I used to do a lot of things before. I used to do “típico” or folkloric dance, I used to travel to the “interior” (countryside) and ride on wagons pulled by oxen. Even my quinceañera birthday party theme was folkloric and I remember dancing “El Punto” with my brother. Today I was reminiscing those days and just wondering about our regional dances. That is why I am sharing with you about folkloric dances from Los Santos.

The province of los Santos is considerate one of the most important exponents in folklore in Panama. Los Santos is not only the HQ of the world famous Carnaval Tableño but it is the birthplace of Panama’s folklore. There dances are of great variety, from popular dances like pindín to tuna, puntos, tamborito, cumbias, mejoranas, all of them with lots of passion and sensuality. The most popular dances from los Santos in the whole Panama are:

The Cumbia Santeña:  One of the most popular dances in Panama.  It consists in four forms of steps:  paseo (a traveling step), seguidilla (another traveling step), cruces (the couple dance a crossing step) y zapateo (tapping step).  La cumbia has giving birth to a popular dance you can find in salons and bars around the country: pindín.  The cumbia santeña has four important variants:

• Cumbia Cerrada (Close Cumbia): A fast dance where in the seguidilla step a circle is form and closes the formation to open up again.
• Cumbia Abierta (Open Cumbia): A slow dance.
• Cumbia Zapateada ( Tapping Cumbia): Tap movements accompany the music.
• Cumbia Atravesada ( Crossing Cumbia):  a very fast and happy dance.

Tamboritos (Drums Dance): These drums are of Spanish origins and they are of melodic and lovely rhythm with tales of love, passion, sentimental, or it can be of insults, hard and rebellions.  They also tell about animals like iguana, dove, and snake.  And tamborito has two important variants:

• Tambor del Norte ( Northern Drum):  It is a soft drum and the dancers execute soft sensual movements.
• Tambor Corrido ( Running Drum):  Faster paces drum than the tambor del norte.

Also the Dirty Devils are from Los Santos regions, check my pass blogs to learn more about them.

It is difficult for me to explain in great detail how this dances are performed or explain the steps.  I am not very sure if the translation in English is correct.  But I just wanted to share a little about Panama’s dances.  I have added a little video that I hope can give you some light on Panamanian dances. Of course, this video is courtesy of youtube.com.