Bachata Bachata Classes and parties downtown Oslo: Here are some videos about this beautiful Latin street couple dance. 
Bachata hos I Love Dancing Come join us at our Bachata & Salsa Mondays with classes and Social dance downtown Oslo.
Click here to check our schedule page for exact times. Bachata hos I Love Dancing: THE FOUNDERS: I Love Dancing is the founder of the beautiful and sensual couple dance BACHATA in the capital of Norway and the eastern part of the country. As the premier latin couple dance promoter, our classes, parties and events in Bachata are known because of their high quality, dedicated instructors and elegant and beautiful locations! Bachata is an easier Street Latin Couple Dance to learn and really fun to dance. It is sensual & nowadays also very popular on Street Latin Dance Floors worldwide.
Dance:
The dance style that today is called Bachata originated in the Dominican Republic. It is danced widely all over the world but not identically. The basics to the dance are three-steps, followed by a tap which can include a hip movement also on the 4th beat. The knees should be slightly bent so the performer can sway the hips easier. Generally, most of the dancer’s movement is in the lower body up to the hips, and the upper body can be moved more or less. In partnering, the lead can decide whether to perform in open or closed position. Dance moves, or step variety, during performance strongly depends on the music (such as the rhythms played by the different instruments), setting, mood, and interpretation. Unlike Salsa, Bachata dance does not usually include complex turn patterns but they are used more and more as the dance evolves. The leading is done just like in most other social dances, with a “pushing and pulling” hand and arm communication. Hand and arm communication is better conveyed when most of the movement is performed by the lower body (from waist down); i.e. hips and footwork. The original dance style from the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean is a basic dance sequence in a full 8 count moving within a square. Dancers in the Western World much later began developing a more simple pattern and added dance elements from other dances as well, the basic is also in a full 8 count, but with a side-to-side motion. Both Styles consist of 3 steps normal and then a tap step. The tap is often accompanied by a “pop” of the hips, and is sometimes substituted with syncopations (steps in between the beats). Bachata music has an accent (the Bass) in rhythm at every fourth count. Often, this is when dancers will tap-step & pop their hips – this is called dancing bachata to the basic rhythm of the music (because the first step after the pop falls on the 1st beat of the measure). But bachata can be danced to different timings as well if it’s danced to one particular instrument instead. The tab or ‘pop’ is done in the opposite direction of the last step, while the next step is taken on the same direction as the tap or pop. The dance direction changes after the tap or fourth step.
There are several bachata styles.
Dominican: The Dominican Bachata dance style is the original style of Bachata, originating from the Dominican Republic where the music also was born. The early slow style in the sixties from where everything started was danced only closed, like the Bolero. The Bachata Basic Steps moving within a small square (side, side, forward and side, side, back) are also inspired from the Bolero but danced slightly different including a tap and also syncopations (steps in between the beats) depending on the dynamics of the music being played. The hand placement will vary with the dancers position which can be very close to semi-close to open. The Dominican style is today danced all over the Caribbean, now also faster in accordance to faster music, adding more footwork, turns/figures and rhythmic free style moves and with alternate between close (romantic) and open position (more playful adding footwork, turns/figures, rhythmic torso etc.). This style is danced with soft hip movements and a tap with or without a small «pop» with the hip on the tab (1, 2, 3, Tab/Hip). Can be danced with or without bounce also (moving the body up on the beats and down again in between the beats by springs the legs a little). Dominican Bachata is created by the people over many years (from around the beginning of the sixties) for social dancing and are the day today still evolving. Notice that what’s called Dominican Bachata in the West is just called Bachata in The Dominican Republic and by most Dominican immigrants. Dominican Bachata is the original style of Bachata and therefore by some also called the traditional style. Because of this, the name «Traditional Bachata» for the first not very old Fusion Style Bachata is misleading; nevertheless it is term of today.
Traditional
(the Western Traditional: As mentioned the first Fusion Style) At some point in the late 1990s, dancers and dance-schools in the Western World began using a simpler side to side pattern instead of the box-steps probably due to a misunderstanding of the original steps. The basic steps of this pattern move side to side, changing direction after every tap. Characteristics of this «early» dance school style is the close connection between partners, soft hip movements, tap with a small «pop» of the hip on the 4th step (1, 2, 3, Tap/Hip) and does not include many Turns/Figures. Most of the styling in this style is from Ballroom Dance and Dips are commonly used in this style. Notice that the term Traditional here refer to it was the first Fusion Style and not that it’s the original Bachata from the Dominican Republic. This was the first style of Bachata popularised by Salsa Schools outside the Dominican Republic. Bachata hos I Love Dancing
Bachata Modern/Moderna
Later a newer style called Modern Style was developed probably from around 2005 on the ‘Traditional’ Style base. This style is widely considered to have originated in Spain, but as with all ‘evolutions’ of dance style this itself is widely debated. The basics are the same as Traditional Style Bachata, but with added dance elements and styling from Salsa, Tango, Zouk-lambada, Ballroom etc. In this style, couples typically move their upper torsos more, put greater emphasis on the hip pop, and women use more exaggerated hip movements. The most direct fusion influence on modern style bachata dancing comes from the adoption of salsa turn patterns. There is also an even newer modern Urban Style that incorporates HipHop elements but this style basically also have the same technical base as Modern Style. Bachata hos I Love Dancing
Bachata tango/BachaTango
At the same time as the Modern Style was developed there was also developed an another style called Bachatango/Bachata Tango. It’s also a Fusion Style from the West with short sequences of Traditional basic steps and then added different Tango steps danced like Tango. The “pop” count is used to add elaborated sensuality and varied Latin dance styles and also include the characteristic kicks from Tango. The Vueltas is like the Traditional Style. Although this dance has been used to dance to Bachata, it has evolved to be used to dance to Tango as well. Even though BachaTango is unheard of in the Dominican Republic, Bachata’s country of origin, BachaTango has become popular with foreign instructors outside the Caribbean.
Bachata Ballroom:
Ballroom is yet another style also developed in the West, primarily for competition dance, with very extreme hip movements and lots of Ballroom Dance styling. It is used predominantly for Ballroom competitions rather than social dancing. The basic step is based on Traditional Style. Bachata hos I Love Dancing
Bachata Other styles:
There are «many other Fusion Styles» of Bachata from the West, pioneered and promoted by different teachers around the world, each with its own distinct flair. Whether these are considered completely different styles or simply variations of the main styles above is often argued by teachers and students alike.
Bachata Musikken/ Bachata music:
The music that today is called Bachata emerged from and belongs to a long-standing Pan-Latin American tradition of guitar music, música de guitarra, which was typically played by trios or quartets comprised of one or two guitars (or other related stringed instrument such as the smaller requito), with percussion provided by maracas and/or other instruments such as claves (hardwood sticks used for percussion), bongo drums, or a gourd güiro scraper. Sometimes a large thumb bass called marimba or marimbula was included as well. When bachata emerged in the early 1960s, it was part of an important subcategory of guitar music, romantic guitar music – as distinguished from guitar music intended primarily for dancing such as the Cuban son or guaracha- although in later decades, as musicians began speeding up the rhythm and dancers developed a new dance step, bachata began to be considered dance music as well. The most popular and widespread genre of romantic guitar music in this century, and the most influential for the development of bachata, was the Cuban bolero (not to be confused with the unrelated Spanish bolero). Bachata musicians, however, also drew upon other genres of música de guitarra that accomplished guitarists would be familiar with, including Mexican rancheros and corridos, Cuban son, guaracha and guajira, Puerto Rican plena and jibaro music, and the Colombian-Ecuadorian vals campesino and pasillo – as well as the Dominican merengue, which was originally guitar-based. Before the development of a Dominican recording industry and the spread of the mass media, guitar-based trios and quartets were almost indispensable for a variety of informal recreational events such as Sunday afternoon parties known as pasadías and spontaneous gatherings that took place in back yards, living rooms, or in the street that were known as bachatas. Dictionaries of Latin American Spanish define the term bachata as juerga, jolgorio, or parranda, all of which denote fun, merriment, a good time, or a spree, but in the Dominican Republic, in addition to the emotional quality of fun and enjoyment suggested by the dictionary definition, it referred specifically to get-togethers that included music, drink, and food. The musicians who played at bachatas were usually local, friends an neighbors of the host, although sometimes reputed musicians from farther away might be brought in for a special occasion. Musicians were normally recompensed only with food and drink, but a little money might be given as well. Parties were usually held on Saturday night and would go on until dawn, at which time a traditional soup, the sancocho, was served to the remaining guests. Because the music played at these gatherings was so often played on guitars (although accordio-based ensembles were also common), the guitar-based music recorded in the 1960s and 1970s by musicians of rural origins came to be known as bachata. The word bachata also had certain associations, upper-class parties would never be called bachatas. In his book Al amor del bohío (1927), Ramón Emilio Jiménez, a distinguished Dominican «man of letters» and «writer of manners,» described a bachata in terms that reflect how such gatherings were associated by the elite with low-class debauchery and dissipation: The «bachata» is a center of attraction for all the men, where the social classes of those who attend them are leveled and where the coarsest and libertarian forms of democracy predominate. The most elegant figures of the barrio are there, daring and audacious. The setting of these dissolute pleasures is a small living room impregnated by odors that seem conjured to challenge decency…. In an adjoining room a guitarist plucks and unleashes into the contaminated air of the house (a) blazing street-level couplet, to which a singer with a well-established reputation as a «second» makes a duo, provisioned with a pair of spoons which he strikes to accompany the melody. Bachata hos I Love Dancing Among Dominicans there is considerable disagreement as to exactly when the term bachata come to refer to a particular kind of music. In the absence of any systematic research into the subject, there is a tendency for people to rely on their own memories, which vary according to their age, class, and where they grew up. According to bachata musicians themselves, it was in the 1970s that the guitar-based music they recorded came to be identified by the term bachata, which by then had lost its more neutral connotation of an informal (if rowdy) backyard party and acquired an unmistakably negative cultural value implying rural backwardness and vulgarity. For example on hearing one of these recordings, a middle- or upper-class person might say something like «¡Quítate esa bachat!» (Take that bachata off!). By using the term in this way, a style of guitar music made by poor rural musicians come to be synonymous with low quality. The condemnation fell not only upon the music and its performers, but upon its listeners as well; the term bachatero, used for anyone who liked the music as well as for musicians, was equally derogatory. In the late 1970s and 1980s, the worsening social and economic conditions of bachata’s urban and rural poor constituency were clearly reflected in bachata. The intrumentation remained the same, but the tempo had become noticeably faster, and the formerly ultra-romantic lyrics inspired by the bolero became more and more concerned with drinking, womanizing, and male braggadocio, and increasingly, it began to express desprecio (disparagement) toward women. As bachata’s popularity with the country’s poorest citizens grew, the term bachata, which earlier had suggested rural backwardness and low social status, became loaded with a more complicated set of socially unacceptable features that included illicit sex, violence, heavy alcohol use, and disreputable social contexts such as seedy bars and brothels. Untill recently, bachata was a musical pariah in its country of origin, the Dominican Republic. Since its emergence in the early 1960s, bachata, closely associated with poor rural migrants residing in urban shantytowns, was considered too crude, too vulgar, and too musically rustic to be allowed entrance into the mainstream musical landscape. As recently as 1988, no matter how many copies a bachata record may have sold – and some bachata hits sold far more than most records by socially acceptable merengue orquestas – no bachata record ever appeared on a published hit parade list, received airplay on FM radio stations in the country’s capital Santo Domingo, or were sold in the principal record stores. Bachata musicians appeared only rarely on television, and they performed only in working-class clubs in the capital. In contrast, even second rate merengue orquestas were given lavish publicity and promotion, and they entertained at posh private clubs and nightclubs. To read more about Bachata, check out the book «Bachata, A social history of a Dominican popular music», published by Temple University Press in 1995, written by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, from which the above synopsis is taken. Bachata hos I Love Dancing Learn Bachata at I Love Dancing!?