Some like it hot: Salsa is spicy, sexy, and making waves in dance.

Ask any salsero and they will tell you salsa is more than a dance. It is life, the motion of intense rhythm, being in the beat and on top of things. Today's salsa is unquestionably shaping tomorrow's social dances. The passion for salsa is worldwide: It is danced throughout Europe, South America, Canada, South Africa, Japan, and China--with as many variations as there are people dancing it. There are so many conferences, congressos, classes, and clubs that a salsero can be busy 24/7.

Salsa is an addiction. So claims Juliet McMains, a professional ballroom competitor and teacher, dance scholar and assistant professor at Florida State University, and a devoted salsera. "As a dancer, you are looking for a dance where you, the music, and your partner can lose all boundaries. Where you become danced by the music, where you cannot tell who initiated what--ending in a space that is outside any intellectual discourse."

However salsa can begin with an argumentative discourse. It goes like this: "Do you dance on the '1' or the '22'?" (meaning do you step out on the "1" or the "2"?). Whichever count is stepped on determines which beat will be held, since salsa has six steps to eight counts.

Beware the answer. It can make of break a potential partnership. It can determine the logo on your T-shirt. It determines whether or not yon can flip the "V" (the old victory sign) with two fingers. It will stereotype and geographically situate you: The "2s" are New Yorkers; the "1" are from Los Angeles and Miami. Passions run high but, in the end, as one of the great salseros stated, "It's all bullshit." What distinguishes the best salseros is that they know how to do a "1" of "2." They choose depending on the music, the musicians, the clave, their mood, and what their partner prefers.

In part, the argument traces the dance's history. Salsa (literarily meaning "sauce," a spicy mixture that gives flavor, sabor) is the perfect dance for the twenty-first century because it is the product of the fusions of peoples, languages, music, movement, and styles that define the times. Salsa was--and is--multicultural, multinational, multi-musical and multiracial.

Originally cooked up in New York City in the 1960s and '70s, salsa incorporated ingredients from the music and dancing of Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the wild New York City, jazzmen in love with the Latin beat. The steps, styles, and rhythms are rooted in African-Cuban rumba and mambo (here's the history connection: Mambo steps out on the "2"), Puerto Rican bomba and son, and Dominican merengue, which got stirred together on city sidewalks and clubs by the free-styling jazz dancers and musicians. Exuberance and improvisational playfulness were the catalysts that fused the elements. But the technical skill of the players tempered salsa, making it both strong enough and simple enough to absorb all kinds of influences.

The initial popularity of salsa lasted flora the 1960s through the height of the disco craze, when salsa got recast and pushed to the background by the Latin Hustle, New York Hustle, L.A. Hustle (and lots of other Hustles). It receded during the 1980s, and burst out in the 1990s, when interest in the Lindy Hop and its cousin, the Hustle, merged with the rise in Hispanic immigration to the U.S. and Europe.

Part of its popularity has to do with the fact that the dance celebrates sexuality in a nice way. Instead of the humping, bumping, freaking, and grinding of simulated sexual intercourse, salsa is light-footed and mores across the floor. In the couple-salsa, and most always in the circle-salsa (casino style of rueda), the man leads. Salsa is about give-and-take, and partners must remain attentive to each other. A good leader is like a good lover rather than like a boss.

Salsa is gloriously feminine, and its sassy danceable rhythms can convert even an uptight girl into a hip-swinging hussy. Big, plump mamacitas are respected and admired. Their outfits and hip tremors might undo lesser women, but they do not hang back. Instead, bolstered by sexy attitudes. proud mamacitas enjoy their weight, volume, and style.

Transformation is at the center of the dance. Normally shy and reserved, McMains changes when she hits the floor. At one party she was passed from one salsero to another to determine which young cub could match her style and energy. She was a lioness. Tossing her head, flicking her hips, laughing, turning, she fluttered her hand past face, torso, hips, smiling and outlining what she has to offer. Slipping through fast footwork, she circled and challenged her partner, even while following his lead. Technically quick and sure, she improvised elegant, witty gestures and phrases ("shines") that complemented and topped her partner. One after another the young cubs got sweaty and tired. But McMains effortlessly surfed the rhythms shaping music into movement. "Salsa is fun," she says. "And because it is not a competitive dance form, it is not about measuring things against pre-established norms. It is about creativity."

Sally Sommer is a dance writer, historian, and professor of American Dance Studies at Florida Stale University. She produced a film on club dancing called Check Your Body at the Door.

Salsa Postmodernized

Merian Soto, a Bessie Award-winning choreographer and an associate professor of dance at Temple University in Philadelphia, grew up in Puerto Rico, where there is now an annual salsa convention. Based in Philadelphia and in the Bronx, she has made a series of works that incorporate salsa. The following is a conversation between Soto and DM's Editor in Chief Wendy Perron.

Wendy Perron: When did you first become aware of salsa? Merian Soto: As a kid I used to dance something very much like the salsa with my dad, but it wasn't called salsa. My father was a suave dancer, and the slightest touch of his hand would make you go one direction or the other I felt like I was being swept away with him.

And what was it called? Guaracha. People also danced son montuno, merengue, and cha-cha cha. All those forms have been integrated into salsa. In New York in the '70s, with the Cuban embargo, you'd get the Puerto Rican musicians and exiled Cuban musicians mixing with Colombians.

When did you start putting salsa in your choreography? The first time I used popular forms was in 1975. I used a drumming vocal group from Cuba, and Puerto Rican bomba. When I started improvising I would always go into these rhythms. I knew that culture is written in the body.

When you made Deconstruction of a Passion for Salsa, you danced a salsa as though you were on the beach, didn't you? Yes, I grew up on the beach. I have fabulous memories of watching people dance under the palm trees by the water. There's a saying that the ocean brought salsa. The sea and the rhythms of the ocean--there is something about that that feeds the salsa. The beginnings of all that fusion comes with the Diaspora. Another piece I did was like a feminist deconstruction of a salsa song. For many years, the salsa lyrics were misogynist. So when a woman sang those songs, the meaning changed. I wanted to empower the woman. (Now salsa singers have cleaned up their act because they were so criticized.)

How do audiences to the work you've done with salsa? Salsa is a working-class form and it's not accepted as art. In Puerto Rico now it's become more acceptable because the government is trying to export it as a national identity. But for many years it was considered black music, working-class music, lower-class expression. When I took it on in the '70s, some reviewers said, "Oh they just walked on stage and danced around." There was no recognition of any kind of nuance of structure.

What do you look for in a dancer? I work with people who move easily through forms. Salsa is really fun, and you can tap into a sense of community. Because it is a popular form, it changes with the people. I can mine each individual's expressiveness, but it's hard to do unison in salsa.

Is there anything you can say about learning salsa? You've got to have the rhythm down. There's that one, step back, two, step-step in a syncopated rhythm. Once you can do that backwards, forwards, sideways, up and down, then you can dance salsa. In my work, you have to be willing to play with that, to go beyond what you've learned.

UPCOMING PERFORMANCES

This fall Merian Soto will be touring a new work, La Maquina del Tiempo (The Time Machine, photos p 46 and above), which explores salsa and other popular dance forms as "time machines." For more information, see www.pepatian.org.

Nightspots

Why would dancers, who dance all day long, salsa all night? DM's Kate Lydon asked four performers--and got their favorite clubs.

San Francisco Jais Zinoun, freelance dancer and former San Francisco Ballet soloist goes to salsa clubs to hang out: "It's fun. Once you get to know the rhythms and step you really have a blast doing it. And because the songs are ten minutes or more you have plenty of time to talk with a woman while you dance with her," says Zinoun. "Salsa is different from ballet because it's free form. Once you have the rhythm. you can move the way you want."

Zinouns favorite clubs in San Francisco: Cafe Cocomo and Pier 23.

Miami Stephanie Walz, of Maximum Dance Company in Miami, likes to dance with friends at parties: "Even though we might dance at work all day, with salsa you can really let your hair down and have fun--as long as you feet aren't killing you," she says.

Clubs with buzz in Miami: Bongo's Cuban Cafe, Mango's Tropical Cafe, and Macarena Tavern.

Boston "The salsa rhythms are infectious," says Giamni Di Marco of Boston Ballet. "If you are a dancer, you cannot help but move to that beat." Di Manco learned to salsa when he was a child. "It's part of the Latin culture," he says.

Sizzling salsa spots in Boston: El Bembe, Sophia's and Ryles Jazz Club.

New York Tony Meredith, U.S. Latin Dance Champion and owner (with Melanie Lapatin) of Dance Times Square in Manhattan, says, "It's so simple--it only takes six steps. When you are dancing salsa, everything else disappears. There's no time for other problems."

At New York hot spots like Nell's, Babalu, of Copacabana you might run into Meredith or Lapatin. If you go to La Maganette on a Wednesday night. you'll find older salseros teaching the young ones.