Latin Dance Club gets students dancing the salsa, eating it too

Spicy dips and shaking hips filled Foster Quad’s Harper lounge Tuesday night when Sigma Lambda Upsilon, Foster Global Village and the Latin Dance Club held their first “Salsa y Salsa” CommUNITY Education Program. \nFoster CommUNITY Educator Angela Beaudion said they held the program in order to introduce non-Latinos to two aspects of Latino culture – salsa (the dip) and salsa (the dance). \n“Salsa is a Latin music generic term developed in New York City specifically during the 1970s,” Beaudion said. “It was used to describe mainly Afro-Cuban popular Latin dance music generally utilizing rhythms from Cuba.” \nSalsa music originates from Cuba, but also includes other genres of Latin fused with pop, jazz, rock and R&B. \nIn Spanish, “salsa” as a food usually refers to any type of sauce, from mole to guacamole. But in English, “salsa” is a spicy, often tomato-based hot sauce found in Mexican cuisine and used as a dip, Beaudion said. \n“They are two completely different aspects of Latino culture,” she said. “Salsa does not mean the same thing even within the Hispanic culture.”\nThe program began with a brief discussion on Latino stereotypes. \n“What do you think of when you hear ‘salsa’?” Beaudion asked the crowd of 50 students. “Spicy,” “Mexico” and “Tostitos” were several of the responses and were all addressed as stereotypes of Latino culture. \nMcNutt’s CommUNITY Educator, Radley Alcantara assisted Beaudion with the discussion. His portion of the discussion looked at generalizations of Latinos students mentioned, such as “everyone south of the Mexico border looks the same” and “everyone in a Latino country speaks Spanish.” \n“A lot of people think that in Brazil, everyone speaks Spanish,” one student said. “That’s a huge stereotype because they speak Portuguese, which is a lot different from Spanish.” \nAfter the discussion, everyone in the room circled around Beaudion, who demonstrated some basic salsa steps. Once the majority of the room had mastered those steps, they turned on salsa music and students tried out their new moves.