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7 The Global Commercialization of Salsa Dancing and Sabor (Puerto Rico) Priscilla Renta W estern ideals of beauty, elegance, and grace influence competitive salsa dancing and ballroom dancing and have had significant impact on the globalization of salsa dancing and sabor, flavor, and the related concept of sentimiento, feeling. World salsa dance competition rules and regulations, for instance, often mirror globalization’s centralization of power1 and tendency toward homogenization, thus suppressing sabor, cultural creativity , improvisation, and individual expression. Three world salsa championships serve as regulating bodies for competitive salsa dancing, performance, and instruction at the moment: (1) the World Salsa Federation (WSF) Championship, or Campeonato Mundial, in Miami, Florida, (2) El Congreso Mundial de la Salsa (World Salsa Congress; now known as the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress) and its World Salsa Open Championship in Puerto Rico, and (3) the World Salsa Championships in Las Vegas, Nevada, renamed the World Latin Dance Cup. The global commercialization of salsa dancing and sabor has a symbiotic relationship with these organizations and events, generating diverse global, transnational, and national perspectives among Latin American and Caribbean observers. This chapter discusses the globalization of salsa dancing and its effects on the concept of sabor, beginning with my own localized experience. This project is native-ethnographic, given that I am both Puerto Rican and a salsa dancer. Thus, an aspect of my analysis is testimonial, particularly with regard to sabor as a spiritual principle. The first half of this chapter deals with the cultural capital of sabor on the basis of several phases of my own experience. It describes the Caribbean cosmology underpinning salsa music making, which centers on dancing with sabor and sentimiento. It also includes my performance experience with the Eddie Torres Dancers at the RMM (Ralph Mercado Management) 118 Priscilla Renta Twenty-Third Annual Salsa Music Festival at Madison Square Garden, which inspired my scholarship on salsa dancing. Thus, the first half chronicles the transformation of salsa dancing from a form of Caribbean everyday life experience to staged choreography, emphasizing its role in Puerto Rican cultural life. The second half of the chapter examines competitive salsa dancing, the global commercialization of salsa, and sabor in three different scenarios. First, the WSF has created an instructional video called Latin Body Rhythms, which influences global concepts of and access to sabor by focusing on its corporeal aspects. Second is a YouTube clip of dancers from Spain performing the routine that won them the 2009 title at the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa. This performance generated a transnational Latin American and Caribbean online discussion regarding what constitutes salsa dancing, sabor, and the sentimiento it engenders and how competitive salsa dancing, influenced by Western concepts of grace and elegance, destabilizes national identification with salsa. Finally, I turn to my archival and ethnographic research on the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa. My work demonstrates that dancing salsa with sabor serves as a symbolic form of cultural nationalism, which Jorge Duany describes as the “spiritual autonomy of a people” (2002: 5; see also Duany 2001: 15, on the Puerto Rican “nation” as a spiritual principle). Sabor is the heart and soul of salsa dancing, an aesthetic tradition involving improvisation, creativity, and a corporeal response to the polyrhythmic quality of salsa music that stems from its African heritage. While some Puerto Ricans believe salsa loses sabor as it moves away from its history as a street dance with working-class roots and into the context of the Congreso Mundial, which focuses on staged, choreographed salsa dance performance and competitive dancing, global legitimacy has nonetheless caused the island’s middle and upper classes to embrace salsa dancing.2 This chapter voices the concerns of Puerto Ricans, particularly those on the island, about salsa and sabor and considers the impact of the global commercialization of salsa dancing on Puerto Rican nationhood. I draw from online discussions; formal and informal interviews I conducted in Puerto Rico (2006) and New York (2002–2003); and my attendance at the first Congreso Mundial in Puerto Rico in 1997, the third in 1999, and the 2006 tenth-anniversary celebration . I focus primarily on global commercialization and the reception of competitive salsa dancing while remaining conscious that the production side is equally significant and requires additional space and research. What Is Sabor? Sabor in Salsa Music (the Meaning Is in the Feeling) It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. —Duke Ellington Salsa music’s globalization and industrialization beginning in the sixties set the...

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