這是紐約時報於２００７年８月的一則報導，藉由影片“El Cantante”來記錄拉丁舞Salsa的回顧興盛沒落的歷史與轉機。在七零年代末期和八零年代初期的拉丁舞全盛時期，人們湧入紐約的舞池，享受著音樂舞蹈的歡愉氛圍。Salsa舞蹈曾經是以一種以優美的肢體來展現的街頭能量。在歷經了時空的盛衰起伏後，還是有一群熱愛舞蹈的人嚐試著喚回人們對它的喜愛。
「Salsa舞仍然保持著街舞的形式:它是透過吸收融合而非學習而來. 」這段話點出了Salsa舞的為何如此吸引人們喜愛的草根特質和互動多變的能量。
雖然後來的舞者把這樣的舞蹈課程制式化，讓它可以被更多人學習接受，但是被賦予過多的形式技巧的舞蹈讓它反而無法融入舞廳裡飲酒作樂的隨性情境，也和當初街舞的精神有所不同。
報導的標題「A Sophisticated Salsa Leaves the Streets Behind」我把它譯成「賦予過多形式技巧的Salsa舞蹈已離街頭而去」。
這裡的sophisticated 的英譯是這樣的
having a good understanding of the way people behave and/
or a good knowledge of culture and fashion:
中譯部分一般翻為「世故,老練,複雜的」。我覺得這個字用在這裡有一種負面的意思，參照內文中salsa舞從原始的街舞的自由形式演變成後來在教室裡教授的模式。報導者似乎對這樣的轉變多有感慨。所以我把這個字加上自己的詮釋，應該是不會偏離原意太多吧。
More info:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/arts/dance/29bloo.html?_r=1&;scp=13&sq=El%20Cantante&st=cse&oref=slogin
上面是聯合報版本,網站上的版本標題是
「Salsa Spins Beyond Its Roots」,與「A Sophisticated Salsa Leaves the Streets Behind」的意思相去不遠。
聯合報版的原文
A Sophisticated Salsa Leaves the Streets Behind
By JULIE BLOOM
SOON AFTER hector Lavoe, the great salsa singer, arrives in New York in the new biographical film, “El Cantante,” he finds himself immersed in a vibrant scene in the Bronx: a nightclub crammed with bodies drenched in sweat moving to the pounding beat of congas. As the film, which stars Marc Anthony as Mr. Lavoe, shows, it could have been any night in New York in the late 1960s, when dancing was a genuine physical manifestation of the energy of the streets.
But salsa dancing has changed dramatically since the heyday of Mr. Lavoe, whose career thrived throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, when hundreds of clubs throughout New York were packed nightly with Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans and other Latinos dancing to the music of people like Mr. Lavoe, Willie Colon and Ray Barretto.
Salsa is experiencing a revival in popular culture, with “El Cantante,” and “In the Heights,” the Broadway-bound musical set in the Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights, along with moves spotted nightly on television shows like “So You Think You Can Dance.”
But the dance form has largely disappeared from the New York clubs where it was born. The Cheetah Discotheque, Ochentas, Corse Ballroom have all long been closed. The last holdout, the Copacabana, closed in July. Today salsa is kept alive by an ardent band of semiprofessional dancers, not only in New York but around the world.
“Salsa has gotten bigger in the sense that more people are taking lessons, but the people who came up in the streets and know about the music aren’t dancing,” said Henry Knowles, a D.J. who has been spinning salsa for more than 30 years. “In the ’80s and ’90s you could go out every night of the week in New York and have four or five places to choose from, and all of them had live music, and you don’t find that, especially in the Bronx, which used to be known as the barrio of the salsa.
Maria Torres, the woman responsible for the dance scenes in “El Cantante,” has lived through the evolution through 20-plus years as a salsa dance and choreographer. She now teaches salsa and her own brand of Latin Jazz dancing throughout the world.
In the mid-1970s, the 15-year-old Ms. Torres and her peers began to fuse mambo steps and movements with a grittier street style that reflected the changes people like Mr. Lavoe were making to salsa.
Until then, she said, there were primarily only two styles of Latin dance known to the public: mambo and cha-cha. “I went to this competition, it was freestyle, they were doing mambo, and I started laughing because I was like, ‘You don’t know what the kids are doing,’ so I started doing street stuff.”
Ms. Torres and others represented a new era of Latin dance, what has come to be recognized as salsa today.
Still, salsa remained a dance of the street, not taught but absorbed. That changed when Eddie Torres (no relation to Ms. Torres), brought the street into the studio in 1987. Mr.Torres, who runs the Eddie Torres Latin Dance Studio in Midtown Manhattan, grew up in Spanish Harlem and performed as a dancer with Tito Puente in New York throughout the 1980s.
Mr. Torres began teaching salsa as a dance technique after he choreographed a show for Puente at the Apollo Theater in 1987. “I hand-picked about 60 dancers from the nightclubs,” he said in a phone interview, “and I started teaching these dancers a routine. Afterwards I asked 12 dancers to stay with me and we formed the Eddie Torres Dance Company.
Mr. Torres’s dancers soon started their own schools, spreading the more formal approach to salsa that is practiced today.
Mr. Knowles, the D.J. was ambivalent about this news serious breed of dancer. Most focus more on moves than on socializing and drinking. “The clubs depend on the bar,” he said, adding that if the dancers “want nice venues to go to, they need to understand what it takes to run a venue and support it and buy a few bottles.
But Mr. Torres said he believed that the changes are for the better. “It’s gotten so sophisticated,” he said. “Before, we’d give the girls a little run here, a little run there. Now we start her off with 14 spins in the first bar.
