Solares - The Key Concepts

Imagine...

Imagine you could dance any dance that Spanish America could throw at you.
Imagine you could feel the meaning of each song, each movement, as though born to it.
Imagine you had the confidence and ability to absorb new dances in a heartbeat.

What if this could be true?

The Principles of Solares

Solares is built on an innovative approach to multi-genre instruction – it emphasises the similarities of Latin dance, placing all movement and rhythm skills common to all genres at its core. It’s closer to how natives learn.

Wrapped around this universal core are the configuration skills – abilities which allow you to recognise a genre, tailor your movement and express the rhythms necessary to characterise that genre.

Universality and adaptability combine to produce genre agility: the ability to move seamlessly, instantly, between genres/dance types just as natives do.

Although Solares is centred on the development of skills, dance moves will be used:

• as a means of providing genre context;
• to build move and movement vocabularies;
• in cultural case-examples; and
• as elemental building-blocks in combination-building.
   

The Concepts

Yvonne Daniel, a dance ethnographer from the United States, studied, trained and performed as a troupe member of Havana-based Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba. In her book ‘Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba’ (1995) is the observation:

“African cabildos (secret societies) in Cuba contributed to the crystallisation of certain African dance/music concepts in the Americas: that music and dance are not primarily entertainment forms; that music and dance are interdependent; that their structure utilises both set and improvisational elements; that complexity and depth are built by the layering and interfacing of small, simple, diverse units; that the human body is paramount.”

Thus the key concepts are:

• music and dance are not primarily entertainment forms
• music and dance are interdependent
• their structure utilises both set and improvisational elements
• complexity and depth are built by the layering and interfacing of small, simple, diverse units
• the human body is paramount
   

Is Solares for you?

Take a moment to reflect on some key-concept questions:

The nature of interdependency between music and dance – ‘dancemusic’
How have the Europeans made us listen?
Why have the Africans driven us to dance?
Has modernity quietened our primal voices?
“How African is your dancing?” “How European is your dancemusic?” “When did you decide?”

The human body is paramount
How you move is who you are: your body and how you choose to use it is your CV.
How you move is what you believe in, so “what do you believe in?”
Your quality of movement is your personal history
“What are you saying?” “What would you like to say?” “How could you say it?”

Afro-Caribbean music-dance structures utilise both set and improvisational elements
Do natives learn your basics?
Do you let your partner dance? (macro-structure: marcas, combinations and calls)
Have you danced with the saints? (micro-structural elements, motifs and gestures)

Complexity and depth are built by the layering and interfacing of small, simple, diverse units
How much dancemusic can a single body hold?
How nimble are your feelings? (the spirit of dance lives in the in-between)
Would you jangle the keys to Heaven? (hyper-learning the elements and cues of improvisation)
Does your dance sing?

African-derived ‘dancemusics’ in the Americas are not primarily entertainment forms
Where you dance is who you are (social spaces of dancemusic)
Is it in your blood? (Ethnomusicology and embedded meaning)
Do the drums nudge you playfully? (giving as good as you get in live situations)

If you’d like to understand the questions better then Solares could be for you, because the answers to them can already be found inside you.

To express interest, you can contact Loo via:

• email: loo[at]salsa-merengue[dot]co[dot]uk
• email: parrandapage[at]gmail[dot]com
• facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parrandapage
• a chat at your nearest Parranda night
   

Loo Yeo