What is ábaco?

Ábaco is a dance created to follow the calls from rueda de casino.
It is danced inside a rueda, or separate from a rueda with a designated caller.
Ábaco figures are based on women’s rueda footwork, and easy to follow also for men.
A partner change in rueda corresponds to a rotation in ábaco (dame una = quarter left turn, dame dos = half left turn, dame una arriba = quarter right turn).
Ábaco uses various Cuban dance elements, from son, rumba, afrocuban dances, etc.
Ábaco means abacus, referring to a view from above (like rueda means wheel).

Ábaco is a great alternative for cuban salsa and rueda in times when we cannot dance regular rueda, because of social distancing.

More info about how to dance ábaco

Videos of ábaco figures

RUEDA.CASINO now offers videos of about 45 ábaco figures! All the videos show the corresponding rueda figure, to demonstrate how they correspond. See also explanations of the figures below the videos on each level.

Select your ábaco level:

Video preview

Here is a preview of one of our ábaco videos. The corresponding rueda figure to the left. Ábaco may be danced inside a rueda, or separate from a rueda.

vamos arriba | tarro (ábaco figures)

Ábaco practice videos

Ábaco is a fairly new dance, so there are not too many callers yet. To help ábaco dancers practice ábaco, we have published a few videos from online ábaco classes, where you can follow the caller dancing and calling ábaco for an entire song. This is a simple production, as we will try out how useful these videos are.