Afro-Cuban Orishas Dance Course: Coming January 2027

One course that takes the Orisha dances the way a Cuban folkloric school does: technique in the body before steps, the steps before the stories, and the stories told honestly.

• Body-movement technique first. The bent knees, the low weight, the chest and shoulder movement, the undulation and the isolations that every Orisha dance is built on. This is the technique that translates into salsa, rumba and every body-movement drill you will ever do.
• Every Orisha and its main steps. Elegguá, Changó, Oggún, Yemayá, Oshún, Oyá, Babalú Ayé, Ochosi and Obatalá, each with the steps that identify it and the way the body carries them.
• The toques, rhythm by rhythm. The most common toques, Chachalokafun, Ñongo, Iyesá and more, broken down into what the drums play and what the feet do on it, and how to recognise each one when you hear it.
• Character on the rhythm. How to take each Orisha's gesture and personality, the sea in Yemayá, the storm in Oyá, the thunder in Changó, and apply it to the toques, so the same rhythm is danced differently for different Orishas.
• History and culture. Where the Orishas come from, how the dances travelled with enslaved Yoruba people to Cuba, what each Orisha represents, and the line between the dance you learn here and the religious rituals the dances belong to, which this course does not teach or stage.
• For men and for women, every level. Federico teaches the men's and the women's styling and steps in every lesson, with no partner needed.

Taught by Federico Moledi, with video captions in 16 languages and the written notes translated, like every course here.

The Orishas are the deities of the Yoruba religion of West Africa. Between the 16th and the 19th century, hundreds of thousands of Yoruba people were taken to Cuba in the slave trade. They kept their religion alive by syncretising the Orishas with Catholic saints, and it survives today as Regla de Ocha, or Lucumí, often called Santería. Each Orisha has its own colours, its own objects, its own stories, its own rhythms played on the batá drums, and its own dance.

In Cuba those dances left the ceremony and became a folkloric art as well, taught in schools and performed on stage, most visibly by the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional de Cuba from 1962 on. That is the tradition this course teaches: the dance as a dance, with its technique, its steps and the character of each Orisha, and with respect for the ceremonies the dances come from.

A short portrait of each one, the way the dance remembers them:

• Elegguá. The opener of roads and the messenger, the first and the last to be greeted. Playful and mischievous, danced like a child with a hooked stick, the garabato, clearing the way.
• Changó. Thunder, fire, the drums and virility. Proud and powerful, danced with the double axe and a chest that leads.
• Oggún. Iron, work and war. Danced with the machete, cutting through the forest, with a weight and a force that come from the ground.
• Yemayá. The sea and motherhood. Her dance rolls like waves, the skirt in the hands, from the calm sea to the storm.
• Oshún. The rivers, sweetness, love and gold. Graceful and flirtatious, honey and laughter, the skirt and the mirror.
• Oyá. The wind, the storm and the gate of the cemetery. Fast and whirling, danced with the iruke, the horse-tail whisk.
• Babalú Ayé. Illness and healing. Danced bent and limping, with the ja, a broom of palm fibre, carrying the weight of the sick.
• Ochosi. The hunter and justice. Bow and arrow, stealth, the body low and aimed.
• Obatalá. Creation, wisdom and purity, dressed in white. Slow, upright and dignified, the oldest of them all.

A toque is a rhythm played for an Orisha on the batá drums, and each toque has steps that belong to it. Some toques belong to one Orisha; others, like Chachalokafun, Ñongo and Iyesá, are shared, and the dancer colours them with the character of the Orisha being danced. The course breaks each common toque down twice: first what the drums play and where the step sits in it, then how the same toque changes when it is danced for a different Orisha.

This is the part most salsa dancers have met without knowing it. Chachalokafun and the Changó bounce are already in Bodymovement Mastery, and the Afro-Cuban toolkit teaches Orisha-rooted footwork. The course puts them back where they come from.

Three things on the platform build the same body and need no Orishas course to begin:

• 13 Afro Cuban Steps. The Afro-Cuban toolkit: Orisha-rooted footwork, popular Cuban dances and rumba vocabulary in short single-step breakdowns, Open level.
• Bodymovement Mastery. Isolations, bounce, the Changó bounce, despelote, Chachalokafun, rolls and waves. The technique the Orisha dances are built on, taught on its own.
• The glossary. Chachalokafun, the Changó bounce and despelote are defined word for word from the lesson notes. Free, no account.