Creative Casineros began to make up novel approaches to dancing Rueda after the dance had been around for a number of years.
a. Early on, something that was done was to have the flow of leaders moving to a new partner go clockwise instead of the traditional counter-clockwise. The Danceintime choreography below shows has a short segment with an “inverted” circle. Each couple dances as though they are doing moves with the center outside of the circle that the dancers are actually formed around.
In this video, we got into the inverted circle by the call “Enchufla Flip.” For that step, leaders and follower switch sides on beats 1 2 3 of Enchufla. Then on beats 5 6 7, leaders turn left to face their partner and followers step in place doing the basic. After that, we did Enchufla Bikini. However this move is normally a Dame Dos, which is tough in an inverted circle (especially one with just 3 couples). That is because leaders have to move further than is needed in a normal circle because of the circle’s arc. After Enchufla Bikini, we performed Vacilence los Dos, and then did Enchufla Flip again to return to the standard circle formation. You can see that from 3:00 to 3:20.
b. At some point, new structures in which the dance is performed and new approaches or concepts for dancing Rueda were all developed. To those who have danced Rueda for years, some of these alterations feel mind-blowing. One popular alteration which is more conceptual than structural, is called TOCADOF. This stands for “Transition Oriented Calling and Development of Figures.” The circular shape for the dance remains intact, and so does the direction of partner exchanges. But the way moves are called is different. The video below shows how this is done—by putting more emphasis on short calls with a lot of movement around the circle rather than long moves with the same partner.
c. An example of a new Rueda Structure is “Avenida” which lines up two rows of Casino dancers. Then moves are done by either a smaller subset of those dancers, or by the entire group dancing together. A special case of Avenida is when there are exactly 8 dancers (4 couples) in this structure. That is illustrated in this video:
d. A very different kind of structure is Abaco. It’s not done as much as the others but I used it during the pandemic quite a bit. In the Abaco structure, some dancers form couples and dance in a standard Rueda circle. But inside that circle, there are dancers who are doing moves solo. This was developed so that if there were more followers than leaders, the excess of followers didn’t need to wait for a partner to do moves. So it keeps everyone dancing even when the lead/follow ratio is not even. The dancers inside the circle do a specific version of the move that was developed by the folks who created the structure. This video shows how a number of Rueda de Casino moves are adapted so they can be done solo, inside the circle.
e. Then a really exciting way to use novel concepts and structures is to super-impose them on one another. My colleague Chae Reid was telling me that she was preparing to teach a workshop in which she’ll blend several of these types of alterations to the dance. She explained that dancers would be doing a role change (lead/follow), a partner change, and an orientation change simultaneously! Phew!