All you need is sencilla and vacilala

under Posts / Tutorials / Dancing about Salsa, Casino Last modified at:

More than 10 Cuban salsa figures with almost nothing to remember once you get these two building blocks.

My first series of casino classes recently ended, just in time for the holidays. However, along with some other outlier students, I didn’t want to lose momentum over Christmas break, so I started venturing into the wild trying to find figures within reach to self-teach. Along the way, I started to see patterns between all the figures I saw appear most, and I realised that I could double the amount of figures I knew just by understanding three new phrases: one phrase to learn vacilalas, two phrases to learn sencillas. And it worked.

  1. Sencilla (pa’ti, pa’mi and siblings)
  2. Sencilla continuado and sencilla mezcla
  3. Vacilala
  4. Vacilala cerranda (di-le que si)
  5. Sombrero
  6. El dos and doce
  7. Dedo
  8. Setenta (70)
  9. Enchufla complicado
  10. Ochenta y cuatro (84)
  11. Montaña
  12. Prima con la hermana
  13. Conclusion

This article first introduces two more basic figures (sencilla and vacilala) that can then be used to build all other figures. Along the way, we will also meet two “sub-figures” (enchufate and crown) that only take 4 counts to complete.

Sencilla (pa’ti, pa’mi and siblings)

A sencilla is a 16-count figure of two enchuflas in a row, where the first enchufla is prevented from reaching caída by doing an enchufate.

  • Etymologies:
    • sencilla means “simple”.
    • The second bar of sencilla is called enchufa-te, like enchufa-la but with te (“you”, the leader).
    • One of the sencillas is called para ti, para mi or pa’ti, pa’mi which means “for you, for me”.
  • Leader counts:
    • Phrase 1:
      • First bar: enchufla.
      • Second bar: enchufate.
        • 5: backstep with right as usual.
        • 6: rather than stepping in-place with left, raise the arm that connects you with the follower, and step forward under it, attempting to pass her on your right.
        • 7: turn between 90° and 180° counterclockwise, ending almost where you started except with some rotation and with your left foot somewhere in front of you.
    • Phrase 2: enchufla.
      • The backstep of this enchufla is also the step that finishes the rotation caused by the enchufate. Indeed, the enchufate is one of the rare figures that overflows into the first bar of the next figure.
  • Alternatives: the enchufate in the middle can be modified in multiple ways, and the name of the sencilla changes accordingly:
    • Sencilla arriba (“sencilla upward”): when the enchufate is done counterclockwise (the short turn, which is the default).
    • Sencilla atras (“sencilla behind”): when the enchufate is done clockwise (which is basically an inner turn for the leader, a.k.a. a peina-te).
    • Sencilla abajo (“sencilla downward”): same feet as sencilla arriba, but instead of raising the arm, you keep it down, passing her hand to your right hand. You then do the turn, passing her hand back to your left hand behind your back. Note: this is not an alarde, a.k.a. a clockwise hook turn with a hand switch behind the back.
    • Sencilla arriba alternando manos (“sencilla alternating hands”): same feet as sencilla arriba, but instead of walking under your left arm, you grab her other hand with your right hand, then let go of the existing connection, and use the new one for the enchufate by “licking your bicep” (the same cue we used on the 5-6-7 exitong a Cubanito). When you come out, revert to the original grip.

A sencilla arriba is also called para ti, para mi or pa’ ti, pa’ mi.1 I will keep using the term “sencilla” because it is modified more easily, as per above.

Sencilla continuado and sencilla mezcla

At your discretion, you could repeat the first phrase of a sencilla any amount of times, which I guess would make it a sencilla continuado. In particular, an enchufla-enchufate-enchufla-enchufate-enchufla is a quirky sequence you can throw in to have a laugh with your follower. Supposedly the steps of a sencilla form a triangle on the ground, so that the couple seems to circle around each other.

You can make this repeated sequence more interesting by using a different enchufate every time: e.g., first an enchufate arriba, then an enchufate atras, and finally an enchufate abajo. This gives you a sequence of 4 enchuflas totalling 32 counts, which I have coined the sencilla mezcla (“mixed sencilla”). It’s long enough to give plenty of time to think about the next move, varied enough not to be boring, not taught anywhere and hence makes you stand out as a leader over your peers, and it requires zero prior knowledge by the follower (enchuflas are tension-led). I throw this into basically all of my dances, usually throwing an alarde onto the fourth enchufla to go into exhibela.

Vacilala

An alternative 8-count figure to get from abierta into caída, as a replacement for an enchufla.

As pointed out by SalsaSelfie, because there is no backstepping in vacilala, followers who have no actual experience dancing casino are very easily exposed here. (If you ever need to explain to an LA follower how vacilala works, tell her it’s like a reverse cross-body lead with outer turn except she should start turning immediately and slowly, rather than on 3 and quickly.)

  • Etymology: vacilar means “to tease”, so vacila-la means “tease her!”. According to a lot of people, the vaci- part is the Cuban slang equivalent of the French “voici” which means “look here”, leading to the translation “look at her!”.

  • Leader counts:
    • Signal: the goal is to get the follower to step forward on 1, unlike what she is used to.
      • Starting from a guapea in the previous phrase, create more tension than usual on 6, and launch yourself away on 7 so that now both bodies are on one line, facing to the right.
      • Tap with your left foot on 8 and start increasing the pulling force on the follower’s arm.
    • Figure:
      • 1: step left and pull towards you and back (southeast).
      • 2: cross your right over your left, and turn her clockwise (the reverse of enchufla). This is quite tricky to lead, but just make sure you are never pulling her arm towards the centre of her body, because she will interpret it as a counterclockwise turn.
      • 3: left steps left.
      • 5-6-7: rotate 90° clockwise while taking three steps such that you can catch her in caída.
  • Follower counts: the goal is to do two 360° walking turns in a semicircle around the leader. Each turn takes 3 counts.
    • 7: you are now standing with your body pointing the same direction as the leader.
    • 8: tap with your right foot, preparing to step forward.
    • 1-2-3: step towards the leader and turn.
    • 2: walk and turn.
    • 3: walk and turn. A good point of reference: on 3, your back should be towards the leader, meaning you have now done exactly 360°.
    • 5-6-7: another walking turn with the same pacing. You’ll be caught by the leader at the end.
  • Alternatives::
    • Vacilala con la mano (“with the hand”) is when you hold her through the turn.
      • In some contexts (e.g. some rueda groups), this is the only variant of vacilala that is known, and so the con la mano is implicit.
    • Vacilala (sin la mano) (“without the hand”) is when you just give her rotational momentum on 2 (like throwing a frisbee) and then let her do the turn by herself. For followers:
      • Style your turn by raising your arms (remember: elbows first), twirling your hands, and coming back down by running both hands from the back of your hair along your neck to the front.
      • You can decide to not come back to him and start doing shines, since the connection was broken.
  • Video: Steven Messina gives a comparison of both vacilalas the 5 seconds after the timestamp.

Lastly: because vacilala ends in caída, the leader moves differently depending on the positional system he dances in. More about that in the next article.

Vacilala cerranda (di-le que si)

The name dile que si (“tell him/her yes”) is apparently given to at least 6 different figures. I follow one of these conventions and give the name dile que si to the figure you could also call vacilala cerranda, which is a vacilala where the leader closes the position rather than catching the follower in caída. This way, you use a dile que si to get from abierta to cerrada, and a dile que no to get from cerrada to abierta.

This is the missing fourth way to close that I referred to in my first article on casino.

Sombrero

Vacilala con mano, but with a switch to a right-on-right hold at the start, turning with both hands held, and ending with a crown.

  • Leader counts: for feet, identical to vacilala. For arms:
    • First bar:
      • 1: pull her southeast like in vacilala.
      • 2: point the palm of your right hand away from yourself, rotated counterclockwise so that your fingers point down. Press the fingers of the hand you are holding onto these fingers to transition hands. With your left hand, reach under your right arm for her free hand. Again, the connection is made using just fingertips.
      • 3: at this point, you should be in a “Titanic pose”.
      • 4: although no step is made by either person on 4, sombrero is one of the figures where counting the 4 out loud really helps. The figure doesn’t stop moving on 4. The arms and bodies both keep rotating even though the feet pause, and if they don’t, you will be late for the 5.
    • Second bar: crown.
      • 5: you are now in a cross hold. Pull both hands down.
      • 6: raise the arms higher than both heads.
      • 7: stretch your right arm to drop off her right hand on her right shoulder, and flex your left bicep to drop off her left hand on your left shoulder.
      • 8: let go of both hands and put your right hand on her back for a DQN from caída.
  • Follower counts: for feet, identical to vacilala. For arms:
    • 2: by this point, the leader will have switched his hand. In response, raise your free hand like it’s holding a platter. Do not put your hand behind your back.
    • 8: when the leader puts his hand on your back, you’ll notice that your left arm is trapped under his armpit. Solve this with styling by stretching your arm, rotating it upwards through the gap between you and the leader using your shoulder, until your elbow can go behind the leader’s arm and you can rest on his shoulder.
  • Alternatives:
    • Sombrero con mambo: on 7, keep holding her in the crown, and start doing a mambo step. Do as many times as you want (more than 2 is cringe) and then release the crown on a 7. She can do her styling on the 8 that follows. You can signal this in two ways:2
      • Change your grip from lightly touching fingertips to hooking her fingers.
      • Keep the crown raised longer than one count, as if you’re slowing down time. By delaying the end of the sombrero, letting the hands only reach the shoulders on e.g. the 1 of the next phrase, you increase the odds that the first mambo step will reach her perception before her body goes into a DQN.

  • Videos: Salsaficion and Steven Messina

  • Tips for leaders:
    • Count the 4 out loud. You will be less acquainted with movement on 4 than followers. Keep turning her. There is no pause.
    • Use the mental cue of DOWN on 5. The reason for this is that if you fixate on the end result of the crown, you won’t know from when to when the arms should be airborne and you’ll trace a strange path. By going down on 5, you separate the crown from the first bar and have exactly 3 points in space to reach.
    • Don’t forget your feet when you focus on hands.
    • Switching to right-on-right on 2 is the very latest you can do so. You can already do it on the 7 of the previous figure. This is a trade-off: a later signal means the leader doesn’t need to decide a vacilala becomes sombrero when he signals the vacilala, but also means the follower may have to react quickly with her other hand.
  • Tips for followers:
    • Press back on the leader’s fingertips so he can lead purely with friction rather than hooking fingers.
    • Follow with your arms. The point of following is that your muscles make your body move in response to pressure felt from his body. That means it is not the leader’s job to drag around the dead weight of your arms. It is also not his job to forcefully work against tensed arms. And conversely, even if you mean well, it is not your job to drag the leader’s arms in anticipation of where you think he wants to go.

El dos and doce

If you end a Cubanita with a two-handed enchufla that has a crown at the end (rather than a right-handed enchufla), it is called el uno.

If you follow up a Cubanito by a sombrero immediately after the enchufate, it is called el dos. The key cue to get this right is to keep your right arm high after the enchufate, exactly like in the video.

If you follow up el uno (1) – without the crown – by el dos (2) you get doce (12).

Dedo

According to Salsaficion, a dedo (“finger”) is a vacilala con mano3 followed by any sencilla.

The name of the dedo inherits modifications to the name of the sencilla: thus, the sequence of a vacilala con mano with a sencilla (arriba) alternando manos is called a dedo (arriba) alternando manos.

Note that the leader alters his steps in the dedo’s vacilala by turning an extra 90° clockwise. That way, he faces the follower when she arrives, and can immediately perform the enchufla after (since vacilala otherwise ends in caída and that makes the enchufla more difficult).

Setenta (70)

Setenta is a dedo arriba alternando manos where the first 16 counts (the vacilala, the first enchufla and its right-handed enchufate) are two-handed. More specifically, the vacilala is hammerlocking (leader grabs the follower’s free hand so her arm ends behind her back), followed by a sencilla alternando manos where both hands are held whenever nobody is turning. You could say setenta is to dedo arriba what sombrero is to vacilala.

Like in dedo, you are supposed to walk an extra 90°. This is true regardless of the positional system, because the hammerlock forces you to face your follower, which means either you stop where you normally stop and hence take away all her momentum after she has done only 360° + 270°, or she stops where she normally stops (after 360° + 360°) and you do a total of 180°.

  • Alternatives:
    • Salsaficion notes that there are multiple variants for setenta. They all have a sencilla at the end (with the first enchufla two-handed). What they differ in is the two-handed figure that makes up the 8 counts before, which will determine whether the sencilla is done linearly or triangularly. With vacilala, you should do it triangularly. With a two-handed vuelta derecha, you should do it linearly. Some people distinguish this variant from the dedo-based variant by calling it a “vuelta-setenta” as opposed to a “vacilala-setenta”, and think that vuelta-setenta is evil.
    • If you take vuelta-setenta and drop the last 16 counts of the sencilla (the enchufate and enchufla, i.e. the part of the sencilla that is never two-handed, not even in a setenta), you get the “35” figure described in my first article. If you make the same alteration to vacilala-setenta, you get what this video confusingly calls a setenta sencilla (even though there is no more sencilla; they named it this because “sencilla” means “simple” in Spanish).
  • Videos: Steven Messina and Salsaficion

A note for followers: we have now seen three arm variations of vacilala, for which you need to cultivate reflexes:

  • When the leader lets go on 2, move both your arms overhead to style your free turn. (This will also allow rotating faster due to conservation of momentum.)
  • When the leader switches his hand, move your free hand up to the same height as the other one.
  • When the leader does not let go and does not switch hands, put your free hand behind your back.

Enchufla complicado

An enchufla complicado is a sencilla arriba alternando manos. In other words, it is a sententa that skips the hammerlock.

Ochenta y cuatro (84)

Ochenta y cuatro is an overloaded name, but the simplest version – the one endorsed by the Norwegian Rueda Standard, if you care about such authorities – is the mirror image of setenta:4 a right-handed dedo atras where the first 16 counts are two-handed. That is: you start the vacilala by switching to your right hand (versus setenta’s left), again go into a hammerlock, then do a right-handed enchufla (versus setenta’s left), then do a clockwise enchufate (versus setenta’s counterclockwise, although you do use your right arm in both cases), let go of the connection with your left, and do another right-handed enchufla (versus setenta’s left).

For the safety of your follower’s elbow, here’s how you lead ochenta y cuatro: once you’ve switched to your right hand, extend your left arm forwards and down under your right arm, and while you extend it, twist it clockwise so your elbow points up. Now you’re offering an open hand palm exactly like you do in setenta, and your arm will untwist when she hammerlocks.

Montaña

A montaña is a two-handed dedo atras with a crown in the final enchufla.

I did not see the link at first, until Son Y Casino pointed it out. The trick is that “two-handed” here has a different meaning than it did in setenta, in three ways:

  • Making the vacilala two-handed no longer turns it into a hammerlocking vacilala, but rather into a sombrero (without the crown);
  • Making the enchuflas two-handed no longer means letting go of the right hand while doing them, but rather means that both hands go over the follower’s head;
  • Making the enchufate two-handed no longer means letting go of the left hand while doing it, but rather turns it into a hook turn;

I used to think of montaña as an interrupted sombrero, with a somewhat arbitrary enchufla-hook-enchufla sequence inserted in between the vacilala and the crown. This was difficult to remember and difficult to orient; La Suerta shows that the follower essentially walks around in a square while doing montaña, but actually, there are only three points of this square that matter to the leader and they are exactly the three points of the triangle formed by a sencilla. By instead thinking of montaña as being to dedo atras what setenta is to dedo arriba, it clicks right away.

Note that if you didn’t use your left hand, montaña and 84 would become the same figure: in the naming system in this article, taken from Salsaficion, that figure would be called a right-handed dedo atras (with perhaps a coronala after the final enchufla, in the case of montaña). Some schools use the name dedo to refer to this specific dedo. You can put your left hand behind your back during the entire figure after switching to your right.

Prima con la hermana

A prima con la hermana is a sencilla arriba, but replacing the first enchufla by a prima.

  • Etymology: a prima is a female cousin and a hermana is a sister. So, this is “the first cousin with the sister” (hopefully, just dancing).
    • Many use the name adiós instead of prima (so you’d also get adiós con la hermana), because the prima steps are reminiscent of a short adiós. To me, the essence of prima is the pull from abierta into a momentary cerrada, so that’s why I use distinct names.
    • Obviously incorrect would be adiós con la prima.
  • Leader counts: the prima is only 1 bar long, but I will connect it to the rest of the sencilla.
    • First bar:
      • 1-2: feet exactly like enchufla, moving so she will pass you on your right. You create the same tension with your left arm as enchufla, but instead of going over her head, you move into a closed hold. Hold your right arm up like you are motioning to give a hug.
      • 3: connect your right arm with her back and turn only 90° (not 180° like an enchufla).
      • 5: rotate another 90° and step to where she used to be.
      • 6-7: enchufate to rotate back by at least 90°. Like in a sencilla, the 1 of the next bar will finish the turn. If it is a prima con …, that next bar will be an enchufla.
    • Second bar: enchufla.
  • Alternatives:
    • Prima con la tia: the above, except the enchufla of the hermana is hands-free after the 2.
    • Prima con la familia: the above, except you do a cásate in the last bar of the hermana.
  • Videos: short summary by Latino Move and slowed detailed breakdown by Lau Dance.

Warning for leaders: because you keep your forward momentum when you close the position, and because you are intending to pass her on your right, it is surprisingly common for your right bicep to touch her left boob, especially if she is lagging behind in abierta while you are already passing her. If either of you is not of the disposition that body parts touching by accident is an inevitable part of life when dancing, you can do a version like this or this which I’d call something like a “chaste / respectful / careful / sideways prima”.

Conclusion

Knowing the different types of vacilalas and sencillas has huge leverage. While your peers are struggling to remember the individual bars that make up montaña, you remember “two-handed dedo atras” and know exactly what to do. You could take 10 weeks of classes to study all the above figures by themselves, or you could learn the underlying structure in an hour, remember it better, and immediately go apply your knowledge at socials.

  1. This term is not used by Salsaficion because they use this name to describe son montuno, the closed position step that goes back-and-forth. Although they are an outlier in this regard, everyone understood what they meant when “pa’ti pa’mi” was called out in their mega-rueda. ↩︎

  2. According to SalsaSelfie, this figure “requires a rueda call because there is no natural way to lead it”, but I disagree. I have given two signals that should suffice to lead even inexperienced follows. Besides, many figures in casino require the follower to have some background knowledge of what she is supposed to do (try doing a DQN or vacilala with newbies), and also, even someone without experience will naturally start to mimic the leader’s leg movements when she is being held locked in-place and somewhat surprised by what his legs are doing. ↩︎

  3. They call it a di-le que si, by the way. ↩︎

  4. This is true in casino and in real life: 70 and 84 are the two large avenues in the Miramar neighbourhood of La Havana de Cuba, bordering the northeast and southwest sides of the Monte Barreto park. ↩︎