La salsa cubana (2011) Documentaries – Resources
Inside Havana's casino scene: this film follows Cuban dancers in their own environment — social gatherings, dance schools, the streets — building toward a rueda de casino competition. The closest thing to being in Havana without being there.
Complete documentary
What It Covers
The film follows La rueda de Guanabacoa, a casino group from Guanabacoa on the outskirts of Havana, on its way to the national casino competition on the TV show Bailar Casino. Older dancers tell how casino began. It was directed by Eric Johnson and Sarita Streng and premiered in April 2011 at the Chicago Latino Film Festival and the Havana Film Festival New York.
The film documents casino (Cuban salsa) as a living social practice in Havana. It follows dancers of different ages and backgrounds, showing how casino is taught, how it's danced socially, and how it functions as community. The rueda de casino competition at the end shows what the dance looks like at a high collective level — dozens of couples moving in synchrony through called figures.
The idea came about in Havana, where Eric Johnson had been living since the summer of 2003. When Sarita Streng, his former casino teaching partner from San Diego, visited him, they saw La rueda de Guanabacoa at a rueda festival in the Teatro América; the group had already won preliminary rounds on the TV show Bailar Casino. In the film, older dancers who were there at the time tell how casino started.
Why Dancers Should Watch It
Most Cuban dance videos show performance — staged, rehearsed, for the camera. This film shows the social reality: how people actually dance casino in Cuba, what the energy in a real rueda feels like, and what the dance means to the people who grew up with it. That context changes how you approach your own dancing — you stop trying to look like a performance and start trying to feel like a Cuban social dancer.