Eddie Torres Style Salsa: What "ET On2" Actually Means

Eddie Torres is a New York dancer, choreographer and teacher, born in 1950 and raised in Spanish Harlem by Puerto Rican parents, who came up in the post-Palladium club scene of the late 1960s and 1970s. He danced and later worked with Tito Puente, and it was Puente who told him to dance professionally and put an act together. With the ballroom mambo teacher June LaBerta, Torres put counts to the On2 timing his generation already danced, and did something the Palladium generation never had: he wrote it down as a system that could be taught class by class.

That system, and the school he ran with his wife Maria Torres, produced a generation of New York teachers who then spread it worldwide. When people say "ET style", "New York Style" or simply "On2" today, they are usually describing the Eddie Torres system. The full story of what came before him is in The Birth of Mambo.

Four decisions define ET style. None of them is exotic; together they turned a club instinct into a curriculum.

1. The count starts on 1. The dancer counts 1-2-3, 5-6-7 with holds on 4 and 8, the same count musicians use for the bar. This sounds obvious now. Many Palladium-era dancers did not count at all, and those who stepped 2-3-4 started the count on 2.
2. The leader breaks back on 2. Left foot in place on 1, right foot back on 2, replace on 3; then right in place on 5, left forward on 6, replace on 7. The follower mirrors. The count-by-count version is in the On2 basic step.
3. The break sits on the conga slap. The 2 is not a number, it is a sound. Torres taught students to find the conga's slap and put the break on it, which is why ear training is part of every serious On2 syllabus.
4. Shines are a first-class subject. Solo footwork, drilled in lines, with names and levels. The Palladium dancers improvised shines; Torres catalogued them. The move glossary is a descendant of that habit.

These three terms cause more arguments than any other topic in the On2 world, so here is the plain version. All three break on the 2 and 6. They differ in which beats carry the steps and the holds, and in which direction the leader breaks first.

"Power 2" is the name Razz M'Tazz, the New York school Angel and Addie Rodriguez founded in 1987, uses for the older count. It breaks on the same beats as ET style, but the steps fall on 2-3-4 and 6-7-8 with holds on 1 and 5, and the leader's first break goes forward instead of back. Dancers from the two systems can usually dance together once they realise that the leader in one is doing what the follower does in the other on any given count. If you learn ET style, which is what you will find in most courses, including this one, you are learning the version the rest of the world speaks.

Three reasons, and none of them is that it is "more correct" than the Palladium count. First, it was teachable: a numbered system with named steps could be delivered in a weekly class and, later, on video. Second, it had a lineage: Torres' students became teachers, their students became teachers, and each of them taught the count they were given. Third, it aligned with how musicians count, which made it easier to explain the music to dancers and easier for dancers to talk to bands.

The result is that "On2" and "Eddie Torres style" are now close to synonyms outside New York. Inside New York you will still hear the distinction, and it is worth knowing so you can read a class description properly. Either way, the thing you are learning is a lineage that runs from the Palladium Ballroom through Torres to the teacher in front of you.

• Learn the 1-2-3 count. It is the one every course, festival and social uses. You can always learn the Palladium count later as a curiosity.
• Do not skip the music. The system only makes sense if the 2 is a sound you can hear. Ear training is the first module, not an optional extra.
• Treat shines as vocabulary, not decoration. In ET style, solo footwork is where technique is built. Partner work borrows from it.
• Know the history well enough to read a class listing. "ET2", "NY On2", "Mambo On2" and "Modern Mambo" all point at the same system. "Palladium 2" and "Power 2" point at the older count.

The Mambo Guild curriculum is built on the Eddie Torres system from the first module, and the history behind it has its own 20-module History of Salsa course for members who want the sources.