Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Amy Weisman de Mamani, a dance instructor with Salsa-Art.com. Let's talk a little bit about easy steps for Cumbia dance. First let me introduce this musical genre in style. It refers to a dance and music by the same name and it originated on the Caribbean coast of Columbia. It's really interesting how it began as a courtship dance among the slave population and even today you hear lots of themes in Cumbia songs about freedom and slavery. These refer also to Columbia's desire for independence from Spain and so you see elements of this in the dance. When people are dancing, Cumbia, you'll see a lot of slave steps where one is dragging pivoting one foot around the other as if one leg contained a chain and you'll hear it in the lyrics. You'll hear lots of discussion for desire for freedom and the like. But it's a very easy rhythm to hear and to dance and basically when dancing the Cumbia, we dance, a basic step takes place on eight beat of music, but we dance six of those beats and we pause on two beats. So, Cumbia steps can take place from side to side, from front to back, in a circle. What's important to remember is that we are always dancing on the first three beats. We pause on the fourth beat. We repeat to the other side, dance three beats and pause on the fourth beat. And generally, in Cumbia and in most of Latin dances, females will start with their right foot and gentlemen or leaders will start with their left."