Dancing on the 2. What is this craze? I hear people talking about it all the time. You walk into a club and ask a girl to dance, the first thing out of her mouth is " Do you dance on the 2"? I say " Of course", not having a clue what she means. But since she is STUNNING, I lie. After the dance she tells me that I dance on the 1. Now without knowing what the heck she is talking about I feel…Insulted! This incident happened to me 10 years ago in New York. I had to do research. I needed to find out what dancing on the 2 meant.

So I went to the best possible source. ABUELITA! Now my Puerto Rican grandmother could dance circles around most women in clubs, but she did not know what it meant. So I went to the next best possible source. Eddie Torres. He is the most popular dance teacher in NY, and has been teaching people to dance on the 2 since the 1970's. This "craze" has been going on since the Palladium days of the 1950's when Tito Puente and Machito were strutting their stuff. Eddie said that dancing on 2 meant dancing to the beat of the clave'. What?? "Ba boom PAH! That "PAH" is the clave'", said Eddie. I showed him what I was doing, and lo and behold, I was dancing on the 1. I was missing the clave'.Fast-Forward 10 Years. Toronto, ON. Everywhere you go people are dancing on the 2. Not only are they dancing on the 2, they are mastering it. So now I ask a girl to dance and the same question is asked, " Do you dance on the 2?" Proudly I say yes! But after the dance she says I dance on the 1. Dammit!

I asked Renee, a dance instructor here, what he thought the difference was. I liked his answer. "You hear the 1, and you feel the 2". (Although, I must admit I was feeling it on the dance floor.) It is a lot easier to teach on the 1. But more fun to dance on the 2. Cuban Pete, one of the greatest dancers of the Palladium era once explained it like this: "Dancing "ON 1" is dancing "TO" the music. Dancing "ON 2" is dancing "IN" the music." At a discussion at the World Salsa Congress, he said " Dancing "ON 1" is like dancing to the melody of the music, while dancing "ON 2" is like dancing in the rhythm of the music."

There is not a better example of this than the March 2001 dance competition going on at Berlin. The better couples are usually dancing on the 2. We applaud them without realizing they are dancing on the 2. They make us feel the music as well. It is as if they are floating, but they are dancing baby, they are dancing! Now, is dancing on 2 better than dancing on 1? Of course not. It is a just a different way of dancing. We should all learn. Especially Latin men. There are way more Latin women out there who dance this way than men. Which is a common complaint with women nowadays.

There are so many great dance instructors here in the Toronto area that have gone to New York and studied for months on end. Look through this magazine and you will get names of different dance troupes. Call any of them…and learn to dance to the beat of the clave'!

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