The Great Migration: Los Angeles Salsa Speculations and the Performance of Latinidad

In a booth at Chuck’s Grill¹ in the City of Commerce,² I sit watching the dance floor, waiting for María Elena to arrive. A few newcomers practice moves they must have learned at the class taught earlier. They clutch each other with lots of tension as they unsuccessfully attempt a quick set of turns. In contrast, a very skinny man (Felipe from México, I was to learn) leads his partner with a touch so light, it appears as if he had no bones in his arms. His partner responds uncertainly at first, but then accustoms herself to the slightness of his finger signals. Without any sort of pressure exerted between their bodies, they do not gain momentum as they putter in place. An older man and woman close their eyes and cuddle. Others dance comfortably on tempo, minus the uncontained hoopla of the newcomers. A few couples cross their steps behind, with a basic step associated more with Mexican cumbia than with salsa in Los Angeles.

One couple stands out from the others because they inject their speedy dips and spins with layers of moves like head rolls and neck drops. With precision and velocity they lift, lunge, and raise their arms into the air triumphant like acrobats. Then he snaps his fingers and slicks back his hair while she swishes her skirt. They effectively distance themselves from, and occasionally bump into, those who practice less spectacular techniques—the contained sways, the jerking, the bobbing, the over-zealous exertions of the newcomers, and the boneless arms of the more informally trained. The newcomers teeter closer to the edges of the floor, giving up space to the ones who dance what is known as L.A.-style salsa—the style that has put Los Angeles on the global salsa map.

Together, the dancers with their multiple salsa moves at Chuck’s Grill not only create latinidad,³ they also socially generate a hierarchy among Latinas/os. Throughout my ethnographic research on the salsa practices in Los Angeles and its surrounding cities, I found that salsa practitioners contend with the contradictory poles of latinidad produced in Los Angeles, particularly in Hollywood films—the exoticized Caribbeanesque Latina/o manufactured with the ability to rejuvenate a white protagonist’s sex life,⁴ and the laboring Latina/o migrant.⁵ (See Photos 1 and 2).

I argue that to move up the salsa social hierarchy, local salseras/os perform L.A.-style salsa that distances them from practices associated with undocumented Mexican laborers.

Photo 1.

Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights (2004) depicts Afro-Cubans at La Rosa Negra nightclub asa mass of dancing bodies.

(DVD capture from Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, directed by Guy Ferland, produced by Lions Gate Films, Miramax Films, Lawrence Bender Productions.)

Based on my ethnographic work at Chuck’s Grill from 1999-2005, I analyze how such danced distinctions underscore a social choreography entangled with the politics of migration.⁶ At Chuck’s Grill, salsa practitioners evaluate one another’s performances of belonging based on whether they have trained their bodies to dance L.A.-style salsa—the practice marked by acrobatic lifts and neck drops, accelerated spins, dramatic poses, and meticulous timing. If you fail to pass as an L.A.-style salsera/o,⁷ and the crowd appraises you to be Latina/o, you may be accused of “dancing like a Mexican.”

I watch as a Latina confidently steps onto the restaurant dance floor, lightly kicks into a basic step that crosses diagonally behind her, alternating sides. A few beats into the song, her partner stops her and exaggerates the linearity of his own forward and back basic. Moments later, she has changed her step, follows his lead for a few beats, and then switches back to her own basic. He stops and tries to correct her again. I have seen and been a part of these impromptu dance floor lessons previously, in which the basic steps of salsa from Mexico and Central America are either not legible, or...