This post is deeply personal, and as such it will be lengthy; as such, it will be deeply vulnerable. It came about because recently I noticed that my posts, which have no other purpose than to educate the general, non-Cuban public about the dance of casino, are being used as a tool to harass people online. I am not going to mention any names here. If you know, you know. And if you do not know, well, I’m okay with you not knowing these people.
One of the prerogatives of publishing something online is that you never know how people will (mis)interpret or (mis)use what you post, regardless of intention. The same quote of the Bible can be used to both condemn and to commend, depending on who is doing the interpretation. My point is, if you have been a target of online attacks and a post by “Son y casino” has been used to, in some nefarious way, validate said attack, I am deeply sorry.
Online arguments are not new to the world of casino (not that that should make you feel any better). In fact, they are not new to the world of social dancing. Dance schools of all styles feud left and right online. People fight over whether dances are authentic or not. The dance scene is not a quiet, peaceful place. Not if you’re looking closely.
But there are some people out there who are taking this to an extreme. I consider these people to have been radicalized to whatever their position is.
I know because, once upon a time, I was one of them.
I write this post not to excuse anyone’s behavior online, but rather to help people understand how some can come to adopt extreme views and behaviors about something so innocuous as a dance. My case and my circumstances are unique to me, of course. That said, I can tell you that such radical views and behavior about a dance are almost always a symptom of deep-seated, often left unresolved issues that have nothing to do with the dance in question, but that through this medium have found a way to be funneled out and let loose, be it online or in person.
To those who are currently following these people, or engaging in this kind of behavior online and/or in person, treat this as a cautionary tale.
This is the story of how I came to hate casino–yes, you read that right–and how I am starting to love it again.
Many people may not know this, but I actually did not learn to dance casino in Cuba. Don’t get me wrong, I tried! But when I asked my mom to teach me some steps, all she gave me was a broom, a quick show of the basic step, and a stern command, “Practice!”My older cousin’s promise to teach me always dissolved into nothing because she was “too tired” whenever I stopped by the house (RIP cousin, I love you).
Cuba, then, was not where I started. That does not mean that I did not grow up around casino. It was part of every party I attended. One of my favorite CDs from my youth was Charanga Habanera’s Soy cubano, soy popular. The televised casino dance competition, Para bailar casino, came out while I was still living in the island.
But the truth is, I did not learn to dance casino in Cuba. I have never denied this, and very few have actually asked. But now you know, and this will be important for the next part.
My casino dancing journey started in my second year of college, after having spent an entire year lonely and trying to fit into university, an institution that none of my parents had attended. I found this “Cuban salsa” student group called ¡Azúcar! Dance Company. This group was heavily influenced by the Salsa Lovers curriculum, a topic which I have extensively covered here. Moreover, a lot of its members danced salsa on1, and so many of the things done in this group were a hybrid between what they called “casino-style salsa” and salsa on1. To illustrate, here is a performance from this group. While I was not part of this performance then, I performed the exact same choreography at another event in Jacksonville (of which I cannot find the video).
I made a lot of friends in this group, and for the first time in a long time, I felt like I belonged somewhere. I still remember with fondness the never-ending nights dancing at someone’s house, the laughter at silly jokes, and overall being a college kid and enjoying that experience.
But my initial enchantment with the novelty of finally learning casino passed, and I began noticing some troubling things along the way.
I would go to a place on Thursdays that had an event called “Havana Nights”, where they never played music by Cuban musicians.
I went twice to the Orlando Salsa Congress, where again, no music by Cuban musicians played. Nor did they have any sort of Cuban dance workshop.
When I would go to the socials sponsored by the salsa on1 student group, no music by Cuban musicians was ever played.
Here is the thing: in Cuba, we listen to anything. Sure, one of the most influential albums of my childhood was the already-mentioned Soy cubano, soy popular. But I also listened to Gilberto Santa Rosa and Marc Anthony. In the group to which I belonged, we also listened and danced to musicians from all over.
But once I stepped out of this group, it was as if Cuba and its music had been cancelled (the “Havana Nights” events where no Cuban music was played were particularly baffling to me).
On the dance front, I also started noticing (again, once the novelty of what I had been learning began to fade) that what I was dancing did not necessarily reflect the way in which I remembered casino being danced back in Cuba. The stuff that I was learning felt different, looked different. And of course it was, it wasn’t necessarily casino, but rather “salsa structured through casino rueda”, as I have extensively explained here.
I also started noticing that salsa as people danced it here was something entirely different from what I thought it was. Spatially, the linear paradigm was confusing. I was used to seeing people dance casino all around the room. And yes, I thought that what I was dancing was salsa, and I explain why I thought such a thing here. However, I was soon dissuaded from that notion.
Beyond that, in my group most people wanted to learn on 1, and often mixed the two. In our performances, we often took concepts from the salsa scene and added them to our ruedas (as you can see in the video linked above) The on1 group members, on the other hand, never deigned to come to our lessons, nor would they add anything related to casino to their performances. And yet my group would go out of their way to attend every salsa social in the area. I already mentioned that the congresses we went to offered no Cuban dance classes, and so my teammates and I would end up taking salsa on1 lessons, which had nothing to do with what we danced in our group. The big-name instructors teaching these workshops added gravitas to the whole thing, and so when my teammates returned to town, still high from their congress rush, all they wanted was to do that.
Casino, meanwhile, was the “fun” thing you did in a circle. Mostly to goof off and have fun. The serious stuff, the technical stuff? Leave that to the linear salsa.
As a Cuban, all of this ostracism and lack of acknowledgment of my culture, even within the group that professed to teach in the “Cuban style,” started to get to me.
And so resentment started to set in and simmer.
It was around this time, toward the end of my senior year in college, when I was looking for casino dancing videos from Cuba that the YouTube algorithm spat out a video of someone dancing casino and selling some sort of method, all of which was part of a movement to spread casino dancing worldwide.
At first I was skeptical. The hat and the 1950s dress code did not help. But at least this looked like the casino I remembered from Cuba, and there was some sort of method that would help me learn it. The course was in its infancy, maybe two lessons out at the moment. After some back-and-forth with the teacher on YouTube, to whom I pointed out my aforementioned aesthetic critiques, I decided to bite and bought access to the lessons that were available.
What happened next changed me forever.
For me, it wasn’t whether the course was good or bad. It was the fact that the instructor clearly knew what he was doing–he had the gravitas of the instructors at the salsa congress–and that he was unapologetic about what he taught. For the first time, someone was calling casino by its name, clearly differentiating it as a different dance from linear salsa and giving me the tools to do so, and speaking out their mind about the things that were happening to Cuban culture abroad.
It wasn’t hard to find all of this appealing.
However, all of this came with a caveat: this person was angry. He had arrived in the States recently and concluded the same things I had: there was no space for Cuban music or dance here. And if there was, it was very niche and not much respected. The fact that he lived in Miami, where no Cuban dance music was played on the radio at the time, and where requesting a Cuban song in Bongos Cuban Cafe would get you a stink eye from the DJ (my wife’s anecdote)–all of this despite the fact that the city has the biggest concentration of Cubans outside of the island–well, this just added wood to the fire. In short, he couldn’t sell his Cuban product in the greater home of the Cuban diaspora.
And so, frustrated and full of resentment, he lashed out publicly at the world.
In doing so, this person stoked my resentment, my sense of not really belonging and feeling isolated from the dance community, my unhappiness stemming from my dysfunctional and unresolved family issues, my having been uprooted from my home (I came to the U.S. when I was 14), my lack of purpose in life.
Add to this that I was very young (around 21 years old) and that my brain was not fully developed, and you have a case of textbook radicalization.
No, I am not kidding you. I was radicalized. I know that now in hindsight.
This teacher was a person who stopped talking to his brother over casino, who divorced his wife in Japan over casino (his words, not mine). Who has threatened to harm people physically over casino, and a long list of etceteras who I do not want to get into because you get the point. His views about how casino should be danced was so extreme that he was willing to lose the people closest to him.
And here was 21-year old me, eating it all up.
Soon enough, as with anyone who is radicalized, I started emulating this behavior because it gave me something to channel my ethnic and personal resentments. It gave me a purpose, something “righteous” to fight for, such as the exclusion of Cuban culture from spaces where it should rightfully belong. It gave me a way to avoid my actual problems. So I started learning his method, relearning that stuff that I had been taught and slowly but surely, coming closer to the way I remembered casino danced in the island. For that I am objectively grateful. In the meantime, I would engage in online debates with people over the dance, and sometimes police YouTube videos. Because, you know, I didn’t have anything better to do with my time than to be online, and that’s the example I was following. Rinse. Repeat.
The changes did not happen overnight, but the friends I had made from dancing, I slowly began losing because of–surprise, surprise–differences over casino dancing. (If any one of you is reading this, I take full responsibility; that was totally my fault.) I began getting angrier at things that earlier had simply bothered me, losing my temper more quickly with people that did not want to see things my way, and of course my online behavior became something that to this day makes me cringe whenever those Facebook memories pop back up. It was all an extension of the behavior of this teacher, who at the time was notorious for attacking online anyone who marketed their dance as “Cuban salsa”, a behavior which I condoned because, in my mind, it sought to put right marketing practices that catered to a non-Cuban public, such as instructors mixing linear salsa with casino; exoticising the dance by adding Afro-Cuban moves when, musically speaking, none where needed; and overall trying to make money in a market that cares more about personal gratification than cultural authenticity (see this post for a more in-depth discussion of this topic). These things need to be criticized because they are true, and they often have been in this blog.
The break in the cycle for me happened in 2013 when the teacher began attacking the event organizers of the SalsaRueda festival in San Francisco. It was the usual litany about people being “cultural traitors” and “selling out” Cuban culture, but this time…this time the attacks got out of hand. Racial slurs were thrown left and right, all sorts of names under the sun were called. All because the event had “salsa” under its name. (Of course, this would conveniently not be a problem for this teacher later on when he would collaborate with the dance school Salsa Kings in Miami). Upon reading all of this, something snapped in me, and I said to myself, “Enough.”
I guess, in a way, I should have seen it all coming. The signs were there. But I was too caught up in the righteousness of it all. Later, as more people also distanced themselves from this person, I would wonder why they stuck with him then (even after he changed his profile picture on FB to that of Hitler’s), and what finally made them snap out of it. But I digress.
At any rate, I no longer wanted to be angry. I no longer wanted to be in this cycle of toxicity over a goddam dance. I didn’t want to lose more friends. I had already lost my girlfriend over this (Lina, if you ever read this, know that you deserved better). Additionally, the movement had started to feel like a cult, what with this teacher being the ultimate, unquestionable authority, the constant demands for obedience to the cause, the seeming imposition of a dress code, and many other things that if you do a Google search for “signs of a cult”, you will likely find many points of similarities..
So I wrote a long response denouncing this teacher’s behavior, and in doing so exited his movement of “cultural preservationists.” I was done.
And that should have been that.
Tú pa’ allá y yo pa’ acá (You over there, and I over here), like the Manolito y su trabuco song.
But of course it wasn’t.
Soon his zealots–I can’t think of a more fitting description, as I was one myself at some point, too–, who often did not have a clue of whom I was, came for me at the behest of this teacher. He would write his vitriol online, and people–again, who did not know me–would eat it all up. Soon my videos were bombarded with negative comments, and my inbox as well. I was harassed and made fun of, called names; lies were fabricated, truths molded to fit a new narrative. At some point, said teacher promised me a visit to the dentist for all the teeth I would lose if he ever saw me in person again. I was a traitor to the cause, the worst possible offense. And I deserved all of it.
Also, I was 23.
I bring up my age as a way of providing a timeline and because, well, I was still young. I did not know how to deal with all of this negative attention that all of the sudden came my way. And because throughout these two-and-some years, I had isolated myself from my friends thanks to my righteous fight to preserve casino, I did not have a group of people in which to seek shelter (we are social beings, after all). Neither could I distract myself with a hobby because, well, casino was my hobby. And to say nothing of my fanatical online persona, which had also pushed away a good number of people.
All of this unwanted online attention had very serious effects on my psyche that I did not realize at the time. Later, with therapy (yes, I went to therapy over this; that’s how bad this was), I would be given the opportunity to acknowledge what had happened to me. What you are reading now is the distillation of the work I did over half a year with a wonderful resident therapist at the university who listened to my story for one session and made me see that this was more than just about dance, and that we needed to get to the bottom of what had led me down this path.
With this, I do not seek your pity nor to absolve myself from my behavior at the time under the pretense that “I was just a kid”. I simply seek to shed some light on the factors that can contribute to someone who is struggling internally to seek refuge in things that can, at face value seem righteous, but, upon closer inspection, are most definitely radical.
And no, saying casino (because that’s what the dance is actually called) instead of “Cuban salsa” is not radical.
Casino is danced in Cuba by predominantly stepping forward on the 1 and 5. Pointing this out is not radical.
Wanting Cuban music and dance to be accepted at Latin dance events that have benefited from the work of Cubans musicians, and where they should rightfully belong, is not radical.
Talking about the global market forces that seek to subvert culture at every turn (casino being one example of many, others include bachata, tango, and kizomba) is not radical.
Wanting to educate people about Cuban culture is not radical.
What is radical is how you go about treating these topics, which by all means should be treated.
What is radical is calling people names because they disagree with you over a dance.
What is radical is being racist, misogynistic, homophobic and xenophobic over a dance.
What is radical is losing the people that are closest to you, again, over a dance.
What is radical is threatening to physically harm people–one more time–over a dance.
What is radical…is cheering for all of this as you see it unfold before your eyes.
This blog started in 2014, some time after my rupture with this toxic movement, because, while I was done with the teacher and the movement, the issues that had bothered me before I even encountered this person still persisted. To this day, they persist.
But I had to have a different approach, and of course, my own take on things because I had had a different experience. I wanted people to listen.
That’s why the first article I wrote was about how the salsa scene doesn’t play music by Cuban musicians, and how the Cuban dance scene responds in kind by not playing music by non-Cuban musicians. And so the vicious circle continues. The second article was along the lines of something similar: we should all view the music to which we dance under the umbrella of son. By doing so, we could dance casino to any son song, from any country.
My first blog posts had a message of unity embedded in them, if you wanted to see it. At the same time, it did not stop being critical. My later posts could continue to attempt to educate a public that knew very little about Cuban dancing (that was my target audience, at least). Of course, my writing has matured over the years. The older posts still have a bit of that anger in them. Letting go of it when it had so thoroughly consumed me did not happen overnight. But if you read closely, you can see the attempt at trying to get my point across, to still argue for Cuban culture amidst the market forces that seek to distort it (and yes, that sometimes means including a video or two that is clearly misleading an unsuspecting public), without being a total a-hole.
And granted: even to this date with my later posts, people may react negatively to what I write no matter how diplomatically I phrase things, and that’s fine. The whole point of the blog is to be contrarian in a world where people consume culture without caring too much for it. To invite people to reflect on what they consume–again, often without much thought. Sometimes, that creates discomfort, and rather than face it, people lash out.
But that’s something those people have to work out for themselves. Me, I already went to therapy.
Notwithstanding the work on the blog that I updated on and off all this time, for years I hated dancing casino. It did not bring me the unbridled joy that it once had. Every time I would attempt to dance it, it would bring back all the stuff that had happened. All the hatred. And I would be assaulted by a sudden remembrance of the worst parts of myself. I might have smiled here and there and given the impression that I was enjoying myself, but inside I was constantly struggling. I stopped talking to certain people with whom I had been close during my time in the movement because interacting with them reminded me of what had happened. I avoided talking about this person and this topic like the plague, and when someone would bring it up, I would often not respond kindly. It still happens sometimes.
I think there is a name for that: PTSD.
In the meantime, I worked on myself, worked on my anger issues stemming from unresolved personal trauma that had nothing to do with casino or that whole ordeal. I found other hobbies. I got into board games, taught myself the piano. In 2022, I started producing my own music. I’ve gone on and off the radar, and those who follow the blog’s Facebook page can attest to this. Many times I’ve said I am burned out, only to later resurface via a blogpost, a meme or a video. What you see is not someone who doesn’t know what they want. It’s someone who is trying to come to terms with something that they love and simultaneously causes them pain.
I have started enjoying dancing casino again, I must say. Like with any other process, it didn’t happen overnight. But what has really helped is the community. Every time I get invited to an event, every time I see one of my posts shared, every time people appreciate what I have to say–every one of those times, it chips away at my trauma. It tells me that despite my behavior and the things that I did when I was radicalized, I have something positive to offer others. I am more than my past actions. This has helped me to forgive myself and grow as a person. And self forgiveness is important here; for the other option would be to constantly hate yourself and constantly relive past wrongdoings, unable to move beyond your worst moments.
Last weekend, I had the privilege of being part of RuedX in Virginia, an amazing initiative that seeks to bring people together to share dance knowledge without having to pay the sometimes-exorbitant costs of a dance congress. At the good-bye barbecue on the last day of the event, I got a chance to talk to some people I had not seen in years, and in doing so, they reminded me of the impact I had made on their dancing.
Things like this inject me with passion and remind me of why I have never really stopped doing this.
This community is full of amazing people. If, like in my case, you ever find yourself being attacked online because of how you dance or view casino, don’t forget that you are part of a community that is full of love and acceptance. Lean on the community. Lean on the people, on the friendships you have cultivated.
Don’t lose sight of what matters to you.
Block, and move on.
Otherwise, you will eventually hate this dance.
Beacuse that’s just it! If you are not a promoter or teacher of Cuban dance, if you are–like the vast majority of people–someone who dances for fun, casino is just a dance. At the end of the day. It. Is. Just. A. Dance. (Now, if you’re a promoter, teacher or community leader, casino is certainly more than “just a dance, and we need to have a different conversation). But again: for the vast majority of people: casino is just a dance like any other. It should bring joy, not tension and angst.
Finally, I will admit that I struggled with writing this post. Not writing it, per se, as it was actually very cathartic and I am now realizing how much I had needed to do this, but because I know it will get to certain people, to a certain teacher (or maybe his 2.0 version), and attacks will begin again. A new batch of zealots will come for me. Maybe I am wrong. I sure hope I am.
But if it does happen, this time, I am older, I am wiser.
I know not to look at screenshots that people send me (well-intentioned as they may be) about what others are saying about me.
I know how to block people and delete comments.
I know not to engage.
Most importantly, I know how to look after my own mental health.
Stay healthy out there, my dear readers.
And never, ever, stop loving dancing casino.
Son y Casino 
Excellent article and so authentic. I know of that person too-a purist who has his own trauma and a diagnosis as a result. I studied with that person also and do admire the detail of the method but it limits movement to a rigid pattern. I chose to adapt and incorporate some creativity and more expression while preserving the basic structure of Son casino. I too don’t currently dance Rueda where I am living because it looks like a square danced, Americanized, hip hopped, mish mash of people running around without good form. Dropped out of that and only perform Son with my dance coach who taught real casino for years. Anyway. I admire your post and your courage and I am sorry for the attacks you have weathered. May you be well and continue your well written blog.
Great piece of writing. I hope that after all those years you really had managed to form skill to not pay attention to those toxic peope. Please, continue share with others your findings amd knowledge abolutnie casino. I really love your posts describing musicality and what and why something hapends in music. Even though right now I’m bad casino dancer I feel thanks to your describtion I’m getting to understand what my teacher wanted to tell me during dance class.
I really love this article! I used to read your blog at my highest fascination over ‘salsa cubana’ dance as fanatic and I have to admit, it influenced the way I looked at this dance and Cuban dance/musical culture a lot. Without getting too personal or intimate 🙂 I had my struggles and pretty long period of hating dancing community as well. Well, it took some time to discover that my aggression toward dance and some people in this community is only a way I can easily let off some frustration and turn of my attention off real emotional issues I had at this time.
Nevertheless I want to say your blog had great educational value and it forced me so often into deeper thinking about casino and all the processes that shape and change culture all the time. It actually really made me into studding, so called, traditional music and dances of my country (Poland). I rally appreciate that effect your writing had on me. I rally believe that being, maybe indeed a little radicalised or angry was that drive which allowed you to really get down to the point and express and describe all these issues and nuances so precisely and passionately. It’s also great to hear from somebody who already abandoned dancing community for a while, that he sees it’s advantages and all positive, supportive people who are still to be found there. I’m starting to reconnect to some of my old dancing friends and it feels really great.
Finally, I really believe that everything that is published online should be accompanied together with therapy certificate of person who publishes it 😉 It would make all the online discussions much more reliable and mature.