Our Classes

Our classes blend Cuban style casino dancing pulling from son, cha-cha-chá, and rumba with Miami style rueda moves. Our students are also exposed to Afro-Cuban movements and contra-tiempo dancing. We also teach Casino partnerwork to help people work on translating rueda moves to partner dancing. We place a heavy emphasis on preparing people to be great social dancers. We love to have fun & hope to help people feel comfortable on the dance floor!

The Dance

Rueda de Casino is a fun and exciting dance that originated in Cuba somewhere around the 1950’s. Rueda is the Spanish term for wheel, hence the circular formation. In 1959 one of Fidel Castro’s first decrees was to outlaw casinos. The old casinos turned into empty halls which people used to dance. This is where the term casino came from.

The dance typically consists of multiple couples dancing to the same moves in a circle (rueda) intermixed with frequent partner exchanges. The moves done in the circle are called out by the “caller” who is responsible for keeping the circle moving. There are many moves done by countless casino groups throughout the world, but what is interesting is that there are certain common moves that can be found in almost all of the casino groups. Of course, each group has their own unique moves. Every move can also be danced as a couple outside of the circle, which is commonly referred to as “dancing casino.”

The Music

The most common type of music played while dancing casino is called Timba. Casino can be danced to any kind of salsa music, but Timba fits it the best. Timba was created in Cuba and is derived from Son, as was all salsa music. Timba became really popular in the 1990’s and continues to be so today. It is not often played in salsa venues because some people find it hard to dance to unless you dance casino. One of our missions is to educate people in Baltimore area about this type of dance, music, and culture by slowly integrating Cuban music at numerous venues.