2008 Woodie Awards
LSO dance lessons to spice up the night
By Jill Sarver-Monk
Rocket Contributor
Issue date: 3/3/06 Section: Life
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Students can learn a variety of dances from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., with music and an open dance from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. to practice the moves learned during the first half of the night.
The lesson and open dance, which are free to all students, will be held in Carruth-Rizza Hall.
Bobby D., a swing deejay who hosts Swing City dance parties in Pittsburgh on Saturdays, is instructing dances for the evening. Bobby D. will teach students several popular dances with Latin roots, including the salsa, swing, samba and meringue.
According to dance history Web site www.centralhome.com, salsa is a dance that has a pattern of six steps over eight counts of music and is made up of side-to-side movements and turns. The music accompanying the salsa is a mixture of jazz and rock components.
Swing, an upbeat style of dancing, has regained popularity since its prime in the 1950s.
According to centralhome.com, samba has its roots in Brazil. Originally a celebratory dance performed in street festivals samba was introduced to the U.S. in the late 1920s and has kept its popularity due to its energetic rhythm.
The Dominican Republic and Haiti claim the meringue as their national dance. According to www.centralhome.com, there are two fables that tell the story of how the meringue came into existence.
"One story alleges the dance originated with slaves who were chained together and, of necessity, were forced to drag one leg as they cut sugar to the beat of drums," the Web site said. "The second story alleges that a great hero was wounded in the leg during one of the many revolutions in the Dominican Republic. A party of villagers welcomed him home with a victory celebration and, out of sympathy, everyone dancing felt obliged to limp and drag one foot."
Tonight's event is not the first of its kind; one year LSO had Aztec dancers come to entertain students, another year they hosted a band that plays regularly at Compadre's in Grove City and last year they had a salsa band called Azúcar play on campus.
LSO president Elizabeth Edmundson said the past events that the organization has sponsored have been very successful. She said the organization wanted to host a similar event this year due to the popularity of Azúcar.
