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Origin & Purpose

Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it simply changes from one form to another.

(From here on we will call the Ballroom and Latin American Dances as BLD)
At the very core of these forms of dances, there is nothing really special. Every one in the world dance BLD, mostly in a subconscious state. Even the animals do it. The three channels that are widely available in India, about the wild life are the National Geographic, the Discovery and the Animal Planet. All of them show of the movements, that can be closely related to dancing. Many a time these animals are holding each other by the paws or the mouth and some movements occur in pairs, something similar to the BLD.

In our society, invariably all around the world, elder lifts up an infant or a small child and moves about, sways, rock, or some times consciously dance. This activity is usually accompanied with humming a tune, or singing a lullaby, or to some piece of music. The next instance is when a child steps on the parents or elders feet and the pair moves around. Apart from this, the other scattered fragments of the core of BLD is the holding of each other and walking in a park, or on the street, or when crossing the road.

The common factor in all the above is the leading by one and following by the other, rhythmic movements, and most of the times a good sense of joy and satisfaction. The above instances are universal; and are experienced by almost any and every one. This is nothing but the very core of BLD.

Also BLD very subtly bring back the childhood, especially the games, such as the swing (walk in the Ballroom), the merry-go-round (required for all the turns), the jungle gym (for the Cuban movement), etc.

So in the broader sense, the origin of BLD is in fact as old as the origin of life on earth.

Purpose
This starts from the very childhood. A child is comforted by the body warmth, the heart beats, the touch, etc. These are the most vital emotional activities for the child to have a sense of caring, sharing, love, identity, etc. Such moulding starts so early in life that it becomes the strong foundations for the mental stability in life.

With the growing up other set of problem start taking the priority, however the underlying emotional foundation is there all the same. This explains the reason for the hug, touch, feeling the warmth, heartbeat, etc. that tend to pacify an emotionally troubled person, which do a job better than the words.

These emotional foundations get buried deep within us over the period of time, and we forget the way things happened then, however the very essence of it remains very strong and it effects us through out our lives without a clue to it.

Thus this becomes the purpose of the BLD. To delve into the emotional foundations.

The next part is the "survival". By nature a man and a woman are created different, with different qualities required for the survival, distributed almost evenly between the two such that they are interdependent.

For substantiating the above here are some examples. The following is taken from a booklet published by the Reader's Digest magazine a couple of year's back.
Man
Man has better sense of direction, better physical strength, better logic, thinks from one side of the brain, etc.
Woman
Woman has better physical and chemical balances, can think from both sides of the brain, emotionally more stable, better in doing delicate repetitive jobs, see more colours, better sense intuition etc.

The following is from an article that came on the National Geography or the Discovery channel.
It said that the new generation's most sophisticated fighter planes, would be handled by two pilots. The woman would be flying the plane, and the man would be concerned with the final decisions, logistics, navigation, shoot and kill, etc.

I personally love this idea because it derives the best from the man and the woman, combine it and one gets a formidable force to reckon with. As a result one can concentrate better in one's better qualities and rise further. Exactly the same happens in BLD. This necessitated the man and lady dancing together in BLD.

The idea of changing partners as often as possible for social dancing is another important facet of BLD. As said earlier that with the passage of time the nature of the emotional foundation is lost, however the very essence remains. Any single person cannot provide this essence. So one needs to dance with as many partners as possible.

One last point is that the archaeologists have discovered that there was a kind of dance closely related to today's Rumba, sometimes during the time of the Egyptian Pharaoh, about 3000 years back. (Reference taken from the encyclopaedia.) Thus these dances have been on earth since quite some time. Because of the non-availability of documentation we do not know much in this field, of the earlier era.

The last part on purpose is the re-affirmation of the fact that an individual in is nothing. It's the team and the team-work that counts to survive and be successful. Thus almost each and every movement in the BLD is due to a partner. The same however can be done alone, however the finesse can never be achieved.