Glossary of Merengue Terms

Merengue is a couple dance and music tradition rooted in the Dominican Republic, where it is regarded as a marker of the national identity of the Dominican community.^[1] The form is generally traced to the nineteenth-century Caribbean, and at least one account places its origin specifically within the Dominican Republic.^[2] Reference works also record a Haitian strand in its parentage and describe a characteristically stiff-legged, limping step that sets it apart from the gliding ballroom forms.^[3] The dance was introduced to the United States in 1953, where it subsequently mingled with North American swing.^[4] The entries gathered below name its steps, figures, instruments, and observances as they appear in the cited literature.

Basic locomotion

The first cluster of terms concerns how the dancer moves across the floor. Merengue is repeatedly characterized as a marching dance: the dancer steps left and right in steady alternation with the music—left-right-left-right in even time—the simplest cue a beginner is given.^[5] Instructional sources resolve this motion into two components: walking steps and side steps, the latter termed the chasse. They return to the marching image to convey the dance's even pulse and its value as a tool for building rhythm.^[6] The dictionary register sharpens the technique further, defining the step itself as stiff-legged and limping rather than smooth or rising-and-falling.^[3]

Figures

The second cluster names the figures of the ballroom syllabus. One such syllabus distinguishes three basic movements—the Side Basic, the Forward Basic, and the Back Basic Movement—which together organize a couple's progress along the floor's three principal axes.^[7] These figures rest on the steady stepping foundation that observers associate with the dance's development in the Caribbean across the 1800s.^[2]

Ensemble and social setting

The third cluster gathers the instrumental and social vocabulary. The accompanying ensemble is built on the accordion, the drum, and the saxophone, and the dance is performed in pairs, the partners circling and exchanging flirtatious gestures to the rhythm.^[1] The country's northern region is held to be the cradle of the practice, whose sphere of influence extends outward to Puerto Rico, the United States, and the wider Caribbean.^[1]

Observance and nomenclature

The final cluster covers commemoration and naming. The tradition was recognized by presidential decree in 2005, which declared November 26 National Merengue Day, and in 2016 it was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; annual merengue festivals are mounted in Dominican cities such as Santo Domingo and Puerto Plata.^[1] A point of spelling separates the dance from the dessert: "merengue" the dance and "meringue" the pastry differ in English only by orthography, both words naming, in Spanish, the same confection of whipped egg whites and sugar.^[8] The encyclopedic literature treats the dance under its own headword, situating it among the folk dances catalogued from the Americas.^[9]