A note about two positional systems for Cuban salsa
Short disambiguation of two substyles of casino I have encountered in the wild.
In my first article about casino (a.k.a. Cuban salsa), I started by describing the three main positions of the couple (abierta, cerrada, caída, a.k.a. open, closed, perpendicular) and organised the rest of the article into a taxonomy of figures starting in a certain position and ending in a certain position. I’ve noticed, however, that two of the three positions, namely abierta and caída, can look different depending on the dance school. Since doing one differently often goes hand-in-hand with doing the other differently, there really exist entire positional systems for dancing casino, which nobody ever points out. For beginners trying to look up basic figures, this difference is not trivial, so let’s point out two such systems.
Overview
I’m going to argue that there exist two competing positional systems:
- El sistema asimétrico (the asymmetrical system), asimétrico for short: more LA/NY-inspired. Open position and closed position are in front of the leader with the follower facing him, caída is with the follower looking at his right ear.
- El sistema simétrico (the symmetrical system), simétrico for short: more rueda-inspired. Open position is to the left of the leader, closed position in front of the leader, caída to the right of the leader. In open and caída, the follower is looking in the same direction as the leader.
Diagrammatically, they look as follows:
Positional systems in casino. Left: asimétrico. Right: simétrico.
I was taught asimétrico in my real-life classes (and hence described it in my first article), and in rare cases I also see it online like with Yant y Polina. However, I mainly see simétrico online: Steven Messina explicitly describes this system as a triangle, where abierta and caída are left and right, and Daybert Linares adds to this that the follower shouldn’t just end up on his right (and facing the same way), but behind him.
Effect on figures
As someone who dances in asimétrico, the bigger difference between the two systems to me is really the caída position. So, what interests me most is how I should re-interpret figures that involve caída online so that they fit my style. The only real difference caused by the different abierta is that every guapea looks like the start of a vacilala (which starts the same in either system).
Arguably, the four basic figures that involve caída are enchufla and vacilala (abierta \(\to\) caída), exhibela (caída \(\to\) caída) and DQN (caída \(\to\) abierta).
- Vacilala always consists of two 360° turns for followers, regardless of the positional system.
- In simétrico, leader steps for vacilala are among the most boring, facing the same way the entire phrase (according to both Salsaficion and Steven Messina).
- In asimétrico, the leader turns 90° counterclockwise in the second bar, which means (since he already turned 90° clockwise to prepare for vacilala) he ends up at a net 180° away from where he was in abierta.
- Enchufla is a controversial figure. I know of four ways to do it:
- In simétrico, the more conventional way to do an enchufla would be what Salsaficion teaches: first change place with the follower by both rotating 180° past each other (leader clockwise, follower counterclockwise), and then each undo 90° (leader counterclockwise, follower clockwise) to end up facing the same way. Meanwhile, Steven Messina claims that the leader’s steps for enchufla and vacilala are identical, which is to say, in-place stepping without any rotation. The follower moves the same in both techniques.
- In asimétrico, the first bar always involves changing place like Salsaficion, but in the second bar only one of the two can undo 90° while the other no longer rotates. I believe that conventionally it is the follower who rotates while the leader stays put after his first 180° (this is how Yant does it), but in my own experience, I’ve always been the one rotating while pulling in the follower. That is: when I do an enchufla, I do the leader steps of Salsaficion, and expect the follower to bounce into the perpendicular caída rather than the parallel caída.
- Exhibela has to be done with the leader perpendicular to the follower, otherwise it is a sácala. So, how do the simétrico people get in and out of exhibela? The leaders turn 90° clockwise to start it and turn 90° counterclockwise (turning their back towards the follower) to end it.
- DQN is often the most obvious tell for which positional system is being used:
- In simétrico, the hallmark of DQN is the leader’s movement in the first bar: he steps away from the follower on 1 rather than in front of her, and he does not rotate on 3. All he basically does is take a step away from the follower and a step back. It is up to the follower to walk around him and clear her own runway, which lies perpendicular to what the leader indicates.
- In asimétrico, DQN is nicely dynamic: throughout the entire phrase, both the leader and the follower are rotating counterclockwise around each other (90°+90° for the leader and 90°+180° for the follower). On 1, the leader’s foot indicates the runway the follower will make use of. He gets out of the way on 2, and finally rotates the follower onto the runway on 3. Perhaps you enjoy the nonchalance of how the follower is completely out of the leader’s sight when he starts a DQN in simétrico, but to me, asimétrico doesn’t lose that connection and is the way to go.
Although it is possible to mix-and-match the style of simétrico and asimétrico, it looks strange. This video shows a couple whose abierta is from asimétrico (follower faces leader, rather than being on his left), with the DQN of simétrico.
A note on backstepping
I have not written anything about the controversy of back-stepping, and I probably won’t beyond this one paragraph. In short, there are two camps: those who claim that in “true casino” followers (and perhaps also leaders) never place a foot behind the body because “people naturally walk forwards”, and those who find no problem with followers stepping backwards. I currently fall into the latter camp and have not changed my mind despite having read the articles by Son Y Casino and SalsaSelfie insisting on the opposing view. (Interestingly, you’ll still find Steven Messina in the second camp, despite him advocating against a backstepping guapea.) The anti-backsteppers want you to change all the figures you know such that a step back becomes a step in-place at most, or if you can, a step forward. This is feasible, although it makes it more difficult to create tension and hence may not be suitable if the people you dance with need enough tension to be led.
The reason I bring up this two-sided controversy in this article and not another, is that I think the difference between simétrico and asimétrico – which I have never seen anyone point out, even though it affects how you are taught every figure – may actually just be a symptom of the anti-backstepping versus pro-backstepping debate. The key feature of simétrico is that in both abierta and caída (left and right), the follower is maximally rotated and shifted away from the leader. So, if she’s going to walk, it will have to be forwards. Meanwhile, in asimétrico, you are closer together in both abierta and caída, and thus the first bar of each phrase is filled by making her step back and then return to the same position as before the bar.
