Well, hello there, and welcome to a very specific niche of casino dance nerdom.

If you are reading this piece, I am going to assume a couple of things about you:

  1. You know how to find “the 1”, musically speaking, and likely dance on this count.
  2. Because of #1, you can recognize that the vast majority of Cubans, unlike you, do not dance on “the 1”, like on this video, where you can see couples dancing on different timings.

If you are reading this article, you have probably been asking yourself why this is the case for some time. Is there something that Cuban casino dancers know about music that you do not? Is there some hidden truth that only people who are born into the culture are privy to? Could the ability to dance casino on a timing other than “the 1” be (gasp!) in the blood?

I have found a couple of videos online on this topic. The most watched one is this video. However, it is not a video that seeks to explain the phenomenon, but rather a video that simply seeks to point out what is there and can be observed. As the author states, the main purpose of the video is to watch what dancing on each timing “looks and sounds like with music.”

This other video I found does seek to explain why Cubans dance on timings other than “The 1”. Specifically, it seeks to answer why Cubans dance on timings 3 and 7.

After a brief historical explanation of music, he delves into his basic argument, which is that some Cubans began emphasizing the bass accents from the songo rhythm (the music that Van Van plays) which emphasize the 3rd and 7th beats. The video, however, does not hold up to scrutiny. First, songo is a very specific rhythm that not all bands play. What happens when a non-songo band is playing and Cubans dance on the 3 or 7 timings? What are they dancing to? It’s most certainly not the songo bass accents, since that’s not the rhythm that is playing. Additionally, the video contradicts itself by ending with an example of a rueda de casino danced on the 7 to Adalberto Álvarez y su son (not “y su songo”).

So there is not something very concrete out there on the Internet (at least that I have seen) attempting to explain why most Cubans dance on a timing other than the 1.

But here is the thing: the answer is actually quite simple…and it comes down to simple math:

The vast majority of Cubans do not dance on “the 1” because there is only a 12.5% chance (25%, if you consider other factors) that they begin dancing on “the 1”.

Wait. What?

As I said before: welcome to a very specific niche of casino dance nerdom. 

So, let’s nerd out.

Most Cubans have historically learned to dance casino empirically. 

To learn empirically means to gain knowledge through direct observation, experience, or experimentation—rather than through theory or pure logic. In other words, you learn empirically by doing, seeing, hearing, or experimenting.

That’s how the dance of casino began in the late 1950s in the Casino Deportivo in La Habana. A group of friends, known as “Los Fundadores”, got together and began trying out different moves, learning as they went, experimenting. 

Since then, the dance of casino has remained a social dance, escaping the confines of academia (with the exception of a book or two written about it), since the Cuban government did not think it culturally relevant enough to add it to its Fine Arts schools curricula to be studied.1

Perhaps this lack of standardization and constraint, this freedom, is what allowed casino to flourish through constant experimentation and become the most popular social dance in Cuba to date. Because it wasn’t treated like a serious venue for study at schools, people were left to learn it empirically through friends and family.

And unless your friends and family were musicians or had musical training, or you had gone to a Fine Arts School, as a Cuban, you learned very little about the music to which you danced casino. As many Cubans would put it, you learned to “feel it.”

This stands in sharp contrast to, for instance, the pedagogy of son, which is taught in a more academic setting in Cuba. Indeed, before you even take the first step, teachers are talking about the clave, contratiempo, the syncopated bass. It’s uncommon to learn to dance son in Cuba through friends and family precisely because of these other things that you are told you are supposed to know before you even begin dancing it.23

Cubans gravitate toward casino, a dance arguably more complex than son, precisely because it is, ironically, more approachable than son. You do not have to know anything about music to begin dancing casino. Lacking explicit musical knowledge is part of the casino journey for most Cubans. Whatever most Cubans use as a cue to begin dancing, it comes down to what they feel.

But what do Cubans feel?

To answer, I would like to use the words of Herson Fernández Machado, founder of a Cuba-based dance company called Kubasoy, whom I interviewed for this blog. Among the many things we talked about, he stated that he doesn’t teach “the so-called musical time 1, which has never been seen in Cuba” and has been “aimed at foreigners”. He continues:

In my case, I don’t dance on the “time 1” of the music. I dance in musical time. The “time 1” of the music is more tied to the musical structure. Musical time is what we call “the pulse,” which is what a Cuban dances to. A Cuban finds a beat and jumps in. The foreigner looks for the beginning of the musical phrase to start dancing. Cubans don’t do this. That’s one of the things I maintain in the tradition of casino.

According to Herson, “a Cuban finds a beat and jumps in”. Which beat? It doesn’t matter! Again, it comes down to what each Cuban feels.

The video above is a perfect example of this. It’s a casino competition in Cuba, and people are dancing on different timings. Each couple is feeling the music in their own way. 

And, as it turns out, what each couple “feels” is quantifiable.

When you dance casino, you count to 8. Why? Because you’re trying to match the length of the pattern of the core instrument of the music, which is the clave. The pattern of the clave spans 8 beats. So you dance within those eight beats–and you count to 8.

Therefore, when a Cuban with no explicit knowledge of music finds a beat to which to begin dancing casino, that beat has a 1 in 8 chance of being the beginning beat (or “the 1”) of the musical phrase.

A 12.5% chance! 

Thus, it is very likely, 87.5% probable, in fact, that you will find Cubans dancing on timings other than “the 1”.

With this answer, I hope I was able to dispel some notions that some people might have had about Cubans and their timings. Most important to me was the dispelling of the idea that Cubans possess some sort of mystical knowledge about music that allows them to dance on any beat they choose, and which outsiders, who are trained to “find the 1”, cannot understand because they cannot escape their trained ears.

As you can see, when you take into consideration Cuba’s cultural context and the practices stemming from it that lead to how Cubans pass down casino from one generation to another (that is, empirically), the answer is the exact opposite: it is precisely because of a lack of explicit musical education/comprehension that Cubans dance on any beat without worrying about finding “the 1”. Cubans do not choose not to dance on the 1. That would imply that they know how to dance in every other count. That is not the case.

The more likely explanation is that, whichever timing Cubans are dancing on, chances are, it is entirely by coincidence. 

Rueda de casino danced on the 1, by Los fundadores (The Founders of Casino):

Rueda de casino danced on the 3, by Los fundadores (The Founders of Casino):

Rueda de casino danced on the 7, by Los fundadores (The Founders of Casino):

There are a number of nuances that I am leaving out for the sake of length. For the purposes of this article, if you have read up until here, the explanation I have given should be enough.

There is, of course, more to this.

And so, for everybody else who wants to continue: 

Welcome to an even more specific niche of casino dance nerdom. Down the rabbit hole we go!

So far, my thesis is that most Cubans have a 87.5% chance of dancing on timings other than the 1, or a 12.5% chance of dancing on the 1.

That said, that number actually goes down to 75% if we consider other factors related to music. And if we really get musically technical, you could argue that Cubans actually have a 50% chance of dancing on the 1!

To understand how I am getting to these new percentages, we have to delve into some music theory. I will keep it as basic as I can, but I cannot promise that you won’t have to re-read.

Basic MusicTheory: Measures, Beats, and Phrases.

A musical composition (i.e., a timba song) is written in measures. If you look at sheet music, you’ll see vertical lines—these are called bar lines—and they divide the music into measures. The music you dance casino to is typically written in a 4/4 time signature, which means each measure contains four beats.

Now, each beat in the measure can be subsequently divided into a downbeat or an upbeat. The easiest way I can think of explaining it is when your foot taps the floor when you listen to a song. When you tap your foot on the floor as you listen to a song, that’s called a downbeat. Makes sense: you’re putting your foot down. When you raise your foot, that’s called an upbeat. A downbeat occurs on the 1st and 3rd beats. The upbeat occurs on the 2nd and 4th beats.

The downbeats (1 and 3) are stronger than downbeats (2 and 4).

Another quick concept that you need to understand: the phrase. Herson from Kubasoy already alluded to this earlier when he stated: “The foreigner looks for the beginning of the musical phrase to start dancing.”

The best way to explain the concept of phrase is by using the clave. The rhythm of the clave spans two measures of 4. The first three hits of the clave fall within the first 4-beat measure. The next two hits fall within another 4-beat measure. When you put those two measures together, that is called a phrase. 

So, if the clave has a musical phrase of 2 measures, and each measure has 4 beats…two times four equals…

That’s why you count to 8 when you dance. And that’s why the clave is considered the backbone of the music. It centers everything.

To recap: the clave phrase that we use for dancing casino has 8 beats (two measures of 4 beats each). Within those beats, odd-numbered beats are stronger than even-numbered beats.

If beats 1, 3, 5, and 7 are the strongest, that means that we implicitly hear them more strongly (that’s why we stomp our foot on those beats) without having to know anything about musical theory.

So, if Cubans dance on “feel”, without any explicit knowledge of music, it stands to reason that they would gravitate toward a timing that implicitly feels stronger. That is, the downbeats (1, 3, 5, or 7).  

Thus, by taking out dancing on the 2, 4, 6, and 8, we can now adjust the probability of Cubans dancing on “the 1” to 25%, a 1 in four chance.

But there is more.

If you get really, musically technical, that probability that Cubans begin dancing on “the 1” shoots up to 50%.

We, the dancers, count to eight because the phrase that we are listening to spans two measures of 4 beats each. Musicians, however, do not. If you ever watch a musician explaining how they play a pattern to other musicians (not to dancers), you do not see them count to 8. You see them counting to 4 because they are counting each measure (which has four beats).

What we as dancers understand as “the 5”, musicians see as “beat 1” of the next measure because “beat 5”, to them, does not exist in this context. The measure only has 4 beats!

So, that means that if you, as a dancer, count as a musician would, you could argue that someone dancing on the 5 is actually dancing on the 1; or someone dancing on the 7 is dancing on the 3. And you would be technically right.

Should I, like most Cubans, be dancing on timings other than the 1?

Arguably, you have read this blog post because you dance on the 1 and have noticed that the people from where this dance comes from, in their vast majority, do not.

So, should you dance more on their timing; that is, just pick any timing? Wouldn’t that be more representative of how Cubans dance?

Well, these questions, while coming from the very best place, assume that Cubans who are not dancing on the 1 know that they are not dancing on the 1 timing. We have seen that the timing on which most Cubans dance is often random, and it is not by choice, but rather the result of a lack of formal, explicit musical education. Your choice of timing, at no point, is random. (Perhaps it was when you took your first class, but it not longer is.) Whichever timing you choose to dance on, you intentionally do so. You know which timing you’re dancing on, whereas most Cubans are not making a choice to dance casino on a specific timing; they are going with the flow, responding to a beat (which we all, as humans, do). As Herson from Kubasoy put it, “A Cuban finds a beat and jumps in.”

So, the better question to ask, if you are truly seeking to emulate the way most Cubans dance on the island, is: Should I, like most Cubans, not think  about timing when dancing casino?

And that…is totally up to you.

Personally, I have found that I cannot go back and be “carefree.” I have very explicit knowledge about music, about the composition of Cuban songs, about how the instruments play and interact with each other. When dancing, I constantly make dance choices based on that, and I love it.

That is not to say, however, that I only dance on the 1. When I dance casino, I usually alternate between dancing on the 6 and the 1, like in this video, because it makes sense to me as I try to follow the different sections of the song, and the different instruments that take center stage during those sections.

I cannot sit here and tell you to dance on the 3, or the 7, or the 5. Every time I have tried it, I’ve cringed. It doesn’t make sense to me, not with what I know about music.4

So, what I can tell you is: 


Dance on the timings that make sense to you, based on what you presently know about the music to which you dance casino.

Notes

  1. It is my understanding that now there is a semester-long offering of casino in some of these schools ↩︎
  2. This is also what happens outside of Cuba. Think of a son class you’ve taken, even if it has been just one. I bet you’ve heard mentioned the clave, or contratiempo. Now think about your first casino class. Was music ever mentioned? Chances are, you just learned a turn pattern as the teacher counted for you. ↩︎
  3. In regards to the recalcitrant demagoguery when it comes to son dancing, on a panel I shared with Yanek Revilla in 2024, Yanek shared that his MFA thesis centered on a different methodology for teaching son, and that he was fighting against the current because the faculty at his university were set in their ways about how son should be danced. He has since then successfully defended his thesis. ↩︎
  4. Yanek Revilla and Diana Rodriguez won the national casino competition in Cuba in 2004 dancing on the 1. Just watch the video and look at all the things they do that play off the music precisely because they are dancing on the 1. ↩︎