Casino—often marketed abroad as Cuban Salsa—grew out of Havana’s mid-1950s casinos deportivos social clubs and fuses elements of Son, Rumba and Cha Cha Cha into a circular, partner-swap dance still thriving worldwide today.

What Is Casino?

Casino is the original Cuban partner style that inspired later salsa forms; it’s danced a tiempo to the clave and encourages spontaneous improvisation drawn from Afro-Cuban folklore.

The name comes from the elegant “casinos” (dance halls) where Havana’s middle class mixed Son footwork with new turn-patterns, giving birth to today’s circular lead-follow vocabulary.

Why Dance Casino?

Physical & Mental Benefits

  • Increases cardiovascular endurance and tones core, legs and back through continuous rotational motion.
  • Dance-medicine studies link regular salsa sessions to sharper cognitive processing and stress relief.

Cultural & Social Connection

  • Learning Casino deepens understanding of Cuban music genres (son, timba) and Afro-Cuban rhythm.

  • The style’s call-and-response ethos builds quick rapport with partners and crowds—perfect for teaching or social nights.

  • Casino is fun, energic, engaging and creates connection to new people and relations.

Video Liberary

All content streams in full HD from our Vimeo On Demand channel—simply log in here with the same e-mail you used for your rueda.casino vimeo subscription.

We currently host ≈ 40 individual Casino figure tutorials, organised by level. But in reality almost all our Rueda de Casino figures can be used as a casino figure without a partner change.

Modular Learning

Each module groups 4–5 related figures and is designed to fill 4–7 class-hours—ideal for studio courses or structured self-study.

Modules build progressively by level: core turns → hand-change variations → ritmo & musicality layers, helping dancers absorb complexity without overwhelm.

Choose Your Level

Beginner

iming drills, left-right turns, dile que no.

Visit Beginner

Improver

Smooth transitions, basic setenta family patterns.

Visit Improver

Intermediate

Multi-count wraps, lead-switch concepts

Visit Intermediate

Advanced

High-tempo Timba combos and expressive Afro-Cuban styling.

Visit Advanced

extra materials

Improve your dancing

One way to improve your dancing is to add elements of improvisation to your dance. This is useful for women and men, but the way men and women improvise are somewhat different.

Improve your dancing

Teaching Resources

Module Cheat-Sheets

Each module bundles four figures that flow together; use them as weekly lesson plans or quick-fire training blocks.

 

 

 

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Need Help?

If you hit any roadblocks—tech issues, missing figures, or pedagogical questions—drop us a line via the Contact page or tag @rueda.casino on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.