Need advice on how to combine latin dancing for a wedding

[classy1]

My fiance and I wanted to do something out of the ordinary for our first dance next year at our wedding. Is there a way to combine merengue, rumba and salsa together? Also, are there contemporary songs that would work for this, or maybe even a song that is not necessarily salsa, but lends itself to the moves. We are not pros by any stretch and learned latin dance recently and fell in love with it. We want our first dance to be sensual and passionate looking, not that old boring sway from side to side. Any tips?

[pygmalion]

Hi classy1. Just wanted to say welcome. 8) I'm not a teacher or choreographer, so I need time to ponder your question. :?

Just wanted to say hi before I lapsed into lurk mode and let the resident salsa experts handle your question. :wink:

Good luck with the wedding plans. :D

[peachexploration]

Hi Classy1. Great to have you here. :D May I suggest that maybe you could locate a DJ in your area that could mix a CD for that includes music elements you want with a wedding theme. Then start the choreography from there. Are you presently taking classes? Or consider taking a few privates and ask the instructor to help you with the choreography with the music you've selected. Here's one thread where we discussed the subject. Hopefully, you can find at least some inspiration there. Music for a Wedding (http://www.dance-forums.com/viewtopic.php?t=3246&highlight=salsa+wedding) Hope this helps. Keep us posted. And again, welcome. :)

[classy1]

Thank you so much for the tip. I just looked at the link and I will definitely take you up on your suggestion. I am sure my Fiance and I are breaking all kings of salsa rules, but we practiced a slow salsa to I want you by Marvin Gaye and it worked perfectly during the intro to the song, but fell to the wayside after that. We are trying to find that perfect balance between embracing the latin dance we love and embracing our black culture too.

[peachexploration]

That's great Classy1. If you don't mind me asking, what time frame are you looking at?

[classy1]

We have until September next year to learn and perfect what we hope will be a jawdropping first dance that will have cameras clicking and give our guests somethin to talk about about :wink:

I am sure there are other types of sexy dance, but every time we see a sizzling dance sequence in a movie, it is usually salsa or tango. We just want it to look fabulous whatever it is.

[peachexploration]

Oh great, September weddings are nice. Tangos are nice as well. Very romantic and passionate. :D

[DancePoet]

Perhaps try Bolero! In fact, I heard a Bolero/Mambo like tune recently that was used in a performance and I might be able to get the name of it for you if you'd like?

Course I prefer the idea of Tango at my wedding, yet depending on any future woman prefering something else, I'm interested in doing more then one style, too. :)

[classy1]

Yes, I would love the name of that song. I love the idea of combining two different styles of dance. Originally I wanted to combine Tango and salsa and a friend told me that it would be impossible because they are on totally different counts. She did suggest that if I had my heart set on combining the two, I could switch to the second style of dance after he spins me out and brings me back and then the music could change. I welcome any and all suggestions, but I need to narrow it down soon. What styles blend well together?

[Sagitta]

Welcome to df. I have a friend who teaches Argentine tango and he dances salsa like he dances AT. So I cannot see why salsa and tango cannot be combined. Also, there are songs such as salarengues that combine elements of two dances. In the case of salsarengue it is salsa and merengue.

[MacMoto]

Welcome to DF, classy1!
I love the idea of combining two different styles of dance. Originally I wanted to combine Tango and salsa and a friend told me that it would be impossible because they are on totally different counts.
I've seen a few performances that combined argentine tango and salsa -- usually starting off with a slowish tango then switching to a faster salsa after a dramatic pause. Works very well, actually.

At the Geneva congress, there was a "salsa tango" workshop. I was curious so took the class. Turned out it was basically salsa danced to medium-slow songs with some tango moves thrown in, like ochos and ganchos. Cross body leads with a sway also looked very tango-ish and dramatic, and so did outside walk. If you take this approach, you don't have to worry about counts being different since you will be using salsa music only.

Another possible combination of dances is bachata and salsa. I think bachata works much better as a wedding dance than merengue -- it can be very romantic and sensual. I saw a wonderful bachata performance at SalsaMed that totally blew me away!

[borikensalsero]

I think a cha cha is worth a look...

When I dance cha cha, I do Mambo, Merengue, bachata and the 2 steps of tango I half-way know, to it.

They are on the slower side but not slow enough to sound boring, and have an added touch of spice over a bolero, especially if it goes on a little flute/piano/brass riff.

I think it can work very well as, you can get real close (face to face), you can pull apart and throw in a hot combo together, a beautiful dip, you can elongate the steps to fit a tango, and you can even merengue, god you can even bachata the darn thing... I believe that for a wedding song we can't get away from beautiful and slow. It would be beautiful for the guest to see each and every intricate move that is done, from hand placement to face movement, as not to miss anything that is done. Let passion slowly exude rather than speedily burst... :D

[classy1]

Thanks guys for the great suggestions. Keep em coming! We have 11 months to get this right.

[dTas]

what kind of wedding are you having? what kind of music to you normally listen to?

when you mention dancing a slow salsa, how slow are you talking about? is it practically rumba speed? if so... then why not rumba? which for the most part is a slowed down salsa (if you're talking about the steps)

i ask what kind of wedding because usually people select a slower romantic song for their first dance as man and wife instead of a high energy action type song and dance. not to say that its not a good idea but i'm wondering what kind of mood/environment your reception is going to be. traditional (what ever that means) or somethnig a little out of the ordinary? or even something "cultural" depending on nationality.

you definitely have set a good time frame to learn your dance though. 11 months is a good time to either learn a choreographed routine or learn a dance well enough for lead and follow (my personal favorite). i think lead and follow allows for sponanaity and more romance as opposed to a predetermined routine.

one thing i would suggest (a cautionary note)... don't get too caught up in the dance. remember this is your wedding, this is the beginning of your lives together. its not a performance, don't go out on your wedding dance to try and impress your guests. enjoy the dance for the two of you and everyone will get caught up in the wonder of it.

this is your time together and everyone around you is there to support you. no matter what you do they will love you for it.

[delamusica]

When you say you want to combine salsa with rumba, are you talking about American or International? With International it should be fairly easy to add some salsa steps, maybe even dancing double-time to the rumba music for a few measures here and there for impact. It might be harder to fit salsa into American rumba, but I'm not sure (people who know more about American rumba feel free to shoot me down on this. :))

[delamusica]

Also, it's really easy to fit steps from other dances into nightclub two-step (I know it's not on the list of dances you wanted to use, but it provides a really simple, moderately paced basic to work from, making it easy to combine it with other things.)

[classy1]

Just to give a little insight, I am not an expert on any of the dance styles. We just started learning salsa and I don't even know Rumba, so I cannot really answer technical questions or be really specific about how fast or how slow. I kind of need a lot of guidance on how to do our dance, thats why I am posting here. In terms of the style of wedding: Very bold, fun and unique is what we are going for, but we still want to have elegance as well. We both were dancers in high school and have had a lifelong love affair with dance. In fact, we are planning to have some Alvin Ailey type dancers perform at our wedding reception. Everything will be vivid and colorful and we want our dance to kind of reflect that too. In terms of the music we both typically listen too, my fiance listens to a lot of jazz and R&B, I am a bit more eclectic in my taste and listen to everyting from salsa, jazz, pop, r&B, blues to ambient downtempo house. With all that said, because of our culture, both of us have a heavy lean towards jazz and R&B, but we love salsa.

[peachexploration]

Oh Classy1, I forgot to point you here :arrow: Music Directory (http://www.dance-forums.com/md.php) There are quite a few music clips there with Artists information as well. :D

[classy1]

Feel free to post about styles other than the ones I mentioned. I think I grabbed those out of my hat, because they can be very sensual looking dances and certainly perfect for a newly married couple to showcase the passion they are feeling. I was at a wedding where a couple learned a waltz and it looked painfully awkward for both of them and it did not look like they were having fun. We know that the first dance will be a special moment for us, but that does not mean it can't look spectacular too. Not to say he's going to be throwing me on my head or dragging me on the floor, but a couple of sexy dips and some of those latin moves from dirty dancing would probably look great. Remember in the first dirty dancing how Swayze caresses his partners arms and in Havana Nights, the guys hand gliding across her chest (it wasn't sleazy looking in the movie, just really sexy looking) It is that type of energy that we want to capture. How do we capture that in a wedding dance? Thats why I thought about combining two styles and maybe two different tempos of music. Perhaps we start off slow and then go into something a bit more spicy (it doesn't have to be fast)

[dTas]

thanks for the explaination... it makes a whole lot more sense now. :)

i know what you mean by awkward waltz. that's just terrible. but that also usually happens when a couple shows before their wedding and say "we need to learn how to dance for our wedding in 2 weeks." :shock:

a rumba is just a slowed down salsa (for all practica purposes here). so you could do a salsa at half-speed to match the music and then speed it up to regular time by the end of the song.

or you could half time (rumba) during the lyrics and then burst into regular time salsa during the chorus.

it sounds like you have a good idea what you want and have received some good suggestions as to the direction to go. good luck! and congratulations.

do you have a song in mind?

[dTas]

When you say you want to combine salsa with rumba, are you talking about American or International? With International it should be fairly easy to add some salsa steps, maybe even dancing double-time to the rumba music for a few measures here and there for impact. It might be harder to fit salsa into American rumba, but I'm not sure (people who know more about American rumba feel free to shoot me down on this. :))

what makes you say that American rumba would be harder? i would think International style would be more difficult to add salsa to since usually its dance to slower music than American rumba.

but either style will work. they're both latin and give that slow sexy contrast to the fast action of salsa.

[classy1]

I don't have any particular music in mind, but would love suggestions. We aren't sure which direction to go, although there might be a handful of latinos at our wedding, 90% of our guests will be black people many of whom do not listen to salsa unless it is jazz infused like Tito Puente. IAs long as the moves fit the song, it does not have to be salsa. Like I mentioned earlier in my post, We experimented a little bit with Marvin Gaye "I want you" and then we experimented with some songs off of the Twist Of Jobim CD and a jazzy latin infused song from one of my old Boney James CDs. We are definitely open to experimentation with this. Ideally, it would be great if we found a fantastic instructor that could help us put this together. Not necessarily overly choreographed, but showing us how to combine the elements and work the song and convey that emotion to our guests who will be watching.

[Sagitta]

When you say you want to combine salsa with rumba, are you talking about American or International? With International it should be fairly easy to add some salsa steps, maybe even dancing double-time to the rumba music for a few measures here and there for impact. It might be harder to fit salsa into American rumba, but I'm not sure (people who know more about American rumba feel free to shoot me down on this. :))

what makes you say that American rumba would be harder? i would think International style would be more difficult to add salsa to since usually its dance to slower music than American rumba.

but either style will work. they're both latin and give that slow sexy contrast to the fast action of salsa.

I think that delamusica has a good point. Think about the basics for international and American rumba and compare to salsa. Which rumba basic is closest to salsa, not in terms of tempo but in foot and body placement.

[Sagitta]

When you say you want to combine salsa with rumba, are you talking about American or International? With International it should be fairly easy to add some salsa steps, maybe even dancing double-time to the rumba music for a few measures here and there for impact. It might be harder to fit salsa into American rumba, but I'm not sure (people who know more about American rumba feel free to shoot me down on this. :))

what makes you say that American rumba would be harder? i would think International style would be more difficult to add salsa to since usually its dance to slower music than American rumba.

but either style will work. they're both latin and give that slow sexy contrast to the fast action of salsa.

I think that delamusica has a good point. Think about the basics for international and American rumba and compare to salsa. Which rumba basic is closest to salsa, not in terms of tempo but in foot and body placement. Personally, I can do International rumba when almost any salsa follower, but doing American rumba with someone with a salsa follower who does not know it isn't as easy.

[dTas]

funny... i learned American rumba in both box and "mambo" patterns so for me salsa fits American rumba better than international. International comes across as more ridgid in it form which would make it more difficult to adapt to the freestyle actions of salsa.

for me the difference between American and International is the speed and which beat you move on. i know many the International dancers that have a very hard time breaking from their patterns and simply danceing thier style. ie: they must do a hockey stick, they have to do an alamana, anything else would be wrong.

Classy1: the music you describe sounds great. i haven't heard the songs you mention i'll try and find them and listen to them. can you suggest some other artists? or titles that you are intersted in?

[peachexploration]

I think a cha cha is worth a look...

When I dance cha cha, I do Mambo, Merengue, bachata and the 2 steps of tango I half-way know, to it.... :DI think Boriken is onto something here...(as usual. :wink:)

Thank you so much for the tip. I just looked at the link and I will definitely take you up on your suggestion. I am sure my Fiance and I are breaking all kings of salsa rules, but we practiced a slow salsa to I want you by Marvin Gaye and it worked perfectly during the intro to the song, but fell to the wayside after that. We are trying to find that perfect balance between embracing the latin dance we love and embracing our black culture too.

May I suggest including another Marvin Gaye for a Cha Cha....Listen to "Got to Give It Up". It's mostly considered a party song but if you listen to it, there is some mean Cha Cha going on. There's also an instrumental to this. The lyrics don't do much for a wedding. :wink: I wouldn't do this for the whole dance though, maybe it could be mixed in with another song. Just thought it would be a cool twist. :)

[delamusica]

When you say you want to combine salsa with rumba, are you talking about American or International? With International it should be fairly easy to add some salsa steps, maybe even dancing double-time to the rumba music for a few measures here and there for impact. It might be harder to fit salsa into American rumba, but I'm not sure (people who know more about American rumba feel free to shoot me down on this. :))

what makes you say that American rumba would be harder? i would think International style would be more difficult to add salsa to since usually its dance to slower music than American rumba.

but either style will work. they're both latin and give that slow sexy contrast to the fast action of salsa.

I think that delamusica has a good point. Think about the basics for international and American rumba and compare to salsa. Which rumba basic is closest to salsa, not in terms of tempo but in foot and body placement. Personally, I can do International rumba when almost any salsa follower, but doing American rumba with someone with a salsa follower who does not know it isn't as easy.

Basically I was just thinking that the basic for salsa and the basic for International rumba were pretty much the same except for tempo, so if you picked a song you liked you could just start double-timing for your salsa segments without really having to change anything.

[delamusica]

i know many the International dancers that have a very hard time breaking from their patterns and simply danceing thier style. ie: they must do a hockey stick, they have to do an alamana, anything else would be wrong.

I know this thread isn't really the place for this, but I just had to say that people dancing either american or int. style get stuck doing the steps in the original patterns that they learned - not just those doing int. rumba. But this is an argument for another thread . . .

[peachexploration]

Classy1, how's it going so far? :D

[Sagitta]

When you say you want to combine salsa with rumba, are you talking about American or International? With International it should be fairly easy to add some salsa steps, maybe even dancing double-time to the rumba music for a few measures here and there for impact. It might be harder to fit salsa into American rumba, but I'm not sure (people who know more about American rumba feel free to shoot me down on this. :))

I agree with you dela. :)

[Sir Charles]

You may wan to try Prodj.com and post what you posted here. There a re a lot of DJ's on that board and they may be able to assist you in putting together your music and/or djing your wedding.

[peachexploration]

Hi Sir Charles, welcome aboard the DF. :D

[pygmalion]

Cool, sir charles. Welcome. :D

[jamaicanspice]

hmmmm.....I've thought of doing the salsa at my wedding....now its just to convince the husband to be (whoever he is) to do it with me :D :wink: :D

[peachexploration]

JS: :lol: :lol:

[jamaicanspice]

:wink: :D

[pygmalion]

hmmmm.....I've thought of doing the salsa at my wedding....now its just to convince the husband to be (whoever he is) to do it with me :D :wink: :D

If he says no, don't marry him. You have until "I do" to get out of harm's way. :wink: :lol: :lol:

[jamaicanspice]

well if he says no I guess I will have to find someone else....any volunteers :D

[SurfSalsa]

Back to the original thread... how's the wedding dance going?

We did a tango to a live string quartet, only problem was that they kept going and going and going... discuss the time of the song before the time with the DJ or band!! Most songs are way longer than you care to perform solo!!

We had a few private lessons to choreograph a few extra sensual steps (we do tango in ballroom anyway) which was great - added nice flavour and something special, even for the dance peolpe who attended, but at the end of the day, the dance is for you!

If you talk about slow salsa - I would think of Orishas' songs too; I find their harmonising vocals extremely sassy, sensual and romantic. Most of their beats are just that bit slower than racetrack salsa, so you can ooze slow sensual salsa to it; and I'm sure you can mix rumba steps in there too...

Enjoy!!