Korea Carruseles

The upcoming 2 Hour Casino Rueda Crashcourse

Yeah, it's a big deal in my mind!  I'm instigating an event to try to get casino rueda kicked off in Seoul in some way that I can fit into. 

A friend of mine that I met through my blog, Hyun Pil Hwan (AKA: Pillhwan), has a dance studio and he's a very progressive and open minded guy (and a good dancer too).  He's graciously offered to host the workshop, for free, at his studio on Saturday, 4-6 pm, July 25.

His studio is absolutely gorgeous.  It's also only about 3 or 4 minutes from the the Yangjae subway station.  The only requirement we've set for attending the workshop is that you already know your basic salsa steps.  We'll take it from there.

When I say 'we', I'm referring to me, Suki, Neon and Michelle.

Suki referrs to the teacher and ladyfriend of mine who I know from Seattle.  She's one of the reuda gals I knew back in the states.  She surprised me a few months ago when I discovered that she was coming over here to teach English and, as it turned out, she teaches just a bit 'up the road' from me.  She's actually a little closer to Seoul than I am.  She's a bit rusty on her rueda but she's got a lot of it in her head and she said she'll participate and help as much as she can.

Neon is a Korean fellow who has a small circle of friends who have been doing rueda on their own for awhile here in Seoul.  His group isn't big but he does have a good style and dances regularly.

Michelle is a young lady in the www.korealatinandsalsa.com group with me.  She's very open minded and loves kizomba and rueda too.  She's helping me review and practice the patterns that I used to know and she'll no doubt be a big assist at the actual workshop.

If we have any success at this workshop at all, I'm hoping we can do it again later.....bigger and better.  And eventually get Jorge Elizanda or Nick Van Eyck or Sandra Sleeper or some other 'name brand' instructor over here to teach us.

Here's a letter wherein I've come up with a fairly 'final' list of the patterns I'm going to try to cover.  I wanted to find videos of all the patterns but couldn't, or haven't yet.  If you see any here that you know where I can find a video of, I'd sure like to have the URL for the video.  I'm trying to make it as easy and painless as possible for people to attend the workshop.  We've got a lot of good salsa dancers in Seoul but rueda hasn't really taken much of a hold here yet.

Here's the letter/list:

Let's study these good videos for this next weekend

Ola Casineros y casineras:

Here's some instructional videos that I think are pretty good.  I like them based on the factors of:

• the music isn't too fast
• the dancers are oriented correctly toward the camera and each other
• they don't stylize too much (a little is OK but some of these people overdo it)

All these patterns I'm giving you here are pretty intermediate level in complexity.  As you'll eventually realize and like more and more, rueda patterns build one upon the other.....i.e. the patterns get more difficult not so much because of the difficulty of the body movements themselves but primary because they get longer.  It's kind of like simple atoms vs. complet molecules :-)

I'll make some more comments on these patterns later this week but for now I just wanted to get them to you while I had them in front of me on the computer.

If you want to see the actual name of the pattern, you need to click on the BIG 'play' arrow instead of the little one. 

And don't forget that it's very easy to 'subscribe' to this guy's feed, or channel, on YouTube.  I recommend it highly.  If you find something you like, don't hesitate to send it to the group or to me.  Feel free to make comments or questions about it too.

Videos of current patterns we're working on

If you're a recent beginner in salsa or casino and you'd like to get a head start on learning, here's something for you:

In the process of trying to tell a probably-new-Meetup-member where the videos on our Meetup site were, I just realized that they're not expecially easy to find.  I might be able to correct that situation or I might not(depending on what the Meetup interface will let me do and whether I can figure it out or not).

Regardless, I'm going to put here some videos that especially will be helpful to any prospective new members who are barely beginners in salsa. 

Interesting interpretation of Cuban style

Here's a great video.  Great because of the music (Los Van Van), the spirit of the dancing, and the prettiness of the girl (catch the closeups of her smile).  And if you read the notes on the actual YouTube video you'll notice that the guy dancing is Chinese, from Beijing and he even has a website, here.

Here's the clip (they're really rolling!)

Another nice rueda from YouTube and Cuba

Here's another nice video clip of rueda from Cuba.  One particular thing I want to pioint out is the way the dancers take their steps.  It's a little different from the way it's done in other styles.  But remember that in cuba they're accustomed to dancing salsa on concrete, dirt, wood, tile and almost any imaginable type of floor.  And they don't have the luxury of the nice dancing shoes like many of us have either.

Yet, inspite of everything they don't have.....the one thing they do have is excellent rhythm.   Their steps look more like they're walking in rhythm don't they?

Notice also on the video that they start their steps on the 'strong 1'.  Can you tell?

Here's the video:

Nice example of rueda from Cuba

Here's a nice video of a group in Cuba doing a rueda. 

Remember.....salsa is a music, casino is a style and 'rueda' is when two or more couples dance together in casino style.  On this video, if you've got a good ear for rhythm, you might notice that the guys are hitting the '1' with their right foot.  I think it's safe to say that normally, most of us guys here in the US and Korea would tend to hit the '1' with our left foot.

As you know there's 4 counts within every 'quick-quick-slow' so........I coined (i.e. originated) the term 'strong 1' and 'weak 1' to indicate which sequence of 4 beats I dance on.  Usually, I can hear the strong 1 vs. the weak one very clearly and it really bugs me to be hitting the weak one with my left foot.

Sometimes however the music isn't written in even numbered measures so it'll happen that suddenly I'll just be on the weak one......regardless of what I try to do.  Usually in situations like that I'll try to give the lady a signal to 'double up' on one of her steps.

One of the things I also like about the 'timba' style Cuban salsa music is that it's very funky and rhythmic and seems to be written in 'even' measures.   That's important, I think, in a rueda because you want your choreography to be symetrical.

Don't forget about our series of 8 casino reuda classes which start at the beautiful Buena Vista Salsa Club in Seoul, S.Korea this coming Sunday, September 16th.  The club is located at the Honggik/Hongdae subway station.....actually connected to it through the underground there at entrance #5. 

These classes are brought to you by the great folks who run Buena Vista and also by our local salsa promoter and dignitary, "Spin".  I really appreciate the contribution of their valuable time and floor space.

As I recall, the classes are free.  They start sharply at 7pm and will last for an hour but there'll be social dancing after that and I'll be showing a few additional after the official class for they people who are interested and want to hang around.  About 10 p.m. I'll be heading back to Namyangju, where I have to be at work Monday.

I'm excited about it and looking forward to meeting lots of new 'casineros y casineras'.

Here's a couple of nice videos

Here's a couple of pretty nice casino rueda videos I found tonight on Yahoo Video.  I normally search the videos on YouTube.com but there are also plenty of rueda videos on GoogleVideo and YahooVideo and most of the other major video hosting sites.

On the first one...........it's one of the videos from the excellent casino rueda videos from the place where it all started, Cube.  I actually don't recognize most of the patterns these people are doing but it's still instructive to watch it because they are one of the best coordinated groups I've ever seen dance.  And also they're wearing green which which you don't see very often for some reason.

On the next video I don't recall where it's from (as I type this) but it's pretty good to and I especially like it because I recognize several of the patterns they do.

They start out doing 'para el medio' then at :14 do an 'abajo".  At :16 they do an 'exhibela doble'.  At :24 a 'dile que no'.  At :27 they do an 'enchufla doble' followed by a 'dame'.    At :37 they do a move called 'montana'.  At 1:11 they do a 'Kentuckey'.  At 1:23 a 'dame'. 

There's probably some more in there that I recognize but frankly I'm so 'whacked out' here at the 'late night' PC bang at Itaewon right now that I can't keep it straight.  So..........just enjoy the video.  We can be doing stuff like this in about 2 hours.

Here's the video for the second video:

Salsa Rueda De Casino - Funny blooper videos are here

Learn a lot from this video!

Here's a great casino rueda video clip (yeah....from YouTube) done by a casino rueda club in Aalborg, Austria.  Casino rueda really is done around the world!

What's valuable about this video clip is that they do lots of good, solid, basic casino rueda patterns.  they also do them 'on 1' and they stay on the correct beat during the entire video.  I think you'll like it.  Here it is (and then I'll make some comments:

• They start of, coming in, with 'son montuno'.  Notice that in some cases a lady is dancing 'lead'.  That's not uncommon in casino rueda  groups.
• At 18 (seconds.....see the timer on the video) they do their first 'dame'.
• It's actually a 'dame dos'....the leader skips the next girl and goes to the girl beyond her.  Watch for it!
• At around 27, the caller calls 'sombrero' (Spanish for 'hat').  Notice that sombrero, just by itself, does not include a change of partners.
• At 38 there's a real basic 'dame'.
• At 44 they do what is definately an 'enchufla'.  The addition of two claps makes it, I think, an 'enchufla con dos'....('enchufla with two').
• At 50 they do another enchufla.  This time with 3 claps.  I don't know....maybe I missed the enchufla with just 1 clap!  What I don't like here is that they don't start the claps on the 5.  I think it's more difficult timing to start the claps on any beats other than the 1 or the 5.  In our group that's the way I want to do it (and also the way it's been done in all the other ruedas I've seen).
• Right before the 1 minute mark, they start something that I believe is  called 'Toca la T' (i.e. cross the T).  Rumbanana.org used to have a video of that pattern on their site but they no longer do.  I don't consider that a basic pattern.
• At 1:14 you'll see'em start an 'adios'.
• At 1:20 you'll see'em do something called 'adio arriba' (goodbye 'up'.....it means here...'the other way').  Normally the partner changes dictate the leader goes counter-clockwise but thee are several moves, where 'arriba' is called, which dictate that the leader moves clockwise.  It's a great call to keep the leaders 'on their toes' (i.e. alert).
• At 1: 27/28.....I don't know what that is.  Some sort of enchufla.
• At 1:40 you see another 'enchufla arriba'.
• At 1:49 you see something called 'tranca'.  Tranca means 'gate'.  I might not be correct in the complete name but I know it's a phrase that contains the word 'tranca'.  Looks pretty good doesn't it?
• At 1:58 notice that they go into a 'dame dos'......the leader skips the next girl and goes to the next one.  See....once you learn a few of the basics you can use them to embellish the more complicated patterns.  That's one reason why learning the basics is so important.
• At 2:06 notice that they do a pattern that (probably) contains the word 'bulla'.
• At 2:26 they start a pattern that starts with a 'sombrero' but is some variation of it.  I don't know what it's called.  I've seen it done in regular salsa.....i.e. where the leader reaches under the lady's arm with his right hand.
• At this point also notice that they're not dancing on the best of surfaces.  It's like......grass!
• At 2:47 they start something that might be called an 'enchufla doble arriba'.  I'm not sure though. You can almost hear the call on the video.  Also notice how the leader has to really hustle (i.e. move fast!) to make it where he's going.
• Then follows a couple of patterns which I don't recognize at all but at 2:07 they do something called 'Evelyn'......it's a basic pattern that's really pretty simple.  Kinda like a 'spot turn' in regular salsa.
• At 3:09 notice that whatever the call is, it results in the guy switching places with the girl. 
  There's a few different calls that get that result and it's a good way to creat variety in the appearance of the formation.
• At 3:10 you see what I think is an 'exhibela doble'.  Exhibela's are basically underarm turns but because of the direction the lady is moving in rueda's (i.e. relative to the circle and her partner) it looks cuter than the in regular salsa.
• At 3:22 you see another 'dame dos'.
• At 3:30 they do something that, again, results in the couples switching sides.
• Then at 3:34 they do some patterns facing outside the circle.  That not common but it's probably not that hard to do if you know the calls (but I've never done it that I recall).
• And then they end it with that cute little 'sit in my lap' thing that the guy at Macondo showed us last week.

Pretty cool video clip, eh?

With maybe one or two exceptions, everything they did here was stuff we could learn in a couple of hours.  Imagine us doing something like that out here on the street in Hongdae.  You think we wouldn't be locally famous immediately??!!  I know we would.

The last thing I'd like to point out about this video is the music.  Casino rueda music is best done to funky salsa.  To me, all salsa isn't funky.  Probably most of the salsa they play around here isn't.  A lot of it is pretty good....for regular salsa.  But it ain't 'funky'.  And that's one of the reasons why I like casino rueda.  You can have a fun time and put on a great 'show' without having to be a dance professional.

The fun of doing that is what I hope that we can share with others as our group grows.

All we gotta do is get started.  So........I hope we get started soon.  See you Monday?

Saturday night update...

Several items for this post:

• Bahia Salsa Club in Hongdae
• Recommended online video clip
• We need to get our program kicked off soon!
• I'm going to be the 'correspondent' for.......

I went over Bahia Salsa Club in Hongdae tonight.  I liked it.  It was not too crowded, the air conditioning was perfect, the music was good, the ladies were very nice and the iced tea was great. 

I also had some words with the manager (i.e. interpreted through a salsa dancer patron) and it seems to me that we could practice there just about any night we wanted.  Tonight the crowd started to thin out around 11:30 pm.  That tells me that we would probably have room to practive either early in the evening.  Or, it would be a good place to come to later in the evening if we'd been somewhere else already.

As I think about our options for practicing vs. dancing I'm keeping in mind that we probably won't be able to practice anywhere during peak hours.  We might be able to get in a few ruedas during peak hours but I think that would only be practical in the larger clubs like Caliente or Gachi or Son or maybe Turn.   Of course, we won't know til we try, right?

I went to check out the website for Dirty Guide To Salsa tonight.  I've got their 3 DVD set and it is one of my favorites because among other things, it's very well filmed and easy to navigate.  In my search tonight I discovered that their site doesn't look like it used to.  Matter of fact, all they've got on it now ( http://www.dirtysalsa.com) is a video teaser for the set itself but even that doesn't actually link to a place to buy it.  You have to figure that out for yourself.

But there were a couple of things on it that I'd like to call your attention too.

First of all, disregard the fact that they don't start on '1'.  They're starting on the 3 or something wierd like that but that's not a biggie.  The valuable thing you'll see there is some good examples of 'dame', 'guapea', 'enchufla', and 3 new patterns I wasn't familiar with.

The three moves are 'bullita', bulla alta, and pa'al media con dos.  Here's what they are:

In Spanish, 'bulla' (pronouced 'buyah') means 'shout'.  That's a fairly common call in ruedas.  In this video teaser they use a variation called 'bullita' which means 'little shout' (in Spanish when you add an '...ita' to a word it means ' a little.....' whatever).

In this video teaser, she called 'bullita' and that's what the group does......a little shout.  Then she calles 'bulla alta'.  'Alta' mean high.  Or in this case......louder.  So they give a louder shout.

That's an example of what I mentioned in an earlier post about how there's lots of simple little patterns and/or things we can do as a group that look or sound cool but are really pretty simple.

The other move they did that was new to me (but again pretty logical and plausible in rueda practice) was called 'enchufla pa'al media con dos'.  That means 'enchufla towards the middle with two........(claps)'.  And that's what they do.

It's a short teaser video.  Take a look and you'll see it.

Also folks, we need to get our meetings started pretty soon.  I'm going to officially invite everybody to the Monday practice at Macondo.  It starts at 7:30 pm.   I anticipate going to the Tuesday class too but frankly I don't consider that class as the same priority.  The primary value of going over there is actually that I'll have a chance to meet other dancers that have an interest in casino style and casino rueda (they're inseparable).  If we can meet over there to practice our stuff then picking up whatever we can from that class would just be an 'extra'.

I'm not officially involved in any of the teaching at Macondo yet although I would like to be.  Whether I do or don't, I think you cold benefit from what the Monday night teacher does and we can still do 'our thing' after the  regular class is over on both Monday and/or Tuesday.

If we'll get our act together I think we can 'smoke' any of these other groups in town. ('Smoke' means 'to rapidly excell beyond').

I went to Caliente Friday night and I think that would be a good place to have a practice on Friday nights....probably early.  I remember the first time I went over there. It was either a Friday or a Saturday.  There weren't really many people there until til later in the evening.

Regarding Caliente, there would most probably be some other patrons watching us.  If my previous experience holds true, those spectators would want to get into what they see us doing.  But once we get through the basics we'll have to not allow beginners to come into our original group because they'd just hold us back.  What we'd have to do would be to start another beginner class.

That's basically what Sandra does in here classes (in Austin, Texas).  She has 4 levels and she doesn't allow anyone to move up a level until they pass a test.  She also requires her assistant instructors to know both the leader and follower parts of the patterns.....not just in English but also in Spanish.

Personally I'd like to be able to teach our basics in Korean.  I think it would be possible because the words used to teach dancing are really a pretty finite set.  Toward that end, I'm anticipating startng taking Korean lessons with a private tutor here in Seoul on the weekends (I got a referral from a girl I met in a coffee shop in Itaewon today).

Next, I've been given the option (pending some administrative preliminaries) of being the Seoul correspondent for www.salsapower.com .  If you don't know, there are just two or three primary international salsa information websites.  One is SalsaPower and the other is SalsaWeb.  There might be a few others but those are the two main ones that I know of which have international status and coverage.

SalsaPower, even though the names doesn't say it, is oriented towards Cuban salsa and casino and casino rueda.  If I can get plugged in there it might give us some advantages in meeting new dancers who come into town and are looking for a casino rueda dance community to join.

My friend in Austin, Texas, Sandra Sleeper of www.streetsalsa.com , is their correspondent in Austin and she recommended I see if I could be the correspondent either in Houston or here.  So.....I did.

The other thing I want to mention is that I think we have an excellent opportunity to gain some notoriety and publicity in the international casino rueda community if we'll pursue my idea of making videos of the basic patterns as we learn them.  Nobody else has done that on the internet.........yet.

Some sites have a few videos of one couple doing individual casino patterns.  But nobody has a site with a comprehensive group of videos of an actual rueda group (i.e. 4 or more couples) doing the patterns in a systematic way to show new learners what they look like. 

It's a simple idea so I don't know why nobody has done it.  I can see  why the professional instructors haven't but you'd think one of the university groups or even somebody like StreetSalsa would have done it.......but they haven't.

So that's all for this post.  I'm gong to go over on YouTube and post another video or two for you tonight too.

Keep those feet moving!

P.S.  As soon as we starting doing some dancing within our group, I'll have some pictures and videos to put here on our site.

A couple of nice videos for you

Here's a couple of nice videos.  The first one I'd actually seen a couple of years ago.  It's a group from Vancouver, Canada.  I like their costumes.  Pretty simple but still cool and classy.  They look to be a fairly young group too.  You'll notice the somewhat dramatic opening they do before they actually start dancing.  I don't personally favor that type of opening but you see it a lot and I guess some people do like it.

On this next video, I'd like you to notice how the dancers sorta just walk to the music.  They add a saucey little stut to it but it's just a lot looser and more flexible than 'LA style'.  They guys aren't jerking the girls all around both partners have time to enjoy the feeling of the music.  This particular clip is from Cuba.  You'll see a lot of Cuban clips over there on You Tube.

Lastly I'd like to introduce you to a nice lady, a good friend of mine and also one of the most knowledgable casino rueda instructors in the US......Sandra Moro Sleeper.

Sandra (and an associate named Nick Van Eyck in Oakland, California) has an organization called Street Salsa.   She lives in Austin, Texas (the capital of the state of Texas and the home of the University of Texas) and every Sunday she conducts a 2 hour casino rueda class at a place called the Ruta Maya Coffee House there in Austin.

I went to my very first casino rueda class there.  My instructor at the time, Salsa Eddy, told me I'd probably like it and recommended I go.  So Eddy and me and a couple of Eddy's other students drove the 2 hour trip up to Austin.  The special guest instructor was Renee Gueits from www.salsalovers.com in Miami, Florida.

It was just an awesome day and I totally enjoyed it.  Needless to say, I was hooked on casino rueda.  Thereafter, I eventually bought some DVDs, Eddy taught some classes and I went back to Sandra's classes on Sunday in Austin several more times.  That's how I got into casino rueda.

Sandra's is where I learned the majority of the casio rueda that I know (or...I should say....'knew' because I'm a bit rusty now).  But Sandra has an ongoing and very successful program there in Austin.  Sandra would be one of the insturctors I'd like to bring over here in the future if it would be possible.  Sandra has a  syllabus and I'd like to develop something like this for out group.  Matter of fact we might just wind up using hers. Click here to see it.

I'd encourage you all to invest in your own education by purchasing as many casino rueda DVDs as you can.  Right now, as near as I can tell, there's almost no live casino rueda instruction available here in Korea.  But that might change.

What you can do to help matters is tell all your friends how much fun casino rueda is and invite them to our classes and/or the classes at Macondo and/or the classes that'll be starting up at the studio in Itaewon.  Someday we'll be at the point where we can meet casinero and casinera friends anywhere and everywhere we go out.

The one thing I think we need to be cautious about here in Seoul though is that we adhere to learning rueda patterns and practices that are commonly accepted in other parts of the casino rueda world.  We want to 'setenta' that we do here to be the same as the 'setenta' they do in Moscow or Miami.  Most rueda patterns are done pretty much the same way worldwide and that's one of the beauties of casino. 

Let's try not to get into a situation where we're doing mostly stuff that we just dreamed up because we want our Korean based casino rueda dancers to be able to walk right into a rueda group anyplace in the world and be able to fit right it with relative ease.  And conversely we want rueda dancers from other parts of the world to be able to come to Seoul, and Korea, and be able to jump right into our circles and do most of what we're doing with no effort.  That'll make rueda stonger and more fun for everybody.