Rican style
Rican style... Lets call this street rican style. For Studio rican style is the 2,3,4 6,7,8 as some NY dancers do it. Or the Paladium Style...
What is known as the rican style is almost the same as the cumbia step, with a little slide of the foot forward/cick of heel/tap of toe foot forward while in the middle stop, that being the 4 and the 8. All the tapping, cicking, sliding is done with the same foot that is on the way to either hit the 2 or the 6. It differs with cumbia in that Ricans don't jump when they dance or over exert the movements while in the middle stop. Columbians tend to get "off" beat because they like to move a lot on the 4 and 8. Rican street basic step can be compared very closely to the cuban step. All of their patterns if any originate from there. However patters are very few and far between. If spins are taken, each spin is done on a half count/4 beats, both by male and females. This style is very famous in NY with the Older folks as well as those who say they were taught by their old schoolers, or their parents. Ricans who use this style tend to slide their feet a lot. Their arms are always in front of their chests as well as the elbows tight to the sides. A very lot of circular hand movement and the sway of their hips is far less noticeable than that of cubans. Ricans lean somewhat forward, with their butts seeeming to sticking out. It isn't consider one of the big 3, however, when someone in PR is street taught they will most likely be referring to what I've mentioned above, not really any "kind" of Studio taught dancing. It is more of a Island wide subconscious culutral body movement for salsa.
But if we are talking about what some consider the power2 rican style, Then the dancing style has very little to do with feet placement. It is all about body placement and movement, this style is more of a suave one, very little solos, and not very many fancy moves by the males as compared to NY style. In my opinion they over emphasize the lady making the less expirienced male dancers look like a striper pole. I had the oportunity to hangout my last visit to PR with 2 groups that perform regularly at the congressos. I happend to notice the similarity off all of the dancers no matter what school they went to. By similarity I mean hand, body movements as well as the translation of the song into a dance. The males where somewhat reserved, almost seeming that the ladies "out-classed" way too much. To the point I had to mention to one of the guys that dancing salsa was like making love to a woman. You gotta move that body boy!! Although it was refreshing to see the difference in styles from PR to NY on2 dancing. I couldn't help but to think that they are limited by that which finds itself in the island as opposed to what we have in NY which is a lot of different styles.
Hope that helped some...
