Bachata the dance that almost didn’t make it
Find out more about Bachata and how the dance almost never made it!
Going through some really hard and challenging moments, the sensational dance of Bachata became the talk of everyone all around the world. We all want to try it, learn about it, and we all want to dance it! A dance that came to life decades ago but we never heard of it till recently, let’s all discover why and how Bachata is the way it is today!
The origins of Bachata
The Bachata dance appeared in the early 1960s in the Dominican Republic, however, it only gained its popularity in the capital Santo Domingo in the 1990s. The word “Bachata” means literally “party / good time”, originally the Bachata music was more on the romantic and sentimental side with similarities to the Cuban bolero and was mostly considered countryside music known as “Campo”. It was a way for neighbors, friends, and families to gather and have some fun together, hence the name Bachata.
Bachata a vulgar dance?
Bachata was a way for the people of the Dominican Republic to express their feelings and emotions, and even though it was meant to be a happy moment shared with loved ones, not everyone shared the same ideas, as the Bachata was deemed vulgar, disgraceful, and low-quality music by the upper class. This led to Bachata evolving in bars, cabarets, and brothels in the dark streets of Santo Domingo which didn’t help its image afterward, to a point where the term “Bachateros”, Bachata performers, was used as a derogatory term.
There were few attempts in order to bring Bachata back, however, most of them failed due to the lyrics having double or bad meaning, until the artist Blas Duran introduced the electric guitar to the Bachata music and therefore changed the genre and made his track “Consejo A Las Mujeres” a huge success.
Bachata will then keep evolving and gaining in popularity and people’s perception of it will forever change.
The types of Bachata
- Dominican Bachata: this Bachata style is the closest to the original one, which is based on the basic small square steps, it could be slow or fast depending on the music.
- Moderna Bachata: As the name indicates, this Bachata style is a modern fusion style created around 2005. Keeping the basics of the traditional Bachata, the Moderna style also includes some Salsa, Tango, Zouk-lambada, Ballroom, and more.
- Sensual Bachata: This Bachata style is one of the newest additions to the Bachata dance styles that keep on evolving day after day. The Sensual Bachata is a bit similar to the Moderna, with more circular, whole-body movements executed in a more dynamic way.
