Salsa Crossings: Dancing Latinidad in Los Angeles

Abstract

It appears to be a ritual among salsa dance scholars to open by sharing a personal salsa experience. I will follow their lead: My introduction to Los Angeles–style salsa came on a Saturday night in the spring of 1999, when I had the pleasure of taking a tour of the city's salsa scene with dance scholar Juliet McMains. Already an established professional ballroom dancer, McMains was just beginning her graduate studies at the University of California–Riverside where I was visiting faculty, having recently co-edited a collection on Latin/o American social dance. Lucky for me, McMains was among the many brilliant students who enrolled in my class on race and dance. The night of our tour, she invited a handsome friend and fellow ballroom dancer to partner first one of us, then the other, throughout the night. He drove us around the city as we stopped at a cramped restaurant-turned-nightclub in a strip mall, at a glamorous ballroom in Beverly Hills, then ended the night downtown at a massive disco in a former movie palace, the Mayan nightclub.

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