Yeah! TS Flossie did a number on IBDI dance classes last Monday that caused the mayor to close down the Palladium. But all was not lost. It gave my main squeeze Lani and myself time to do other things that needed catching up and also dig into some juicey info about the Hot Cha-Cha-Cha and hanging out with "just musing". So here's what I dugged up from my library as written by the author of "Touch Dancing".
"The Cha-Cha is really a spinoff of the Mambo, which is itself a derivative of the Rumba. When the Mambo evolved from the Rumba in the 1940s, many Americans and Europeans vacationing in Havana (Cuba) had a hard time trying to dance to the racy tempo and off-beat rhythm. To accomodate the dancers, Latin-American bands slowed down the Mambo tempo from 50 to 30 bars per minute, but kept the triple Mambo staccato rhythm. In this slower version, dancers took two slow steps on the beat, followed by three steps in quick succession. Musicians would call out "cha-cha-cha" on the quickies. The heavy hip wiggles were modified to a subtle sway, and the whole affair became much more manageable for ballroom dancers. The Cha-Cha-Cha has enjoyed popularity from the 1950s right up to the present, and you occassionally see variations of it on a disco floor".
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Lani and I were doing the showcase circuit for HBDA and IBDC (now IBDI), we danced the Cha-Cha that was choreographed and tagged "Disco Cha-Cha" by our professional instructor Carmelo Baysa. It was a mighty fun dance with variations of disco steps fusioned with Cha-Cha patterns. (There's that word again). That was then and maybe now it's called Night Club Cha-Cha. But whatever the call is, the Cha-Cha-Cha is a fun dance with a lot of freedom to "innovate and create a few of your own Cha-Cha patterns in closed, break, and free-style positions". As the catchy tune go, ""the rhythm will get you!"
Hang Loose and Lani and I will see you this coming Monday at the Palladium for IBDI first 4th Term dance class on the Cha-Cha-Cha.
