Salsa Rueda Dancing

“Through salsa rueda, students build a new skill in dancing while immersing themselves in the cultural components of this performance art form,” says Director of Experiential Education Maren Anderson ’03. “The benefit is that students engage in something that they may not have a path toward in their everyday life.”

In true Drew fashion, the learning doesn’t stop once the Elective period is over. Drew offers an immersive DEALL program in Havana that further explores the intersection of music, dance, and language. During this program, students work with teachers and students at La Ena, a Cuban music school. Dance students work with professional salsa dancers to perfect and refine their craft, while music students work on their particular instrument with teachers and students from the school. All classes are taught in Spanish, providing language immersion at the same time.

“Our relationships with teachers and students in Havana have shown our students the global aspect and impact of what they are learning as not only a skill, but also a cultural connection,” says Anderson. “This activity and the many relationships Drew has formed through it is yet another way for our students to continue learning about themselves and communities around them.”

Learning salsa rueda at Drew fosters connections to the more immediate community as well. For example, this year’s dancers are fortunate to learn from the experience of two Drew alumni: Kat Luck ’14 and Jonathan Bolinao ’15. For Kat and John, exposure to salsa rueda at Drew awakened a passion. Both students danced in Drew’s salsa ensembles, participated in the Summer Cuba program, and even took classes at ODC dance school in San Francisco after graduating from Drew.

In the video clip below, students are rehearsing rueda de casino, a form of salsa from Cuba composed of moves called by an individual who is also dancing in the circle (as opposed to square dancing, where the caller stands separate from the dancers). You’ll see the dancers in rehearsal refining the steps and their timing as our choreographer Ryan Mead, from Rueda Con Ritmo, calls out specific moves for the dancers to execute.