Boogalu Videos

Rueda de Buen Ache

Level: Int-Adv

General Comment: This is a purely visual video: no instruction, no talking. But it takes you straight to Santiago de Cuba and immerses you in the atmosphere. You will see some nice cuban rueda, some free dancing, some performances from the Casa de La Trova as well as combination of one man dancing with two women and even with three women. All this with live son music in the background. You will be able to extract few figures if your eyes are quick or if you make good use of the slow motion control, but the core of the video is in the cuban style and the feel from the roots of salsa. A good video.

Reviewed by : Fabio from SalsaIsGood - Good

Salsa Suelta

Level: Beg-Int

Style: Pure Cuban

Content: Cuban Line dance steps

General Comment: Salsa Suelta refers to salsa steps that you can execute without a partner, in solo or in group. In a few words it is the equivalent of western line dancing. As for all Bugaloo videos, this also is filmed in Cuba (Havana in particular) with all local dancers. Some of them have a fairly good international reputation, like 'Nichito'. The video starts with some demonstration of line dancing and then the steps are demonstrated at a slower pace. There is no formal instruction in the video, so you will have to pick up the steps from the slow pace sections. The fact that the dancers dance in front of you (rather than you lookign at them from the back) does not help. Still you can learn several steps going from beginners to more advanced sequences. A brief section on how to dance 'on' and 'off' the music (equivalent to 'on 1' and 'on 2') is also included. The videos shows some 8 dancers, so you ill also be able to admire different personal styles.

Reviewed by : Fabio from SalsaIsGood - Good

Rumbon Tropical

Level:Intermediate/Advanced

Style: Rumba

Content: Dance Demonstration

General Comment: A good video is you like pure cuban roots. A hour long demonstration of pure rumba, filmed directly in Cuba. Great music, great singing, great dancing, from very young and very old dancers. You will wish you can dance like the old ones, not to mention the young ones... In Cuba traditions merge and flow from one into another, and, to demonstrate this, at the end you will see a mix of rumba and rap, music and dance.. a great buy.

Reviewed by: Fabio from SalsaIsGood - Reccomended

Mueve La Cintura

Level:Intermediate/Advanced

Style: Cuban Salsa

Content: Salsa Instruction

General Comment: This video is dedicated to Cuban Salsa. You will see several dance demonstrations by different couples. These demonstrations are basically free dancing with lots of improvisations. In addition, each couple has a unique style, which makes the video fun to watch. If you are an intermediate or an advanced dancer, you will be able to extract very nice Cuban figures and may be enrich your style. I also thought that the second part of the video was very interesting, since the director of the Cuban dance company "Ban Ra Ra" explains and demonstrates how Cuban Salsa is influenced by other dances. It is really good.

Reviewed by : Thea - Good

Danza Charanguero

Level: Beg/Adv

Style: Cuban Salsa

Content: Demos of Contradanza, Danzon, Bolero, Cha-Cha-Cha, Son, Mambo and Salsa.

General Comment: Boogalu Productions have made a considerable effort in recent years to document a large section of the Cuban dancing and music tradition and made it available to the outside world; this is a great service to dancers, and especially to US dancers who rarely travel to Cuba. If you can not afford to travel to Havana, this DVD offers you the possibility of tasting a social dance evening which, for the lovers of raw dancing, is much better than the many expensive shows for tourists you may see nowadays in the trendy night clubs in Havana. In actual fact, what is contained in the DVD is hard to find even if you do travel to Havana, since the producers have made an effort to reunite in a single venue a band and several dancers with considerable knowledge of some 80 years of Cuban music; here, they attempt to re-create the atmosphere which has characterised Havana popular culture for several decades. This is by no means easy to find in Havana today in standard tourist circles.

This DVD covers several dances, starting as far back as Contradanza, passing through Danzon, Cha Cha Cha, Bolero, Mambo, and reaching Salsa Casino, a certain chronological progression of what made today’s salsa,. The dancers stick to a very traditional style of dance (remember they try to show it to you as it was done then), which means very simple steps and no turns or complicated figures. There are interesting things to pick: you will clearly see how in the days of Contradanza, Danzon and Bolero, ‘africanity’ was still seen as something to transcend, so no hips movement for the women and a very elegant and restrained posture for the men. You will then see some resemblance of more modern style taking shape through Cha Cha Cha and Son, and we can start to notice where Dile Que No and other simple crucial elements come from. You may then get a shock in seeing Mambo.. well, the way they danced it then was VERY different from what we intend for mambo today, as popularised by the NY tradition, but then we reach more familiar territories with Casino etc..

Here and there interviews with the musicians and dancers will tell us about the days gone by and give other interesting aspects of the cultural background. This is not a DVD from which you will learn new tricks, and probably you will not watch it over and over again, but it is interesting and informative if you are not familiar with traditional popular Cuban dance.

Reviewed by : Fabio from SalsaIsGood - OK