Group Salsa - Rueda (Casino Salsa)

Rueda de Casino (Rueda, Casino Rueda, Salsa Rueda) is a particular type of round dancing of Salsa. It was developed in Havana, Cuba in the late 1950s and early 1960s by the famous group Guaracheros de Regla and one of its main choreographers and creators was Jorge Alfaro from San Miguel del Padron, a soloist of a comparsa.

Pairs of dancers form a circle, with dance moves called out by one person, a caller (or 'Líder' or 'cantante' in Spanish). Many moves have hand signs to complement the calls; these are useful in noisy venues, where spoken calls might not be easily heard. Many of the moves involve the swapping of partners.

The names of the moves are mostly in Spanish, some in English (or Spanglish; e.g., "un fly"). Some names are known in slightly different versions, easily recognisable by Spanish-speaking dancers, but may be confusing to the rest.

While rueda is especially popular in Cuba and a number of places in the U.S., it can also be found in many other countries. Rueda has active groups in at least Norway, France, Germany, Poland, Russia, Hong Kong, Spain and UK. At least in Germany, some of the calls are in German.

Although the names of the calls are presently the same across the board, the different towns in Cuba use their own calls. This was due to the fact that when the pioneers of Rueda de Casino started, they wanted to keep others from participating in their Ruedas. Nowadays many local variations of the calls can be found. They can change from town to town or even from teacher to teacher. For example, if you learn rueda in London you will not normally be able to dance it with people who learned rueda from a different teacher. Furthermore, when a teacher runs out of calls but wants his class to keep going and make money, he often makes up new calls. This may decrease the fun of dancing rueda with people you just met, but makes for an expanding world of rueda.

Casino Rueda scenes may be seen in the movie Dance with Me and in the music video clip No me dejes de querer by Gloria Estefan.

Information Source: Wikipedia

In case you didn't know, Singapore currently holds the Guiness Book of Records for the following:
- Biggest Casino Rueda Circle
- Most number of calls in a Rueda
It was achieved during the Singapore International Salsa Festival 2006.

Here's a video clip of Channel 5's new report on the event: