Merengue Dance History: from Fast and Flashy to Slow and Sexy

AMSTERDAM -- Merengue was a ‘Circle Dance’ long before the dictator Rafael Trujillo institutionalized Merengue music in the Dominican Republic (1930 – 1961). This Circle Dance can be compared with the more famous Cuban ‘Rueda de Casino’, but without dance couples: the men danced around the women with no ‘dancing in pairs’. 

In the 1980’s Merengue Dance had already evolved to the ‘simple’ partnering dance the Western society is now familiar with. The lead and back vocal singers of some Merengue bands such as Los Kenton and Wilfrido Vargaz started to dance choreographed dance steps when performing live and on television. And they saw the public enjoying this and try to mimic them. The growing popularity and accessibility of the VCR (video recorder) made it possible for their young fans to learn these choreographed footwork/shines and dance them at the same time as their favorite artists did when playing live in concert. This new dance craze, called Merengue Show, spread from the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico to Mexico, and all the way down to Peru. Merengue Show teams were formed, and Merengue Show Dance Competitions soon followed. In the 90’s Merengue Show evolved from only footwork to incorporating elaborate turn patters and dance techniques into the mix. Some Merengue big bands invited whole dance teams to perform as background dancers on stage, and adding their own dance choreography's to the ecstatic music (e.g. Wilfrido Vargaz). And Merengue Dance Competitions for dance couples started to become more popular in Latin America.

But at the same time a ‘contra movement’ occurred. The fierce and growing competition between the growing number of Merengue bands signaled the introduction of more daring dance moves on stage. The government of the Dominican Republic considered the dance moves of main Merengue artists such as Bonny Cepeda - and especially Johnny Ventura - to be ‘pure pornography’: they were practically banned to the island of Puerto Rico. And the popularity of the fast paced Merengue music called the ‘Períco Ripiao’ or ‘Merengue Ripiáo’ was gradually being replaced with the much slower ‘Pambiche’ or ‘Merengue Apambichao’. 

The international Merengue artist Juan Luis Guerra started to mix Merengue with classical music (later with Senegalese music) and poetry thus bringing ‘class’ to Merengue. Artists such as Fernandito Villalona, La New York Band, and Elvis Crespo soon followed him in his quest of making slow Merengue internationally popular. Pambiche is not ideally suited for high paced Merengue show dancing. This new development resulted in Merengue Show decreasing in popularity, and ‘Merengue Hip-Hop’ music (Proyecto Uno, Sandy y Papo, El General) taking over to suit the needs of the younger generation. And the dance changed once again to lesser turn patterns, but this time with more Hip Hop dance moves being incorporated into it. In the Dominican Republic ‘Hip-Hop Merengue’ was soon combined with the Jamaican ‘Bubbling’, Ragga Muffin’, and the American R&B music to create the now internationally popular Reggaeton music and dance: there is practically no ‘partnering’ involved, and lots of sexy dance moves are combined with Street Dance elements.

The small group of Latino Salsa Dance instructors teaching Merengue without a Merengue Show experience were practically forced to take it out of their dance program because of the growing competition they experienced from the gross of teachers starting their first dance classes with Salsa. So the third (and later) generation of Salsa dance instructors never learned Merengue: the dance devolved to a mere didactic tool for teaching their students the basic dance techniques they would later need to master Salsa dancing.