The 2008 Canada Salsa Congress ramps up the entertainment quotient with Caleño Salsa or Cali Salsa from Colombia.
Instructor and Canada Salsa Congress creator Jennifer Aucoin notes that,
"The caleno style is gaining in popularity as it is such a high energy version of salsa and the shows are such crowd pleasers. The Colombian teams are winning every year at the world salsa championships - super high energy, fancy tricks and so well choreographed and synchronized."
A quick search of YouTube.com finds some outstanding routines. Short clips of Son de Cali, this year's Caleño Salsa performers are here and here.
While Caleño Salsa show dancing is beyond what most dancers do, Jennifer suggests that there are two versions of caleno style - the version Colombians dance socially and the higher energy style used in shows.
Like salsa all over the world, Caleño Salsa or Cali salsa - the music and the dance takes its influences from many different sources.
The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia author Lise Waxer says that the El Paso Caleño or Cali dance step is a rapid double time shuffle on the tips of the toes, combined with high kicks and rapid footwork. Turn patterns and some style combines Cuban Guaracha and Mambo, North American Jitterbug, twist and the Charleston - all high energy dances.
Salsa and Its Transnational Moves author Sheenagh Pietrobruno fills in more details. She observes that,
"In Cali, salsa is a 'showy' dance. In the rural areas, it is performed in a closed - couple emmbrace in which the dancers sometimes move with their heads touching. Salsa in Colombia does not include the forward and backward movement found in Mambo influenced styles of New York and Puerto Rico. Foot patterns are alternations to the back or to the side in a step series known as 'Cumbia style.' Most Colombian salsa dancers move to the rhythms without numerous turns and spins. Colombian social dancing is calm and close, with dancers touching one another from head to toe."
Pietrobruno picks up on this when she describes salsa music from Colombia.
"The music emphasises melody, exciting lyrics and simple horn section. The music has a light touch and a spritely persussive feel. There is no forceful percussive element or intricate musical arrangements. Influenced by cumbia and curridao, salsa cali emphasises melody, exciting lyrics, and simple horn sections. The rhythmic phrasing of playing on the beat is mirrored in the Colombian way of dancing basic step. Dancers step on the beat. Puerto Rico, and New York step behind the beat.
Music and dance go hand in hand with music setting the tone for the dance. In Colombia the dancers took things into their own hands and drove the music to suit them. Recorded music took precedence over live musicians.
Waxer observed,
"Fast dance tempos became key for Caleño dancers. Upbeat pachanga was ideal. Bugalu was too slow. Kids played 33 records at 45. So Pete Rodrigues Micaela went from 65 to 85 beats per minute. Edie Palmieri's Palo de Mango would go from 160 to 220."
Pietrobruno observed the moves what evolved with the hi-energy uptempo music, "In the arueluloso and the griles, dancers developed high standards of athletic prowess and stamina, Inventing complex and virtuosic new dance moves."
She picked up on the language that Caleño dancers used to describe the intensity of their dance when she observed, "Local salsomanos (salsa fans) developed colorful phrases, azotar baldosas - whip the floor tiles, castigar la baldosa - punish the floor tiles; meneanco el esqueleto - shaking your bones; mover la angarilla - move the saddlebag ie hips; machacando pasito - grinding a step; brillar chapas; or sacarle brillo a la hebilla - polish the belt buckles.
They personified the 70s' frenzied spirit of salsa dancing.
Promoter Albert Torres brought Caleño Salsa to the mainstream through the Salsa Congresses he co-oroduces as Timothy Pratt in his LA Times feature "Salsa At The Next Level" notes,
"About 150 dancing couples from across Europe stopped in mid-twirl or mid-shimmy, dropped their jaws and nailed their eyes on a giant video screen."
They were watching 18 calenos "pumping their legs as if they had solved the problem of perpetual motion."
This was the first time they saw Caleno Salsa.
Pratt neatly summarized Caleno's evolution, "The forerunners of today’s piston-footed, acrobatic cadences came to Colombian shores in the 1940s via U.S. sailors, who showed the Charleston and other steps to black bar-hoppers in Buenaventura, Colombia’s Pacific port city. The portenos adapted those hops, leaps and flips to Caribbean music, particularly Cuba’s sounds."
Pratt continues, "Three decades later, the country’s political and cocaine violence pushed the children of those dancers over the Andes to Cali, a bustling crossroads in a fertile valley.
New York and Puerto Rican salsa also hit Cali in the 1970s, and the city moved to the sound of timbales, congas and brass as if it were home-grown. With drug cartel backing in the 1980s, the music became home-grown, as up to 100 salsa orquestas were formed, seemingly on every corner."
Pratt also notes the social and economic dimensions of Caleno, "Now it’s the children of Aguablanca who keep alive Cali’s particular style of salsa dancing, athletic below the waist and seemingly twice as fast as the styles practiced in New York, Los Angeles and the Caribbean. With dancers worldwide taking notes, it’s as if an exotic flower kept in a hothouse for four decades had finally been revealed.
The success calenos have seen, combined with the growth of the championships, is leading thousands in Cali to dream of hopping and stepping out of misery."
Son de Cali will be performing Saturday and Sunday 11 & 12 October 2008 at the 6th Canada Salsa Congress.
References:
Pietrobruno, Sheenagh. Salsa and Its Transnational Moves. Lexington Books, 2006.
ISBN 0739114689, 9780739114681.
Pratt, Timothy. "Salsa At The Next Level". LA Times May 23, 2007.
Waxer, Lise. The City of Musical Memory: Salsa, Record Grooves, and Popular Culture in Cali, Colombia
Wesleyan University Press, 2002. ISBN 0819564427, 9780819564429.