The Netherlands as Europe’s Salsa Dance Petri Dish Part 1

The Netherlands has been a trading nation for centuries. The open-mindedness of its people allowed free mixtures of foreign cultures, their expressions and their art forms to flourish and bloom. The ‘out-of-the-box-mentality’ and the ‘Third Way’ – the policy of compromise – have both been paramount for the development of Salsa in the Netherlands and on the rest of the European continent.

Integration and Adaptation

Holland has a very rich history of Salsa. Some Cuban immigrants started to instruct Salsa in the 70’s, and Dutch oversee citizens - predominantly from the Caribbean island of Curacao - started teaching Salsa around 1983. They developed a unique style of dancing Salsa, called “Antillean Style Salsa”: the men break forward with the right foot on1. The folkloric dance instructors mixed the Antillean folkloric ‘Tumba’ Dance with Cuban Son. The people from the former colony of Surinam also added their way of dancing to the mix. The Dutch natives were not so much interested in learning Antillean folklore, but they were eager to learn Salsa because of the beautiful Turn Patterns. These pioneering dance instructors soon changed the name of their folkloric dance classes to the more commercial Salsa, they dropped the other dances and focused only on instructing Merengue and Salsa.

Changing Salsa Instruction & ZoukSalsa

 In the early 90’s, some of their autochthonous students went to Cuba on vacation and returned back to the Netherlands completely enlightened. They became instructors and forever changed Dutch Salsa Dance instruction by starting their first classes instructing Cuban Salsa instead of Merengue. A Brazilian native living in Amsterdam, Claudio Gomez, combined Brazilian Lambazouk with Cuban and Antillean Style Salsa creating another unique Salsa Dance Style I call ‘Zouk Salsa’. The mix of Antillean, Cuban, and Zouk Salsa dance styles dominated Salsa dancing in the Netherlands and had its height around 1995. The mid 90’s was also the time when the Colombian Jorge Suarez added Colombian Salsa dancing to the mix. Judges at Salsa Dance competitions had a very difficult task selecting the winners out of so many styles of dancing.
Salsa Show teams such as Euro Latinos Dance Company – of which Patrick Mussendijk and I were members -, Claudio Gomez’s Salsa and Brazilian Dance team, and Jorge’s “Raices” were some of the pioneering Salsa show teams of Europe. 

The following videoclip is of me and Vanessa Mamby freestyling together in Nucita’s (ClubFiera) living room in 2007. I had just ended a Salsa Instructors Course I gave to her team, and they gave me those slippery Clogg-slippers as a gift because I normally dance and walk on Dutch wooden cloggs. Here I start dancing with Piglet in one hand.

The First European Salsa Congresses

The whole European Salsa scene changed when Marlon Castillo & Annetje Driel organized the first European Salsa Congress – the first international Salsa congress of the European continent – in 1998, which was held in the Dutch city of Haarlem. And yes, New York’s Harlem was indeed named after this city. I attended the second one held in 1999. It was a crazy but very important transitional time. Young Salsa teachers and performers were struggling to learn the basic Cross Body Lead as instructors such as Luis & Joby Vasquez did their very best to teach us Advanced level LA Style Salsa on1 Turn Patterns. Angel Ortiz, one of the original instructors out of Eddie Torres’ team of Mambo instructors had a much harder task as he tried to teach us New York Style on2 Mambo. But he pioneered in making Mambo On2 the dominant Salsa Dance style in Europe.

The European Salsa Congresses in Holland split the Salsa scene in two. The Salsa dance instructors who thought they had nothing else to learn, and that their dance style was the very best there is, caused the Antillean Style Salsa and ZoukSalsa to have a quick dead. On the other side stood the young Salsa instructors who understood Salsa dancing keeps evolving, so they have to keep educating themselves. They also learned the fine art of networking and making friends with other instructors instead of them adopting the old habit of seeing all the other Salsa instructors as competitors and/or enemies. This last group of young & liberal Salseros and Salseras is responsible for the rapid evolution of Salsa from 2000 to date. Current European Salsa Stars such as Leon Rose, Super Mario, and Manuel Mascarell started their international careers at these Dutch Salsa Congresses.

Stay online for the second part of this wonderful tale.