Latin dance

The category of Latin dances in the international dancesport competitions consists of the Cha-cha-cha, Rumba, Samba, Paso Doble, and Jive.

Typical Bolivian folk dances are the morenada, kullawada, caporales and the recently created tinku.

The earliest native roots for Latin dance came from the Aztecs, Guarani, Aymara, Incas and Tehuelches among others.

When sixteenth-century seagoing explorers returned home to Portugal and Spain, they brought along tales of the native peoples.

According to Rachel Hanson, no one knows how long these dance traditions were established, but they were already being developed and ritualized when they were observed by the Europeans.

When European settlers and conquistadors began to colonize South America in the early sixteenth century, they reinvented the local dance traditions, but still kept the styles of the natives.

However, “much of the storytelling element disappeared from the genre as the focus moved toward the rhythm and steps,”[6] Hanson explains.

When the African slaves were forced to Europe in the 1500s, their culture brought styles such as basic, simple movements (putting emphasis on the upper body, torso, or feet) and intricate movements like the coordination of different body parts and complex actions such as “fast rotation, ripples of the body, and contraction and release, as well as variations in dynamics, levels, and use of space.”[7][8] The difference between the African and European styles was that it included bent knees and a downward focus (grounded to the earth) rather than a straight-backed upward focus like the Europeans, and whole-foot steps than toes and heels.

It has several different forms and many modernized styles which creates a problem because it is shifting away from its Native, European, and African roots.