Today I bring you an exciting dance to learn, it is called Capoeira. Capoeira is an Afro-Brazilian art form that ritualizes movements from martial arts, games and dance. This art was brought to Brazil from Angola some after the 16th century in the regions known as Bahia, Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro. Participants form a roda or circle and take turns either playing musical instruments (such as the Berimbau), singing, or ritually sparring in pairs in the center of the circle. The game is marked by fluid acrobatic play, feints, and extensive use of sweeps, kicks, and headbutts. Less frequently used techniques include elbow-strikes, slaps, punches, and body throws.

Rhythm is the heartbeat of Capoeira and song is the soul. Music can make a game play fast and hard, without music Capoeira is not complete. This is the excitement that Capoeira brings to you. Capoeira continues to grow in popularity and here in Panama you can also learn these fascinating steps and movements in their prestigious schools.

The Bullerengue is a sensual dance that means happiness and movements; the dance is originally from the Darienita black race. This kind of dance is made up only of turns and a dance step call “seguidilla”, where the main character is the women, the one who make with attitude and concentration the different displacements the make up the dance. The Bullerengue is danced by the women with their body in a straight position, doing slowly movements with lots of coordination and the man display all his energy in acrobatics steps and sensual gests. This folkloric dance has small and sliding steps, where the feet are leaning on the floor. The displacements are done joining the feet and bending the knees in order to maintain the grace and the posture of the body. The choreography is made up of straight lines and sometimes circles. This dance ends up in a huge whirl of couples. The instruments that are use in this dance, el Bullerengue are: the song accompanied by drums, the music box, maracas and slaps.

The Bullerengue is maybe one of the dances who puts more emphasizes on the black race culture. The Bullerengue is a ritual dance. This is a special dance that is danced especially when young people have the higher age. The Bullerengue also symbolize women fertility and its music was created for the pregnant women who couldn’t assists to the different dances. The costume is made up of “polleras” or skirts, barefoot women and a flower on their hair.

Merengue Dancing is a Latin America style dance and it’s the national dance of the Dominican Republic. Merengue is a combination of two dances, the African and the French Minuet. Merengue dancing is a couple’s dance, eventhough the original was not dance by individual couples and the original movements were only the shaking of the shoulder, nowadays it’s dance in 4 beats or 8 beats, and with a sensual movement of the hips. The basic steps counting on 8 beats is the most popular (1, 2, 3, 4 – 1, 2, 3, 4) and only after completing those eight steps you can change to some other movement. Merengue dancing is composed of three basic movements; they are the Side Basic Movement, Forward Basic Movement and the Back Basic Movement. The combination of these three movements, with small variations in body position, makes up the steps of the dance. In this dance you move in every beat.

From all the dances, merengue is the easiest to learn, if you can walk you can dance merengue. One important rule of all Latin dances is “feel the music”, is important to enjoy the music in order to make your movements look natural. The music indicates what to do, just feel the music, because dance is based in listening and moving to the rhythm of the music. Another important rule is the tempo of the music, the tempo indicates dancers how fast or pause they should make the movements, displacements or turns. The tempo is the important component that differentiates merengue from salsa, mambo and other kind of dances. The music tempo is about 120 – 160 beats per minute.

Here in Panama City, Panama merengue is one of the most popular dances and there are many academies where you can go and learn in the different workshops, more of how to do the merengue dance, the important steps and movements such as the position,  the correct posture, and men’s and women’s basic steps. Learning how to dance merengue is a great way to start familiaring with Cuban Motion.