Mambo (dance)
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Mambo is a
History
Origins
In the mid-1940s, bandleaders devised a dance for a new form of music known as
From Havana
Americanisation
The mambo dance that was spearheaded by Pérez Prado and was popular in the 1940s and 1950s in Cuba, Mexico, and New York is completely different from the modern dance that New Yorkers now call "mambo" and which is also known as salsa "on 2". The original mambo dance contains no breaking steps or basic steps at all. The Cuban dance was not accepted by many professional dance teachers. Cuban dancers would describe mambo as "feeling the music", in which sound and movement were merged through the body.[1] Professional dance teachers in the US saw this approach to dancing as "extreme", "undisciplined", and thus deemed it necessary to standardize the dance to present it as a salable commodity for the social and ballroom market.[1]
In the 1940s, Puerto Rican dancer Pedro Aguilar, known as "Cuban Pete", and his wife became popular as the top mambo dancers of the time, dancing regularly at The Palladium in NY. "Cuban Pete" was named "the greatest Mambo dancer ever" by Life magazine and the legendary Tito Puente. Pedro Aguilar was also nicknamed el cuchillo ("The knife") for his mambo dance style.[2]
The modern mambo dance from New York was popularized in the late 1960s into the 1970s by George Vascones, president of a dance group known as the Latin Symbolics, from
See also
References
- ^ .
- ^ Terry Monaghan (25 May 2009). "Pedro 'Cuban Pete' Aguilar". The Guardian. Retrieved 13 February 2019.
- (PDF) from the original on September 11, 2012.
External links
- "Luis Oliveira And His Bandodalua Boys - Chihuahua", YouTube, track 04 from Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 2: Mambo Fever. Uploaded 2009-08-31.