Learn how to dance Bachata
Traditional or Dominican Bachata
Bachata is a close partner dance that originated from the Dominican Republic.
Friends and couples use to hold each other at the beach while wearing flip flops or no footing at all moving their bodies and taking steps while trying to match each other’s footing.
This style of bachata with lots of playful footwork nowadays is called Traditional Bachata or Dominican Bachata.
Variety of styles in Bachata
You may be thinking the Bachata that I’ve seen looks a lot more lovey dubby than this Dominican Bachata you just described. You are not wrong! Over the years Bachata has evolved and developed to a few other styles.
Romantic or Sensual Bachata and Urban Bachata, to name a few. Even though it is ok to mix different elements of each of these styles and showcase how you feel about the music, it’s good to get a bit of understanding on what each style’s main elements are.
Romantic or Sensual Bachata
In this style of Bachata dancing, you hold your partner close to your upper body while creating a connection from the knees. This style incorporates body rolls or waves along with dips.
As a leader, you can guide your partner’s upper body to move with you or separate from you while she’s standing still and isolating the lower body parts. This style is danced to slower more sensual bachata songs that don’t have long solo guitar sections. There are also elements of Brazilian Zouk dancing that dancers have started to incorporate over the years into Sensual Bachata.
Urban Bachata
This style of bachata incorporates R & B body movements and footwork along with the sensual body rolls from Romantic Bachta and is generally dance to remix R& B Bachata songs. This style also uses hips and body isolation to emphasize the upper body movements in Bachata. People often add Contemporary or Hip hop moves to this style as it can match the song pretty well.
What style of Bachata do we teach at DanceNest?
What we teach at DanceNest is a combination of the 3 most popular Bachata styles.
Sensual Bachata, Urban Bachata and Dominican Bachata.
We will teach Turn Patterns, Body movements, Footwork and a few dips.
We believe that if a song is soft and sensual, the dancers need to express that sensuality that they are hearing in the song. While if the song picks up and incorporates more guitar solos, the dancers should know that it is time to separate a bit, get low and go into showing some footwork. When the R&B beat is being heard, body isolation can go well with the music so they need to be interpreted if the song is asking for it.
