What is Rueda de Casino?
Rueda de Casino (Spanish for “wheel of Casino”) is a group dance born in 1950s Havana, in the social clubs known as casinos deportivos. Several couples form a circle, one person calls out (the cantante), and the whole group executes the same figure at the same time. The figure often swaps partners, so you dance with someone new every few beats.
It's dance, language and game at once. You practise timing and turn patterns — and you also learn to listen to a caller, spot their hand signals, and move in sync with strangers. For many dancers, rueda is the high point of the night.
How does the circle work?
In a rueda, couples stand around an invisible circle. Leads face inward, follows face outward. One person — sometimes the teacher, sometimes an experienced dancer in the group — is the caller, and announces the next figure with voice and a hand signal.
The call usually lands on beat 1 or beat 5. Everyone has one bar (four beats) to react and start. On dame the follow moves clockwise to the next lead, on contra dame counter-clockwise. The bigger the circle, the more spectacular when it all lands — and the funnier when someone spins the wrong way.
A typical rueda session runs 15 to 30 minutes and builds in difficulty. The caller starts with simple swap passes, layers in longer combinations, and often closes on a showstopper like pelota or a collective setenta complicado.
Famous calls explained
Dame
Literally “give me”. The leads hand their follow to the next lead in the circle, clockwise. The simplest partner swap and the building block of almost every rueda.
Dame Dos
Pass two follows down. Faster tempo: you skip one and take the second. Demands clean timing from the whole circle.
Enchufla
The follow turns under the arm and swaps places with the lead. In rueda form, often chained into a dame or a roll-through to the next.
Setenta
Classic four-beat figure (the name means “seventy”) where lead and follow work through a hand pattern, dame que no, and move on. One of the most iconic Cuban salsa moves.
Sombrero
The lead guides the follow's arms past the head as if placing a hat. Visually striking, especially when the whole circle does it in sync.
Exhibela
“Show her”. The follow spins a double turn in front of the lead, a brief showcase moment. Often part of longer combinations.
Adios
The follows peel off diagonally and cross to a new lead on the other side of the circle. A bigger swap pattern than dame.
Pelota
The follow is tossed — sometimes literally — between several leads. A joyful, playful pass that spikes the energy.
This is a tiny slice of the rueda vocabulary — many groups know over a hundred calls. At socials a shared core set is usually used so dancers from different schools can still dance together.
Where to dance rueda in the Netherlands
Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht and Leiden all run weekly rueda classes, and most Cuban socials open (or break) with a rueda block. Dutch Cuban festivals also put rueda on the programme as a matter of course.
Want to know when and where? See all rueda events in our calendar, or look more broadly at all Cuban salsa events.
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Find a rueda near you
Most dance schools welcome new rueda dancers in their weekly class. No experience? Start with an intro workshop in Cuban salsa.