Bachata - Dance of My Heart

By Carma R and Tony

Arguably, the most sensual Latin music and dance of all times, Bachata is a genre of music that takes its origins from the colourful countryside and the rural neighbourhoods of the Dominican Republic.

As a music and as a dance, bachata expresses the desire for connection and intimacy. It's the longing we have for someone to know us in the deepest part of our hearts, to know we are not alone. It's a tender spot, the most vulnerable part of ourselves, where we wish to know another can reside and be close to us and know we are together in the world.

Even when strangers dance the bachata, modestly separate from one another, the paralleling of movements, the continuous contact, the graceful and gentle spins, are all invitations to walk together for awhile, to be close, to share in tenderness. I move you and you move me. No matter which way you turn, we are going together. The dance can be playful and light, a game of mirroring one another, of playing to the rhythms of the music.

But if you hear the invitation to what bachata has to offer, and accept, then two, become one, and move in synchronicity across the floor. In the closest of embraces, a couple can experience the powerful emotions drawn out in the music: feelings of love, warmth, joy, excitement. Something in the music touches your heart so powerfully, you can't resist and you respond instinctively in your movement. Bachata is about feeling the emotion in the music.

The longing and loss experienced in heartache are also expressed in bachata music and dramatized in the dance's movements. Turn away from me, I'll turn you back. Come back, come back, come back to me. Where you go, I'll follow. Stay here, close to me, feel my heartbeat, and remember.

Dancing under bachata's sensual rhythms, you are drawn into the present moment and elevated into a world of romance and passion, of heart-felt emotion and desire, of intimacy and longing.

© Copyright Toronto Salsa Passion, May 15, 2009 – all rights reserved