Throughout evolution, human beings have discovered new ways to survive, feed themselves and have fun. Dances, dances and parties have been with us since the beginning of humanity. We see them in religious rites, celebrations and in some regions they used to dance as a means of protest. Even in the animal kingdom people dance to procreate.
Dancing is an expression of the emotions through the body, it fills us with energy and enthusiasm, it frees us, it amuses us and since past centuries it helps us to socialize. It eliminates shyness and breaks the shell of many, gives us courage to approach the person who attracts us in a rather dynamic way and automatically changes our mood.
The happy and contagious rhythms, a dancing hip and happy shoulders, that’s when we start to let go. But the dances in which our ancestors courted their future wife, those we see in the films they made in the halls of great castles, where they presented princes and maidens, are still seen today both in meetings and in professional competitions even.
Each region of each town, country or continent has its own customs that in many cases, include dances and celebrations, but what makes them indigenous makes them different and creates separate classifications. However, along with the birth of sports dancing, the name of ballroom dancing began to be attributed to only ten specific styles used in competitions of the same type.
All styles differ in rhythm, technique and costumes, and come from different parts of the world, but at their core they exemplify the basic elements of ballroom dancing: coordination and rhythm.

The most taught worldwide and applied to competition are:
Tango
From Argentina, we get the sensual steps of the Tango, today seen with admiration and elegance but that in its beginnings was repudiated by the upper classes. Its origins date back to the end of the 19th century in Buenos Aires. Where the only women practicing these dances were waitresses or prostitutes.
Cha Cha
The Cha cha cha, on the other hand, has been the most recent to enter the Latin dance category, shortly after the Mambo. Its popularization was simple due to the intermediate level of its dance, an easy rhythm and not so fast to begin with.
Viennese Waltz
Viennese Waltz, is one of the five international standard ballroom dances since 1951, when Paul Kerbs, a renowned dance teacher from Nurnberg combined the traditional Austrian waltz with the English style at the dance festival in Blackpool that same year.
Samba
The Samba with its energy and enthusiasm is the national dance of Brazil, originated by the groups of slaves brought from Africa that used to use in their ritual acts. It combines Brazilian popular music and Rio de Janeiro’s carioca music. Being accepted after World War II, it was considered a human mating dance, since without the man’s pelvic movements the dance would lose its natural character.
Jive
Jive, on the other hand, was born as a variation of Swing. It was characterized by the spontaneity of its steps and acrobatics performed by the dancers, but when it was included as the fifth Latin dance in international competitions, these aspects were replaced by the elegance and technique of the competition.
Fox-trot
The Fox-trot also comes from the United States, born to the rhythm of the first jazz bands by the hand of Africans and Caribbean residents of the area. It was born with improvisations with figures that resemble the trot of an animal, hence its name “the fox-trot”. It has been standardized by the English school since the 1920s, which slowed down its rhythm and modified its gait for a more elegant one.
Rumba
The rumba emerged in Cuba as a mixture of African rhythms with Caribbean dances in the mid-nineteenth century and encompassed a wide variety of local dances. With its lively and dynamic rhythm it was introduced in the competitive dances after the 40’s.
Bolero
The Bolero became popular in Spain in the middle of the 19th century, coming from gypsy musical expressions performed by a couple or a soloist. Accompanied by guitars and percussion instruments, it arrives in Cuba to merge with the Cuban trova and other Caribbean rhythms, hence its slow and cadenced movements that are danced to the rhythm of romantic tunes whose subsequent competition.
Swing
The East Coast Swing had its origin in the east of the United States at the beginning of the last century when dancers improvised steps on the chords of the piano to the rhythm of Jazz, Ragtime and Dixielan. It first became popular among the African-American population of New Orleans, New York and Chicago, and was created based on certain variations of the original Swing from the South.
Mambo
The Mambo, popularized in the 1950s and also originating in the Caribbean islands, was created from the Cuban Danzón and Son. As competition of the American Swing, this genre was born as an aggressive and lively variable of those already known in the Caribbean.
Salsa
The Salsa, is born from Puerto Rican and Cuban mixtures that took place in the United States. It was by mixing these styles with some elements of Afro-American Jazz that this genre was born. There are two variables for this Latin dance.
All of the above have variables in their rhythms, tempos, steps, figures or base. Differentiating them is essential when going out to dance either socially or competitively. Each one represents a level of physical demand according to the figures that it entails, for that reason also at the time of deciding to specialize in one or to enter a wheel, independently that it motivates to us, we must know to what extent it will be able to take our body to us.
Dancing is a physical activity that relaxes us, uninhibits us and regulates our mental health, let yourself be carried away by your body and enjoy yourself on the dance floor. It is necessary for the average human to practice half an hour of cardiovascular exercise a day, whether it be walking, jogging or dancing.