SALSA: A PAN-AMERICAN ART
2025
Dance, Projections, and Soundtrack
Salsa: A Pan-American Art is a short interdisciplinary dance and projection work exploring salsa as an indigenous, living cultural form shaped by Caribbean, African diasporic, and North American musical traditions. Combining live salsa choreography, projection, and narration, the piece traces the cultural evolution of salsa as a social dance rooted in migration, resilience, community, and the exchange of cultures across the Americas.
Like the people and communities that shaped it, salsa embodies a fusion of identities, traditions, and faiths—Indigenous, African, European, Jewish, and others. The work celebrates this diversity while exploring how salsa developed into a shared cultural form that crosses national, ethnic, and religious boundaries.
Salsa’s musical roots draw from Cuban traditions including guaguancó, Son Montuno, Cha-Cha-Chá, Rumba, and Mambo; Puerto Rican forms such as Bomba and Plena; and North American influences including Jazz and R&B.
The current version runs approximately six minutes and is an excerpt from a larger work in development. It was created for and first presented at Mignolo Arts’ Intercultural Dance Day in Metuchen, New Jersey.
PERFORMANCE
“Abicú” — Roberto Angleró (Puerto Rico)
Performance and Choreography by Jeremy Thompson and Natalia Rodriguez-Gonzalez
The music traces a direct lineage to the African diaspora and to traditions carried to the Americas through the transatlantic slave trade. These influences remain present in salsa’s rhythms, instrumentation, lyrics, and dance. Many songs also reference La Regla de Ocha, the Afro-Cuban religious tradition more widely known as Santería.
“Lo Que Dice Justí” — Wayne Gorbea (The Bronx)
Performance and Choreography by Gisela Nucciarone and Natalie Romero
Much of salsa’s development and innovation took place alongside the migration of Latino communities to the United States from the late 1940s through the 1970s. New York City became a major center for the music, where labels including Tico, Alegre, Cotique, and Fania recorded and produced some of the genre’s most influential works.
As salsa grew in popularity, it spread throughout Central and South America, inspiring new musical and dance movements in Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico, Panama, and beyond. These scenes developed their own identities while remaining in dialogue with the New York sound and the Caribbean traditions from which it emerged. A shared passion for the music and dance connected salseros across national borders as participants in a broader Pan-American culture.
Direction, Concept, and Visuals: Miguel Romero-Trejos
Dancing and Choreography: Gisela Nucciarone, Natalia Rodriguez-Gonzalez, Natalie Romero, Jeremy Thompson
Production: Digital Pulse Productions