound that goes a bit like "cha cha cha". The tripling in the rhythm translates to a rapid weight shift from left to right to left to right , and vice-versa. As such, a lot of the so-called ‘On2 Groove’ and ‘On2 Body Movement’ are almost naturally produced.

The emphasis in this course is again on: musicality; body movement; and, lead & follow techniques rather than patterns.

Merengue is the national dance of the Dominican Republic and to some extent, Haiti, its neighbouring land. There is a lot of variety in Merengue music. Tempos vary a great deal and the Dominicans enjoy a sharp quickening of pace towards the later part of the dance. There is a lot of hip action and rhythmic gyrating of the pelvis when one does this dance. Merengue dancing takes up very little space, and is ideally suited to small crowded dance floors.

Street Cha-cha & Merengue may be taught as a combined course or as separate dance courses. Read more about the syllabus here:

Street Cha-Cha & Merengue - The Course
Duration: 5 x 1 hour
Price: $80.00

In this 2-in-1 course, you learn 2 dance disciplines in just 5 weeks !!

The Merengue is ideally suited to small crowded dance floors and is easy to learn! It is essentially called the fun dance as it is very easy to do and you require no dance background at all.

Street Cha-Cha is a great prelude for the “On 1” Salsa dancer who wants to prepare himself/ herself for “On 2” Salsa, as the instructor teaches musicality, body movement and more.

There is a lot of hip action and rhythmic gyrating of the pelvis when one does both these dance forms. Once you learn the almost hypnotic Cuban motion common to both, all your dances - including salsa - will improve as you infuse your dancing with a subtlety of body movement that many recreational dancers lack.

Street Cha-Cha & Merengue - The Syllabus
1) Body isolation for calculated pelvic and hip movements - it’s not just marching !!

2) Musicality and understanding the rhythm of common Street Cha-Cha & Merengue tracks.

3) Introduction to Street Cha-Cha & Merengue artistes and how to differentiate Street Cha-Cha & Merengue from other Latin music such as Salsa, Cha Cha and Bachata.

4) Over 8 different dance patterns.