The slow, pulsating rhythm and romantic music of Rumba has contributed to its ageless universal appeal. The dance itself exudes the strength and confidence of an archetypal male Latin lover, sensuous and seductive, whose passion tempts his partner to become lost in the intensity and innuendo of the rhythm.

But in Rumba the woman does not yield so readily. She displays her own will by remaining coy, teasing and toying with the man as she repeatedly lures him and then reject his advances in this courtship. The current tempo of Rumba is set at 25-27 bars per minute.

The Paso Doble rather uninspiring means “two-step”. Yet this dance, in which the man represents the matador and the woman his cape in the drama of a Spanish bull-fight, has inspired an enduring passion, not only in its homeland of France and Spain but throughout the world.

Though most often associated with Spain, many of the popular figures have French names, underlining the fact that the Paso Doble is one of France’s standard dances. The current tempo of Paso Doble is set at 60-62 bars per minute.

USA in the 1920s there had been a veritable zoo of animal dances, and the best known of which was probably the Turkey Trot. These were in addition to other dance crazes, such as the Charleston and Black Bottom, wild moves got wilder as the music as the music got faster, Other dances and styles developed from these and the taxes Tommy or Breakaway, in which the couple moved apart and came back together, emerged during 1920s, Gradually in 1927 the Lindy Hop and Jitterbug continued to develop into the 1930s, it found a home in Harlem Savoy Ballroom, where it grew up with the great Swing bands of the era.

The line-up of orchestras who played at the Harlem Savoy sounds like Who’s Who of Swing. Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Tommy Dorsey, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie and Duke Ellington all performed at the Savoy. The Band inspired the dancers and the bands in an upward-reaching spiral towards new heights of dance and musical expression, When Benny Goodman gave a concert at the Paramount Theatre, New York, in 1937, teenagers went wild and poured into the aisles to” Jitterbug”, as the newspapers called the dance.

The craze swept across America. Variations in technique led to styles such as Boogie-woogie and Swing Boogie, with “Jive” gradually emerging as the generic term that covered Lindy Hop, Jitterbug and Boogie-woogie dances. Whichever term was used in the 1940s, the music was Swing.

By the 1950s, the music was no longer as smooth and polished as Swing but it had huge popular appeal: this music was Rock “n” Roll. With the change in music came a change in the dancers’ interpretation of the music. The heavier beat engendered a more two – dimensional jive with a “choppier” feel. By end pf the 1950s, jive had already reached the ballrooms and dance schools but in a different style. The signature tempo of Jive is 42-44 bars per minute.