The way european ballroom treats latin cultures is a phenomenon that is worth to be described in steps:

1 step one) lazy curiosity: in a remote era in the past, they were introduced to the rich variety of dance and musical expressions of latin america. They retain only the stereotypes and exotic figures, and never bother to make a deep study about the root of the body and musical expressions.

2) step two) arrogance: once they have the stereotypes, they start to sell it like a circus artifact. Meanwhile they introduce their own rules and techniques and make the dance something else. The arrogance here is the illusion that they can reduce others cultures to a eurocentric view and that they already know it all, that`s why they think they don`t have anything to learn.

3) step three) delusion: in the era of internet, its inevitable that people will see that this so called international "rumba", "samba" and "tango" are very different animals than the originals. So, people will ridicule it and call them out saying, "hey man, this is not samba, rumba, tango". The delusional step is them saying that these people are "arrogant"! the cycle is closed.

4) step four) heart broken feeling: The same arrogant european culture that appropriate other cultures without study, without learning, without any effort to understand it, start to feel oppressed if someone try to teach them things.  
There is no solution when a collective delusion is so strong that they think they are the victims, even when they are occupying and colonizing other cultures. What is left to say? Maybe they would suggest us to change the name of our culture right? haha, its hilarious! But also tragic.


Its really disturbing to see defenders of ballroom distortion appealing to the argue that "cultures are free to interpretation". Actually, ignorance is not something to be proud of. Students and professional artists study and knows what they are doing before they plead to make a new version. Someone dancing this video above know anything about "mangueira", salgueiro", the instruments, the era when samba players were persecuted by police?  No right? International ballroom wants to plead they are doing something new in samba, but they do not even know what they are talking about. They are only presenting some stereotypes and reducing it all to their own rules. And then if someone calls them out, they act like they are heroes doing something great and artistic. They are not. 

1. (cultures and art) Obviously, dances evolve and change. But Art is a expression of cultures. And cultures are the result of a legacy of experience. So, its to that experience that we should recur when we want to understand them. If someone calls himself a "professor" and are not interesting in learning, he is just a charlatan. To make a version or a new interpretation of a deep rooted culture like samba demands study, hard work, humbleness, and a lot of desire to learn with the roots of these cultures. Its not something that you simply do arbitrariness out of the arrogant feeling that "you know it all". The dance above is evidently something made out of European rules and techniches, with no link to any samba musicality or body expression. Its obvious that it is not even a 5 th degree cousin. There is no relation to samba but the name. And the name is there, why? the question that all of you have to answer? Why is it samba? What elements of it make it samba?