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Adrian is, first and foremost, an amazing human being. Yes, he is an excellent casinero. But the thing that stays with you after you have been in his presence is his infectious positivity, his deep capacity for compassion and empathy. His humility. 

Adrian is good people.

Adrian and I conversed for almost three hours in the evening, both taking up precious sleep time (we are both fathers to young boys who are early risers and don’t care at what time we went to sleep) to sit down to talk about casino, and to overall try to make this community better. What you see transcribed here is a very condensed version of all the things we talked about. Even so, you will probably spend at least 30 minutes reading this. It’s a lot. Regardless, whether you read this in one sitting or in short installments, I am sure that you will come back to this interview in the future. There are so many good ideas here, so much respect for the culture, so much love for Cuba and its people. It’s almost palpable.

Without further ado, here is my conversation with Adrian Valvidia, artistic director of the world-renowned DC Casineros.

DL: Tell me a bit about how DC Casineros came about. According to what is online, DC Casineros was the brainchild of Amanda Gill, who founded the group in 2005 at a place called Havana Village, here in Washington, D.C. Tell me about how that process came about.

AV: At that time, Amanda Gill was a dance student at George Mason University and was studying modern dance and ballet. There she met Jim Lepore, a teacher who takes his students once a year to Cuba, specifically to the eastern region of Cuba. On that occasion, however, Amanda decided to further travel to Havana alone in order to study modern contemporary dance at the ISA (Instituto Superior de Arte), along with folkloric dance for a period of four months. The ISA has programs that combine Afro-Cuban dances with modern dance and ballet. There are dance technique programs where they teach you the different nuances of those dances. That’s why Cuban dancers are excellent. You have that particular mix of all those dances. When you see the modern dance or ballet companies in Cuba, it’s something mind-blowing precisely because of these nuances that I’m talking about.

At any rate, when classes were done at the ISA, Amanda would walk about two blocks from the school in order to meet with Roberto Aguilar. He had organized a group of people from different countries who joined together to do a rueda for the shows Para bailar casino, which they finally performed in 2004. One of the dancers in that rueda, by the way, was Eric Johnson, the codirector of the documentary about the rueda from Guanabacoa.

Amanda fell in love with rueda de casino. When she returned to the United States, she told Jim Lepore, her teacher: “Look, I love modern dance, but my dream is to do rueda de casino and Cuban popular dances.” Jim didn’t like the idea because he thought she would be the next, great modern dance ballerina. But Amanda didn’t give up on the idea.

When she moved to Washington, D.C., she began to collaborate with Barbara Bernstein from Dance In Time, which mostly taught what is now known as the “Miami style” and also linear salsa. Amanda, however, wanted to apply what she had learned from the Rueda de Guanabacoa and felt that what people were doing here with the Miami-style rueda was very different. So she began to give her own rueda de casino classes in Washington, D.C., at a place called Havana Village.

I had known Amanda since 2001. I was part of a nonprofit organization within Mary’s Center and later worked at the Columbia Heights Educational Campus and was a community organizer for a long time. And well, at night, from Tuesday to Saturday, I would go out dancing, every night. Wherever they played Latin American music, I was there. At these places, I bumped into Amanda quite a bit.

So Amanda started recruiting people within these spaces. I was the first one. She told me she was doing a rueda de casino class at Havana Village and, well, I had learned a little bit of rueda de casino when I was in Asheville, North Carolina, when I was studying there. I also had a Cuban friend, Paquito–one of my first friends here in the city–and when I would see him dance at Havana Village, I’d say to myself, “That’s what I want to dance.” So, Amanda recruited me and others. And here is the thing: we all had different styles. Totally different. But Amanda had a vision. She has always been a constant professional. Very rigorous with rehearsals, with everything she does. That helped a lot with the formation of the group. And that’s how DC Casineros emerged.

DL: Neither you nor Amanda are Cubans. So, the question I’m having is, why casino? In your case, being Venezuelan, why not a Venezuelan folkloric dance?

AV: I was living in Malawi, a country in the southern Africa region. When I arrived in Washington D.C. after attending the University of North Carolina at Asheville, what ended up happening was that I felt a need to have a connection with my childhood experiences. My parents, cousins, aunts, every weekend we had a party and everyone danced. Since I was little, everyone danced in the house. Some danced well, some poorly, but they danced. So, I wanted to maintain that. 

As a community organizer and social dancer, I went out almost every night and I met many people. That’s how I started to throw parties at my house. We called it “The 3145 Party”. They were very famous. In the first one, about forty people came: Puerto Ricans, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Cubans, African Americans, whites. We played Latin American music the entire night. Eventually the party got really big, and one day Oscar showed up with his Yoruba drums and his congas.

For me, it was like culturally feeding that part of my Venezuelan-Caribbean side, and Cuban culture was a bit like that. So in 2005, I got into it headfirst. Yes, I kept having my parties, but I was more into rueda de casino.

At that time, in 2006, I found out that my cousins and uncles also had a very famous Afro-Venezuelan group in Venezuela called Los Vasallos del Sol. The mission of this group was to recover and promote popular and folk Venezuelan dance culture. They went to different communities to try to recreate their dances and give them back to those communities. They played Afro-Venezuelan drums and also made llanera music, which is like your Cuban son, but different. That is, the same gestation, the same mix of African, Spanish, and indigenous music, but within the context of Venezuela. In llanera music , you can see traces of flamenco and Arab music, as well as African music through the drums.

All this helped me a lot. I said to myself: “If I really want to be involved in Cuban music and dances, I have to apply the process that my uncle and cousins are using, to do it the best I can.” 

Aramis Pasos, who at the time was Amanda’s boyfriend, was here, too. He had a band called Timmba Street, and DC Casineros performed alongside the band. Amanda had us doing what maybe many other groups weren’t doing at that time, which was dancing with live music. That’s what groups in Cuba did: perform with live music, which is super difficult. Just think about it. We were beginner casineros, but Amanda insisted that we had to dance live. It was a lot.

DL: Yes, I understand. When I go to concerts, I try not to dance with a partner. I listen to the song, enjoy it, but if someone asks me to dance, I usually decline. When the song ends, it doesn’t really end. There’s an improvisation, then a chorus, then another improvisation, and another chorus. And it goes on for ten minutes. And that’s what many people don’t understand about live concerts. If you go to a dance music concert in Cuba, usually people aren’t dancing with a partner. They’re enjoying the song, singing it, moving to their own rhythm, and doing solo steps. But there’s no expectation that you have to dance with someone for every song or the whole song.

OK. I went on a tangent. Let’s get back to where we were. So, for you, being part of DC Casineros was mostly a way to stay connected to your Venezuelan culture. Do you think that in its beginnings, DC Casineros had a commitment to Cuban culture?

AV: I think at that time we weren’t thinking much about commitment. I think Amanda was the only one who did. That said, the good thing was that we knew many Cubans. There was Oscar, there was Aramis, who was Amanda’s partner. So at that time, Aramis invested a lot of time teaching us son. And at that time, we didn’t want to learn son because it was too difficult. And the group kind of resisted it a bit. But after we learned it, we were impressed. That’s when we started to delve a little deeper into things. We weren’t just a group of friends anymore. It was much deeper than we had thought. That’s why we began to develop a bit more awareness. I don’t know if at that time we were trying to represent something Cuban, but we had Cuban friends, and some of the group members were Cuban. There was Orielena, Ernesto Tamayo (RIP), and Deliana. Ernesto’s story is super interesting. He studied at the ISA, but as a guitarist, he never had time to learn casino. Because it was a boarding school, as most schools are in Cuba after 9th grade, many spent their afternoons dancing, he spent that time honing his craft. So he knew very little casino. Amanda was the one who taught him more. And since he was Cuban, he picked it up very quickly.

DL: And how did the Cubans themselves view what they were doing?

AV: Oh, they loved it. Orielena, for example, had a way of telling the stories behind the names of the turn patterns, like the “Un fly,” which was a baseball term in Cuba. She was fundamental to our formation. She was one of the people who introduced us to how the rueda de casino was danced in small towns and specifically with what music. Orielena was the one who taught me to appreciate dancing with charanga music, and passed down the love for the sound of the charangas onto me. You know, violins, flutes, and all those instruments. Between her and Ernesto, they kept us tied to the fact that what we were doing was part of a culture.

The commitment to Cuban culture didn’t happen overnight. It was part of an assimilation process. It also helped that we were friends with many Cubans within the community.

DL: Let’s go into hypotheticals for a moment. DC Casineros, unlike the vast majority of groups that get started, had a presence of Cubans within the group. Hypothetically, let’s think for a moment that DC Casineros had not had that Cuban presence. Would DC Casineros have been a different group? In what ways?

AV:  I think it would have been totally different. The Cuban presence in the group helped a lot with awareness and contextualizing things. And also, one of the reasons we didn’t call the group by the name of an Afro-Cuban orisha, or “salsa (something),” is precisely because of the presence of Cubans in the group. For example, when I started mixing things, following what I saw in videos of Cubans teaching in Europe, I would arrive to rehearsals with these ideas, and Ernesto would say to me, “No. That’s not how it is. What are you doing? We Cubans don’t mix that.” Orielena, on the other hand, would tell me: “Adrían, stop mixing rice and beans. This isn’t congrí.”


It’s also important to emphasize that DC Casineros has a board of directors mostly composed of people of Cuban descent: Cubans, Cuban-Americans, Cubans mixed with another nationality, etc. And now that I think about it, at the time we formed the board, no, we weren’t exactly thinking of having all board members be Cuban. It happened more organically. They joined the board because they wanted to help us. Still, all of this is related to Amanda, who has many Cuban friends in the city. Ernesto Tamayo, who was Amanda’s best friend at the time, was the first member of this board. After that, others came who helped us a lot in working with different organizations and businesses. And there were always a number of Cuban friends of ours who wanted to be involved in the company, but not necessarily as dancers. Sometimes they did come to classes, but mostly they helped with the administrative side.

We have always tried to recruit Cubans for the dance company, but most of the time people can’t because of time constraints. Also, when Cubans arrive as immigrants here, their focus is on making ends meet and establishing financial stability. To be in the group, because of the rigor we have and the time commitment, each member has to have that stability. The other thing is that when children come along, we also lose Cubans. And also for them, I imagine it’s a bit strange to see what we do. We are very radical with the music we use and how we call the dance. Many Cubans have grown up with all kinds of music, like all Latin Americans do, not just with Charanga Habanera but also with Marc Anthony. There’s more variety in what they dance casino to. They also call it “salsa” instead of casino. So sometimes some Cubans don’t understand—because they’ve just arrived, because they don’t go to linear salsa socials—why we are like this and that what we are doing is simply rectifying a broader problem related to how Cuban culture and music have been relegated to the periphery of “Latino” culture here in the US.

Another thing I want to say about this–and this is something I’ve noticed that people don’t understand–is that unfortunately, the Cuban professional dancer who leaves Cuba is often seen as a kind of commodity. So they become a stereotype. Human beings are very complex. Ernesto, for example, was an internationally recognized classical musician, even friends with Silvio Rodríguez. They were like two peas in a pod because they had studied together in school. Ernesto was a very modest person, but he also had his Yoruba religion. The guy was even a medium. But he didn’t mix things. He didn’t pick up his guitar and start singing to Ochún. No. His classical thing was over here, and the rest over there. Sometimes he would get bohemian, and other times he would get down, dancing casino with all of us. In fact, there were parties where he would start playing son with his guitar, and Amanda or I would accompany him with the clave. And then Orielena would come along and sing something. But this was only at parties. At his concerts, he would exclusively play classical music. So yeah, man: people are complex.

DL: That’s exactly why I was asking, because I find this very enlightening—not for me, per se, but for people who are reading this–because maybe many of them haven’t thought about including Cubans in their projects. So they create these projects of (mostly) rueda de casino, but they don’t seek the input of Cubans. And I think many of the things happening today wouldn’t happen if people cared to ask Cubans: “Hey, is this okay?” Because there will be people like you, who at one point will come with ideas of mixing a movement from Ochún with casino. And a Cuban would say to them: “Hey, wait a moment. That’s not how it is.” But we are seeing these fusions precisely because people aren’t interacting with Cubans, which is super ironic because this is the “Cuban dance community.” Apart from a few questions here and there about the dance, the interaction isn’t much. If you were to ask people if they have Cuban friends—not acquaintances: friends—I would say that the majority would say no. So there’s the problem. Friends will tell you: “Hey, that’s not right. That’s not done. This is made up. This is a joke. In Cuba, we don’t do this.” But that’s not happening.

AV: Exactly. One thing is to be friends with your Cuban teacher. Another is to have Cuban friends and learn about their idiosyncrasies through interacting with them.

DL: Yes. And being friends with the teacher…there’s another dynamic there. The teacher wants you to keep being a student, to keep paying.

AV: Exactly. And well, you can reach a level of friendship with the teacher sometimes. But that takes a process. In the end, what you have to do is break away from the stereotype, from what you see, and relate to Cubans you meet out there without having to ask them about the casino. Maybe it comes up in conversation or you met them dancing casino one night. But then you went to a book club together, did different things. And then they invite you to a party, and they’re playing trova at the party. They introduce you to different nuances of their culture. All of this in a natural way where they’re not pressured to give you their culture in the way you want it, but rather as it comes, organically.

Look, when Halima, my wife, goes to Puerto Rico with me, she’s a totally different person. She transforms. Her accent changes, she starts dancing bomba. I didn’t even know she danced bomba!

DL: And you’re married to her…

AV: [Laughs] My brother: I saw her with her little skirt once at a Puerto Rican event, playing with the drum, dancing bomba. And I was like, “Where did all this come from?” These are things that come out organically. I’m not asking her to put on a performance of her nationality.

DL: That’s how it should be: those things should come out naturally. And those experiences only happen when you engage with Cubans in an authentic, genuine way.

Well, let’s get back to the questions. I know DC Casineros is a nonprofit organization. Tell me why you made the decision to do this and how it has impacted what you can do within DC Casineros.

AV: It was in 2013 when we decided to professionalize what we were doing and create a nonprofit organization. At that time, we started doing much more work beyond rueda de casino. In fact, we had several people doing folklore. So we decided that we had to delve deeper into other Cuban popular dances like son, cha-cha-cha, mambo, danzón, and put much more care into what we were doing, always paying attention to the power that social and folkloric dances have in communities. In ours, over the years we realized that rueda de casino helped create cohesion within the community. People that came would leave wanting to learn more. Many other relationships came out of it. It was incredible. People felt really good. It was like a secret key. Here we had found something that gave a tremendous level of satisfaction and unity to the community. And this is not just something from Cuba. For example, West African dance communities also have it.

From there came the idea of ​​becoming a nonprofit organization. It gave us the opportunity to continue fostering that social cohesion, but at the same time, Amanda could mix it with what she was doing with dance therapy. I could use this process as part of the community organization I was already doing, which was what I did with “La Fiesta del 3145”. Even politicians came to this party, and people made many connections.

We also realized that we were becoming more popular in the city, and with that came a lot more pressure to do things right. On the other hand, in my trips to Venezuela, I would spend a lot of time with my uncle, who not only had a nonprofit organization there but also a proper dance company. They did folkloric and popular dances. The level of detail every time they did a one or one-and-a-half-hour presentation was incredible. And they did it differently depending on the region they traveled to. Those performances weren’t just about music and dance. My uncle talked about what they were doing and how the instruments were played. There was an educational objective. And I told myself I had to do the same. That’s how we started doing shows around DC. And of course: for that, we had to study a lot more.

That’s why I went to Europe to learn about everything that crossed my path, the good and the bad. I tell my casineros that they have the privilege of learning authentic casino now because back in the day, Amanda, and others from DC Casineros, and I were trying everything, and we had to make a lot of mistakes in order to learn what was authentic and what wasn’t.

DL: So, among you, there was a process of refinement that your current students don’t have to go through because you’ve already done that work for them. So, what I’m understanding from what you’re telling me is that creating a nonprofit organization helped DC Casineros focus on the quality of what they were doing.

Yes. And also because we were working with Dance Place, which is a community theater. Things changed. The Kennedy Center was inviting us to do performances with Aramís’s band. You can’t be messing around anymore. You have to step it up. You are representing a culture on the big stage, and your Cuban friends are telling you, “Do it right.”

DL: Right, right. And there we go back to how positive it is to have Cuban friends who can tell you, “Hey, you’ve got to do this right.” And speaking of doing things right: why did you decide to call what you were teaching “casino” instead of using a more commercial name like “Cuban salsa”? Tell me about how you reached this decision.

AV: First of all, I want to thank my friends in the Cuban community. When we were thinking about what name to give the group in 2005, Amanda, as the leader, was very democratic. She didn’t impose a name, but let the group choose. Ideas like calling the group with an Orisha’s name or something with “salseros” in the name came up. But it was the Cubans—people like Ernesto and Orielena—who centered us. At the end, Amanda was the one who picked the name. And that’s how DC Casineros was born.

Returning to the question, the only one teaching at the beginning was Amanda, and she always called it casino. I wasn’t so into the terminology at that time and was more interested in the choreographies we were doing. I was more concerned with learning the movements and understanding things better. Within the group, there was always an understanding that this was casino. The Cuban members of the group also called it casino. Now, I’m not saying we didn’t use “Cuban salsa.” Maybe it was on a card we gave out or appeared in the description of one of our events. But we all understood that it was casino. And there came a time when we truly realized that casino had nothing to do with salsa as a dance. The cultural “slaps” we received from Cubans when we did or said things that were wrong also helped us.

With so much awareness, you start to develop a sense of integrity. There begins to be a bit of commitment to your friendships and Cuban culture. And it was around 2012 that I started seeing Yoel Marrero’s posts.

DL: Let’s go to that part of the interview, then, because I wanted to ask you about that, too. Tell me a bit about how DC Casineros approaches casino, pedagogically speaking.

AV: Amanda had learned casino with the casineros from Guanabacoa, and she naturally stepped forward a lot. So you can imagine how she danced and taught a little differently than the others groups in DC. There came a moment when I, Amanda, and another member of the group, Patricia, went to Europe to participate in Cubamemucho to help with the festival in 2009. We had to film the festival. We were part of the staff. There we met many artists like Alberto Valdés and Jorge Camagüey, who by the way is one mean rumba columbia dancer.

As part of our work, we had to record the performances. The only performances of Cuban popular dances were done by Mario Charón and his partner. They danced son. Except for Yanek Revilla, the other Cubans at this event didn’t even touch casino. They focused more on modern dance, and fusing it with columbia and guaguancó.

DL: It makes sense, because that was their training, as professional dancers.

AV: Exactly. Well, everyone wanted to present their own thing, something that was artistically theirs. Ironically, the only ones doing casino were the students, who didn’t even perform. It was more in the competitions that were held. Maybe a Cuban teacher with a group they recruited would do a rueda.

By the way, that’s where I also met Mike and the Rumbanana people.

DL: Yes. For me, they were pioneers of casino here in the United States.

AV: And thanks to them, I was able to see casino danced closer to what was done in Cuba.

DL: I felt the same way when I saw them for the first time.

AV: But they were the only group. The others were mixing Yemayá with Ochún, palo, hopping over here, Ochún again, another hop, and then… Enchufla and Dile que no. [Laughs.] And it seemed very strange to me. I told Mike they should have won the casino competition in 2009.

I was used to seeing the ruedas by Yanek and the All Stars in Santiago. The ones by the people from Pinar del Río, with the hats. That’s what I wanted to do. But at this festival, I saw that the Cubans were doing something else. So I began to realize that things were not adding up.

That said, I want to mention two teachers who influenced us a lot: Kati Hernandez and Duanne Wrenn. They helped us get rid of some of the influence we had brought from Europe and what was being done there. With them, we did a lot of work on musicality, working with the clave, with the body, on how to do other popular dances beyond casino, on how to incorporate Afro-Cuban elements into casino— which really wasn’t so much about mixing dances but about adding elements from those dances without it getting in the way of casino. They did tremendous work with us.

It was around that time that I also met Yoel Marrero. At that time, I myself was a bit reactionary because in our community in Washington, D.C. casino was never seen as inferior. They always sidelined us. They never wanted to play any Cuban songs. We were like a kind of scum of the community. And I was very upset about that. I only went to Havana Village for that reason because, the other places? They wanted nothing to do with Cuban culture.

DL: Yes, the United States has always been a special case. Your experience has literally been mine. And you’re not Cuban, so imagine me as a Cuban, having that experience. That leaves you very resentful… and open to people like Yoel Marrero. That’s why I’ve always said that, despite the problems Marrero has as a person, many people turned to him because he was exploiting a problem that existed. He didn’t invent the problem; he reacted to it. By doing that, he gave voice to the frustrations many of us already felt.

AV: Exactly. And well, since he was pointing out the things that were happening, I said, “Finally. Someone’s saying this out loud.” I had already met him at a rueda de casino competition in Miami in 2009, an event sponsored by Henry Herrera, the director of Salsa Racing—who, by the way, got into Santería and never got out of it. [Laughs] And when I danced with Marrero, I was impressed because he was dancing as a follower, and I was leading him everywhere without any problems. It was super cool. Then I started watching him dance on the Internet. It seemed like he was walking on water. I’d watch the videos from Para Bailar Casino, and it was very similar.

In 2011, I contacted him and even went to his house with my wife. It took me quite a bit to do the figures the way he taught them, but I realized there was an attempt there to do something more serious with casino. I told Amanda to come to Miami, and that’s where we all met. I remember you were there, too. Amanda, at that moment, I think she had a spiritual experience, and I remember she even cried because she saw what she had been missing from her time in Cuba and what we couldn’t experience in Europe. He was giving us the technique we needed to really understand what we were doing. It was like the missing link. He himself would grab any Cuban woman, dance with her, and show you how the method was replicable with Cubans.

That’s when we started to become more aware of things and to take them more seriously. We dived headfirst into the MCC (Método del Cuadro del Casino) and we became certified as teachers, which was a long and difficult process, as you had to take exams and provide not only choreographic context but also cultural and historical context of Cuban social dances, starting with the danzón and the son. It was like doing a master’s degree. But we know Yoel also has that very strong side of wanting to criticize and fight with everyone. First, he went after the salsa dancers, but then he started attacking the Cubans.

DL: Yes. Let’s not spend too much time on that drama because it’s not productive. But I did want to highlight this because many people who know about the history of DC Casineros and see how you dance and teach may associate what you do with this person. I have explicitly written an article about how the method needs to be dissociated from the creator and how the method does respond to a need to learn casino authentically in order to dance with Cubans. And that brings back the idea that many of these groups are formed without having Cubans in the group, and people continue to foster ideas of a dance that doesn’t replicate what is being danced in Cuba. In conversations we’ve had before, you mentioned that the MCC is like your way of being able to “converse” with Cubans.

AV:  Exactly. It’s a language. And for Amanda and me, that’s what we were looking for: that sense of integrity, of not calling it salsa, of starting to tell stories. What people don’t understand is that the MCC is not just a method for learning casino, but also a method for contextualizing casino and raising cultural awareness. Another thing is that over time, and with connections to the Cuban community in DC and our teachers, you refine the ability to realize the following: you shouldn’t take everything a Cuban tells you as absolute truth; you have to spend time with Cubans and then do your own research, and in that gray area that remains… that’s where the truth lies. That’s one of the problems we have now: the Cuban teacher in Europe tells you something, and you believe it. But instead of doing your own analysis with your Cuban friends who are not your teachers–

DL: (And who have no ulterior motives. Who aren’t trying to sell you anything.)

AV: Exactly. You can still respect your Cuban teacher’s opinion, but on the other hand, do your research. And that’s how I found Jorge Luna Roque, who is now doing ana amzing project to bring back casino to young people in Cuba. In short: yes, you’re going to make mistakes, it’s not going to be easy to do all this. But it is imperative to understand a culture that is not yours, so you can understand how to be a true ally to Cubans.

For example, although some of my Cuban friends call casino “salsa,” I understand that maybe that comes from an imposition of the international market for Cuban musicians who wanted to insert themselves back into that arena. So if they say it, it’s okay, there’s no problem. But I, a Venezuelan, with a casino wheel group in Washington, D.C., am not going to call it salsa.

DL: Correct. The thing many people don’t understand is that in Cuba, when a Cuban says “salsa,” what they mean is “casino” because in Cuba, there’s no other dance that is danced with “salsa” other than casino. Which is very different from what happens outside of Cuba, where saying you dance “salsa” can mean something else. In fact, there are Cubans who say that casino is a musical genre. What I’m getting at, and supporting what you’re saying: not all Cubans are experts in the culture, and you can’t expect them to be. Expecting them to be expert is part of a reductionist mentality that comes from colonialism where one person is seen as a representative of a whole people to make it easier for foreigners to understand an entire culture through this person.

AV:  Totally. It’s the example of one of our friends: Ari. She is a great Afro-Cuban dancer, but if you ask her to teach you, she says she’s not a teacher and tells you who could teach you better (in this case, the aforementioned Oscar). But if she were someone else, she’d say, “Yes, of course, I’ll teach you.”

DL: Of course: if she were an immigrant and struggling, she’d say, “Oh, you know what? These people have an Afro-Cuban fetish with me and want me to teach them Afro-Cuban dances, and that solves an economic problem for me. Why not?” And she starts teaching. And this is not the Cuban’s fault. In many cases, for the Cuban, this is part of survival in a new country where they don’t have economic security. The fault lies with the people who sustain these reductionist systems of fetishism and stereotyping.

OK. Let’s move on to the questions. For people who–let’s say–”fear” calling casino “casino,” what advice do you have?

Since I worked in community organizing for a long time, I understood how to try to create a movement in an organic way without having to use the word “salsa.” The moment we decided not to call the dance “salsa” and to use “casino” and “son” and the names of the different rhythms, we knew it was going to be a battle to try to raise awareness in the community. So promotion had to be different and much more creative, and that helped us a lot. And of course, there was the fear that people wouldn’t come because they didn’t associate it with something they knew. But you have to start small and build up from there. When you use the right words, what you’re doing is encouraging the person to delve a little deeper into the culture, to ask more questions about what they’re learning and about Cuban culture. You’re inviting the student to seek information, and that’s how they start coming to the studio. Even salsa dancers begin arriving because they want to get in on the action.

The other group of students who comes to us are those who come from parties and other events we host, where they see a show or a rueda and are impressed and want to learn more. There are many ways to do it without using the word “salsa.”

When we used to say “salsa,” we would get people at the studio who knew salsa and wanted to join the advanced casino class, only to find that they couldn’t handle it. I had to explain that it was a different dance, and we would waste a lot of time on that. That’s why it shouldn’t be called a salsa class, because you’ll get people who want to learn salsa. And then, for the money, you start making changes here and there, and integrity goes out the window. That’s what happened to us at the beginning: people would come, and in order to not lose them, we would throw in a bit of linear salsa. That doesn’t happen anymore. Now it’s more straightforward: this is casino, this is the tool we use, the MCC, and when you learn this thing, you’ll be able to dance with Cubans. Actually, sometimes I tell them to imagine they’ve learned tango and that it has nothing to do with what they’re learning now. The only similarity is the music.

Now the community has a bit more awareness and things have changed. People know DC Casineros; they know we teach casino and rueda de casino. There’s no need to explain things. There’s an understanding.

DL: What is the biggest challenge for DC Casineros?

AV: Definitely raising awareness among people. When we teach, we always have to tell a story about what’s happening in Cuba and what has happened with Cuban dances. We do this to provide historical and social context to casino dancing. I’ve always taught this way because that’s how Orielena taught us when we started the group. It’s most effective for us because it helps us differentiate casino from other dances. It’s a long and complex process. For example, tomorrow I have to sit down with my group and summarize a conversation I had with Eric Turro today where he talked to me about the essence and stories of the sonero in Cuba in relation to the “negro curro” from Andalusia and the danzonero from Matanzas, about how bravado mixes with elegance. And trying to contextualize all of this in order to bring it to the stage is extremely difficult.

Another example of this is Marisol Blanco. One time, she sat with us for an hour and a half, without any dancing, just to explain to us where the conga processions came from and the importance of the cabildos for Afro-Cubans. Because from there comes the idea of syncretism between Catholicism and Yoruba religion. The blacks could only worship their gods in secret. During the congas, then, they would make movements representing different deities, making the Spaniards think they were dancing to Saint Barbara, when in reality they were dancing to Changó.

DL: You’re teaching culture as well. You can’t dissociate it from the dance. That’s something capitalism does very well: it isolates dance from culture. And you see it in classes. For example, what’s a typical class? It starts with a figure and ends with reviewing the figure. You didn’t learn anything about the culture.

AV: Correct. And with what we know about the history of the dance, and the culture, we are forced to not do just that.

DL: So, what effect has this pressure and commitment to integrity had on DC Casineros members?

AV: Well, for the dancers who have been with us for over 10 years, it’s had very positive effects when it comes to the connection between ourselves. Within the group, we’re always discussing what we teach and present to the public. Which means that if someone thinks of throwing in a Changó into a choreo, we have to consult with the Cuban teachers, with Kati Hernández, with Marisol Blanco, with Oscar, and if they say it’s okay, then maybe we consider including it in the performance. It’s a high level of rigor.

For newer members, it’s a bit different. Every time we have a one-hour show, I know we’re going to lose people. And the reason is that when we do a show of that magnitude, it means we have to train really hard. Just a couple of weeks ago, we brought in Marisol Blanco to train us, and already someone is giving me hints that they want to leave after two hours with her. Why? Because Marisol hit us with cultural “laps,” and that person said, “I didn’t know it was this difficult. I joined just to learn a dance and all this culture stuff, it’s just too much.” And that’s what happens: when you train at that level for six months for a one-and-a-half-hour show, with all the work and time you have to dedicate to five or six different choreographies, and then a Cuban we know comes to the rehearsals… that creates a lot of pressure for new dancers, who then start to realize that this is not just about dancing, but about representing a culture.

DL: Exactly. You might start to interact with something because you like it. And that’s okay. I like tacos. I ate four today, actually. But from there to me making a video on how to make tacos, there is a big gap there. Or me opening a Mexican restaurant, that gap extends all the way to Jupiter. Because it’s inconceivable that I would do that just because I like tacos. Unfortunately, the standard with Cuban culture is: either I took four or five classes, or I simply like it, or I went to Cuba a couple of times… and that’s already enough for me to start teaching.

And yes: one thing is to create your own interest group, which is done privately in your community. Another is to start making videos, spreading information knowing that it’s not complete information because you yourself know that you’re still learning. There’s a lack of cultural responsibility there, and personal reasons and ego also come into play. As you mentioned, in your early days, getting involved with Cuban dance was an analogous way of connecting with your Venezuelan roots. Cuba, in many cases, is a means to an end. That’s why these conversations need to be normalized. We need to call things as they are. Because everyone wants a piece of Cuba, but they’re not questioning why. And by not doing so, they can end up doing a lot of harm. Not everyone has three Cubans in the group who can tell you, “Hey, I’m Cuban. This is not how it is.”

AV: Exactly.

DL: Well, to wrap up: For people who, like you, are not Cuban but want to create their own casino group, what advice do you have? What would you have done differently in 2005, when you founded DC Casineros, knowing what you know now?

AV: Definitely seek connections with Cubans in your city or community. I’m not saying it’s easy. If there are no Cubans in your community, you’re going to have to do a lot of contextualization work, which is something I didn’t have to do as much precisely because we had Cubans in the group.

Forming a rueda de casino group is a serious decision. Because what you’re doing is community organization. And that’s serious, because the dance has a history. All the figures have a story or are related to something. Students don’t have to do this, of course. But definitely the creators. As a leader, it’s your responsibility to promote the dance in the most informed way possible so that what happened with bachata in relation to the so-called sensual bachata, or with Angolan kizomba with “urban kizz”, doesn’t happen. In fact, with these dances I mentioned, there has been a reaction within these communities to the way these dances are being commercialized. And now there’s much more awareness of what’s authentic and what’s commercial, thanks to the pressure that Dominicans and Angolans themselves have created.

What the bachata community did was to create a separate community. They said, “Do you want to dance bachata with fusions? Go to the sensual bachata event where all the Americans are doing that. But if you want to dance authentic bachata, here are the Dominicans who are teaching it, as well as other teachers who are not Dominican, but we, as Dominicans, validate their ability to promote our dances well. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have to be here.”

The same thing happened with kizomba. Now you have authentic kizomba and, on the other hand, the community they call “urban kizz,” mostly danced by Americans, where they wreck everything and do things that have nothing to do with kizomba. So there are two parallel communities: one focused on making the dance a business, and the other for people who really want to dance authentically.

In the same way, we see DC Casineros as an organization that seeks to empower the Cuban community. That begins with including them in what we do and making sure they feel represented in our work. So there’s always a conversation going on.

When the Artes de Cuba festival was held here in Washington D.C., which was the most prestigious festival culturally representing Cuba in the U.S., it had never been done before with so many resources: painters, intellectuals, performing artists, dance groups, and musical ensembles.

The Kennedy Center called us to participate in that festival. And that was a huge honor. But we also realized that we had to include the Cuban community of Washington, D.C. in this show. So I gathered all my Cuban friends here and had them do all sorts of things. The board members helped us with the organization. Amanda had tremendous ideas on how to incorporate our Cuban friends into the cast without having to do intense choreography. For example, they did the conga and social casino dance from the 1950s with all the period dresses, dancing to the music of the charangas.

We also we hired Orishabó, which was a local group of Cubans led by Randell (RIP). With them, we did rumba columbia and instructional sections on how to play timba and son with the instruments. We did all of that on stage. It all turned out marvelous. And the beautiful thing was that all the families of our Cuban friends came. They sat in the front rows. We felt very good because we had finally done something that gave back to Cubans a bit of the culture that we were borrowing.

DL: That’s part of what the Cuban dance community lacks. I would say it’s starting, but there’s still a lot of reluctance to have these conversations. Part of this is that Cubans have internalized oppression. We’ve talked about this in private. In Cuba, the needs of foreigners have always been given priority over those of Cubans, starting with the fact that tourists don’t experience power outages in their hotels, they have hospitals with all the resources while Cuban hospitals are severely lacking, to the point that you can die because there aren’t the conditions to treat you. So, in Cuba, many Cubans have internalized that inferiority, that the foreigner has more power; and not being able to say “No” because to the foreigner we’ve always said “Yes”. They have the capital that we need. In fact, nowadays I can’t even enter the lobby of a hotel where I’m not staying without feeling like I’m committing some kind of crime. And that’s part of the trauma I bring from Cuba, where I wasn’t allowed to go to certain hotels because they weren’t for Cubans.

AV: I remember when we went to Santiago de Cuba and invited the All Stars to the hotel where we were staying to eat with us, and that was a big problem with the hotel staff. And we had to get tough until they let them in. And these are university students, graduates. They’re not just anyone.

DL: That doesn’t matter. And the message that all this sends to Cubans is that we’re cockroaches next to tourists, no matter what you’ve achieved in your life. We don’t deserve anything in our own country. It’s regrettable. And it also has an immeasurable psychological effect.

Well, let’s finish with something happier because honestly, I don’t want to end the interview on this note. If there’s something you’ve repeated quite a bit during this conversation, it’s the need to include Cubans in what your group does, to somehow give back to the Cuban community everything that Cuban culture has given you. Tell me briefly about something the group has done where this has precisely happened.

AV: We recently started focusing on classes for children. And look, the number of Cuban families that came was incredible. I was impressed. At least ten Cuban families with their children. They wanted them to learn Cuban rhythms, dances. And there was a bit more interest there. More than wanting to be part of a rueda de casino group, the Cubans who came wanted their children to learn about Cuban culture and connect with their roots. DC Casineros helped make that possible. That was something magical.

About Adrián Valdivia

Co-founder and current director of DC Casineros, Adrian has been dancing and performing Son, Casino, and other popular Cuban dances for 17 years. He has also been teaching classes on Cuban popular and social dance for the past 10 years. He won first place in the couple’s competition at the Miami Rueda congress of 2009. Adrian has traveled nationally and internationally to participate and to teach in the major Rueda de Casino and Afro-Cuban dance conferences. Along with DC Casineros, he has performed and taught locally, nationally, and internationally at prestigious and popular venues, conferences, and congresses including: the Kennedy Center, Smithsonian, DC Salsa Congress, San Francisco, New York, Miami and Atlanta Rueda Congresses, and the Nicaragua Salsa Congress, Sweden Rueda Congress and more.  MTV 3 Latino recently featured Adrian and his partner and former Director Amanda Gill to talk about Casino as a Cuban Popular dance in the DC area. Adrian and DC Casineros also brought the critically acclaimed All Stars Dance Company from Santiago de Cuba, and collaborated on a 1 and a half hour production in DC.

Born in Venezuela, Adrian grew up in a family of dancers and musicians, which heavily influenced his love for the arts. Adrian currently trains under the guidance of Afro-Cuban dance Masters Duane Wrenn, Kati Hernandez, Yudisleidy Valdes, Jorge Luna Roque, Yoel Marrero, Oscar Rousseaux and Aramis Pazos. He teaches Son, Casino and Rueda de Casino, rumba at beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. His casino style emphasizes the power and intricacies of Son, Rumba, and at times Orisha dances.

To the memory of our dear friend, Ernesto Tamayo