What happened when dancers joined hands for the love of Salsa?
A Cuban-tinted idea erupted into an astonishing artistic blast in over 200 cities of 66 countries worldwide.
On Saturday, 29th March 2014 a lot of world citizens were surprised by groups of dancers who appeared suddenly on public places, danced together a fun group dance in pairs - Rueda de Casino and immediately after that dispersed into the surprised audience. This is commonly known as "flash mob", where a group of people who assemble suddenly in public places, perform an act for a brief time and then quickly disperses.
Rueda de Casino is a Cuban Salsa dance performed in group of couples. They are arranged in a circle and the group leader (el cantante "the singer") creates an improvised choreography followed by all the couples in the circle by loudly calling the names of the dance figures. There are lots of figures that involve a change of partners in couples and are full of humor, which makes Rueda so much fun for participants and audience.
Erik Zamida, Rueda enthusiast, got the idea for the international Rueda "flash mob" in Ljubljana (the capital of Slovenia) last fall, and shortly it materialized through Facebook. In few weeks the initiative expanded all over the world like a handsome virus, and more than 3000 dancers from over 200 groups in 66 countries have joined the event. All of them performed the "flash mob" at 4 PM (cities’ local time). First group that have published the video of their flash mob on the web were the salsa dancers from Ulan Bator, Mongolia and the rest of the videos began to follow right after. In Slovenia passersby were surprised in six major cities events were organized by the heads of Cuban Salsa and Rueda de Casino schools.
Many dancers expressed great pleasure being part of a cross-country event were the amusing, artistic, challenging and fun act of Rueda de Casino was taken to the next level.
Beautiful idea, beautiful organizers, beautiful singers, beautiful dancers and beautiful Cuba.
Once again art tells a story of strangers from all walks of life and who never met joined hands and created something wonderful, together.
Don't you just love dancing?
Written and translated by Erik Za, Igor Božič and Jack Alexander.
Head organizers Plesni klub, Erik Za, Boštjan Bibič, Igor Božič, Tadej Zupančič, Ida Bibič and Jan Bervar worked for almost six months around the clock connecting the world.
All the world locations of Rueda flash mobs and videos of the events can be seen of the website below, with an interactive world map that pinpoints locations of the events. There are tens of videos from all over the world on the web especially on YouTube and the numbers keep going up.
Official Website
http://flashmob.dileque.si/
Official Facebook Page
https://www.facebook.com/567449123348375
Dubai
