Casino is what they call salsa dancing in Cuba, referring to the place where you go to dance. Casino is also the title of this piece, a dance performance by Ofelia Jarl Ortega, made for three dancers with Latin American roots: Nina Sandino, Jao Moon and Ofelia herself.
Casino is set on a fictitious dance floor in a Latin American club for couples social dancing, where the dancers’ own relationships to salsa reverberates their bodies through a repertoire of historical and personal memories. By way of the dancers’ engagement and the sounds of their steps, the music is present in its absence. In a subtle, restrained, detailed and playful way, the three dancers connect, and fail to simultaneously.
Contextualizing salsa in Sweden
A big Latino boom in the 90’s and 00’s took place internationally, and we could see artists like Shakira, Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony. Of course there have been Latino booms and explosions before and after that too. “Latino” is, as we know, also not a genre, Latin America includes countries from Chile in the South to Mexico in the North. However, during the 90’s and 00’s Latin explosion in Sweden, salsa became very popular. Everyone was dancing salsa, and among them the Latin American diaspora.
Chilenos have never really had salsa as a national dance. Instead, it was very big in Cuba, Colombia and the Caribbean. There, every dinner ends with salsa dancing, and every birthday celebration is a dance. In Chile, the social dance has been cumbia and, occasionally, the folk dance cueca. Nevertheless, salsa gatherings among chilenos became huge in Sweden. The phenomenon grew in Sweden due to its big number of chilenos living here post Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 70-90’s. For the exile chilenos, salsa became a way to connect to the Latin American background. It became a subculture by the diaspora. And to be latino you needed to know how to dance salsa, a cliche that still haunts us in this piece.
“In my family it was only my uncle Rafael who danced. He even had his own salsa club at the opera restaurant in Malmö in the 90’s. But as salseros mostly drink water from the bar, they had to close, despite the well visited evenings. The women in my family called salsa dancing sleazy, and said it’s more fun to dance alone than with other men feeling you up. They might have been right, too.
When I first traveled to Chile as a grown up I met the blossoming reggaeton scene, and the feminist subgenre neo-perreo. For some years reggaeton was my connection to Latin America and my own heritage, until I stumbled upon salsa. The salsa music has always been part of what’s been played at home, but the dance had been hidden for me. Now salsa is all on my mind. And my newfound way of connecting to a Latin American diaspora, to be Chilean in Sweden, and to be a second generation immigrant.“ – Ofelia Jarl Ortega
BIOS
Ofelia Jarl Ortega (b. 1990) is a Chilean-Swedish choreographer and performer based in Stockholm. Her work centres around vulnerability and femininity, often with a suggestive erotic aesthetic. Questions around power and group dynamics are at the core of her investigations. She holds a diploma from The Royal Swedish Ballet School (2010) and a MA in Choreography from Stockholm University of the Arts (2014). Her work has been presented both nationally and internationally since 2015, at venues such as ImPulsTanz, Vienna; MDT, Stockholm; Arsenic – Contemporary Performing Arts Centre, Lausanne and Moving in November, Helsinki. www.ofeliajarlortega.com
Nina Sandino (She/they) born in Bilwi [“snake in the leaf” in the Mayangna language] on the Nicaraguan Caribbean Coast, a reservoir of diverse cultures, indigenous peoples and ethnic communities.
Nina is an architect and movement artivist, working independently as an eco social designer, choreographer/performer and dance facilitator. Their practice focuses on Afro indigenous queer futurism and ancestral communal knowledge. Nina’s work is moved by the urgency of artistic expression as a political action, and is interested in holistic practices, where rest, pleasure and joy work as radical tools for personal and collective empowerment. Their artistic practice is a joyful rebellion for self-preservation. https://www.ninasandino.com/
Jao Moon
The experience of growing up in the marginalized periphery of Cartagena de Indias Colombia turned Jao Moon into a political body. Living in an environment of constant resistance made them question the predominant social orders, this became the matter of Jao Moon’s work. Jao Moon’s work includes Memory of Dislocation, Everybody can be / Everybody can not be at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. The Lifetime of Fire – Manifestos for a Queer Futures at HAU, HKW Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Anahuacalli Museum CDMX. His collaborations and works have been presented at: Volksbühne Berlin, Sophiensaele Berlin, Kampnagel Hamburg, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Pompidou Center Paris, Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart Berlin 2024.
