Latin

Latin Dance Classes

​

Dance Dome Dance Academy holds group  lessons throughout the year. Our Classes are taught in a fun, spacious environment.

Email us at info@dancedome.com.au to register your interest  or click here for more info.

​

Yearly performance course for dance at the Johnston street festival starting late September. Email info@dancedome.com.au to register.

 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Latin Styles

​

Cha Cha Cha

Cha-cha-cha may be danced to authentic Cuban music, or to Latin Pop or Latin Rock. The music for the international ballroom cha-cha-cha is energetic and with a steady beat. The Cuban cha-cha-chá is more sensual and may involve complex polyrhythms.

​

Styles of cha-cha-cha dance may differ in the place of the chasse in the rhythmical structure. The original Cuban and the ballroom cha-cha-cha count is “two, three, chachacha” or “four-and-one, two, three”. The dance does not start on the first beat of a bar, though it can start with a transfer of weight to the lead’s right.

​

​

Rumba

The modern international style of dancing the rumba derives from studies made by dance teacher Monsieur Pierre (Pierre Zurcher-Margolle), who partnered Doris Lavelle. Pierre, then from London, visited Cuba in 1947, 1951 and 1953 to find out how and what Cubans were dancing at the time.

​

The international ballroom rumba is a slower dance of about 120 beats per minute which corresponds, both in music and in dance to what the Cubans of an older generation called the bolero-son. It is easy to see why, for ease of reference and for marketing, rumba is a better name, however inaccurate; it is the same kind of reason that led later on to the use of salsa as an overall term for popular music of Cuban origin.

​

​

Samba

Although samba exists throughout Brazil – especially in the states of Bahia, Maranhão, Minas Gerais, and São Paulo – in the form of various popular rhythms and dances that originated from the regional batuque, a type of music and associated dance form from Cape Verde, the samba is most frequently identified as a musical expression of urban Rio de Janeiro, where it was born and developed between the end of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century. Early styles of samba - and specifically samba de roda - are traced back to the Recôncavo region of Bahia during the 17th century, and the informal dancing following a candomblé ceremony.

​

The international Ballroom version of samba is a lively, rhythmical dance with elements from Brazilian samba. It differs considerably from the original samba styles of Brazil, in particular it differs from Ballroom Samba in Brazil itself. It is often not always danced to music with a samba rhythm and often danced to music with less complex 2/4 and 4/4 time. Moreover its performance does not necessarily include the characteristic steps from Samba no Pé. In many other ways it though been influenced by the Brazilian version of samba, in particular maxixe, and subsequently developed independently from samba in Brazil.

​

​

Jive

In Ballroom dancing, Jive is a dance style that originated in the United States from African-Americans in the early 1930s. It was originally presented to the public as ‘Jive’ in 1934 by Cab Calloway. It is a lively and uninhibited variation of the Jitterbug, a form of Swing dance. Glenn Miller introduced his own jive dance in 1938 with the song “Doin’ the Jive” which never caught on.

Jive is one of the five International Latin dances. In competition it is danced at a speed of 176 beats per minute, although in some cases this is reduced to between 128 and 160 beats per minute.

Many of its basic patterns are similar to these of the East Coast Swing with the major difference of highly syncopated rhythm of the Triple Steps (Chasses), which use straight eighths in ECS and hard swing in Jive. To the players of swing music in the 1930s and 1940s “Jive” was an expression denoting glib or foolish talk.[1] Or derived from the earlier generics for giouba of the African dance Juba dance verbal tradition.

​

​

Paso Doble

Pasodoble, or paso doble, (literal meaning in Spanish: double-step) is a traditional couple’s dance from France and straight away adopted by the Spanish community. It is danced to the type of music typically played in bullfights during the bullfighters’ entrance to the ring (paseo) or during the passes (faena) just before the kill. It corresponds to the pasodoble dance (traditional and ballroom).

Pasodoble is a lively style of dance to the duple meter march-like pasodoble music. It is modelled after the sound, drama, and movement of the Spanish and Portuguese bullfight.

​

Famous bullfighters have been honoured with pasodoble tunes named after them. Other tunes have been inspired by patriotic motifs or local characters.

A significant number of Paso Doble songs are variants of España Cañi. The song has breaks in fixed positions in the song (two breaks at syllabus levels,[clarification needed] three breaks and a longer song at Open levels). Traditionally Paso Doble routines are choreographed to match these breaks, as well as the musical phrases. Accordingly, most other ballroom Paso Doble tunes are written with similar breaks (those without are simply avoided in most competitions).

​

Because of its inherently choreographed tradition, ballroom Paso Doble for the most part is danced only competitively, almost never socially — or at least not without sticking to some sort of previously learned routine. This said, in Spain, France, Vietnam, Colombia, Costa Rica and some parts of Germany it is danced socially as a lead (not choreographed) dance. In Venezuela, Paso Doble is almost a must in weddings and big parties, being especially famous by the song “Guitarra Española” by Los Melódicos.

In competitive dance, modern pasodoble is combined with other four dances (Samba, Cha-cha-cha, Rumba and Jive) under the banner International Latin. It is usually the final performance of ballroom routines.