ABSTRACT
An ethnographic fieldnote from a salsa festival invites readers to get acquainted with the salsa circuit and the themes that run through this book. The brief introduction highlights the pleasurable and commercialised character of salsa dancing and how recent developments have led to the emergence of new forms of salsa entrepreneurship, including highly mobile transnational careers. Despite salsa’s being perceived as a “global dance”, academic literature has so far shown little interest in salsa dancers’ transnational practices. This book suggests to unravel the apparent tensions, addressing global inequalities in access to mobility, gendered performances seemingly at odds with any feminist sensibility and the ways differently positioned individuals meet in an intimate embrace on the dance floor. “Bailamos, let’s dance!”
