The (Cuban) bolero was born in Cuba’s Santiago in the end of 1800 and later on it spreaded all over the latin countries. Bolero is the roots or at least one of the biggest inspirers of nearly all the modern latin dances. The bolero dancers like to listen the old masters like Emilio Tuero, Orlando Contreras, Roberto Ledesma, Antonio Machin, Julio Jaramillo, Rodolfo Aicardi, Alci Acosta and Lucho Gatica. The best Boleros of today like Raulin Rodriguez, Leanardo Panigua and Joan Sebastian are excellent enough to compete with the old evergreens.

Latinos call romantic pop music baladas or pop musica. As you know, pop music is not always danceable. Latin baladas are mostly for listening. Some of them are romantic salsa, bachata, cumbia, vallenato, mariachi, chacha or bolero music.

In the ancient days all the latinos were dancing bolero, which means unlimited amount of ways to dance it. The way it will be teached in 6th festival is based on 3 steps, although bolero has a 4/4 rhythm. Bolero is basically the same as ballroom competition rumba and the Finnish social rumba dance. The competition dances use long and exact steps starting from rhythm 2 and stepping over the rhythm with long wait. The result looks competition or technically oriented. Latinos in hot countries save the dance energy, which makes their style continuous soft movement.

The Finland 6th offers 5 best bolero workshops done by Hips on Fire, Seemore Johnson Costa Rica and Cristine Pujols Spain. They have had a long bolero career in USA and now they spead bolero around Europe. They represent the bolero danced by the regular latinos. In this festival they have enough time to teach huge amount of bolero and to combine it with bachata, chacha and son. They have also invented the BachataRueda and Kizouklero (combining Zouk, Kizomba and Bolero). Their "better than Zumba" is a jorney to nearly 10 latin dances.

We want all the festival bolero attendees to ask the local Dj's to play bolero and most propably at least the bachata dj's can do it. In Finland social dances you'll pretty often hear the the finnish language version of bolero songs (called rumba in Finland).