What Style of Dress Should You Wear for Each Latin Dance?
Everyone knows that dancesport is glamorous, and that’s mainly due to the beautiful dresses we get to wear for competitions and shows. In my other article, I had put together different types of dresses and what they say about your personality. In this article, I am going to discuss what style of dress you should wear for each of the five Latin dances.
Before I start, I want to mention that during a competition, it would be impossible to change the dress style for each dance, so stick with one. Nevertheless, for shows, you can feature all five dress styles.
Cha-Cha
Cha-cha is all about being flirty and having fun. It’s quite a sexy dance, and at times, is even provocative. For that reason, when you say “a cha-cha dress”, you automatically think of fringes. Because of the fast and dynamic hip actions that this dance has, it’s best to highlight your hips even more by adding fringes to your dress.
Of course, there are different types of fringes. You can have elastic, colorful fringes, or for extra spark, beaded or stoned fringes.
As cha-cha is a flirty dance, it’s only suitable to have a short dress, or even a separate skirt and top.
Samba
Samba is all about show and spectacle! It’s about voluptuous movement, and most importantly: BOUNCE! And how do we emphasize that bouncing movement we work so hard on? By wearing the correct style of dress with the right materials, of course.
Boa feathers and individual feathers will synchronize their motion with yours. They bring extra volume to your bounce and hip action.
If you simply don’t like feathers but still want volume, opt for a dress with horsehair braid hem. It’s a special type of stiff tulle added to the skirt’s hemline to give structure and fullness.
Furthermore, if you want to create the full samba look, mix brightly colored feathers with the horsehair braid hem to your skirt; finish it off with a headband. There you go – all set to light up the atmosphere!
Rumba
Rumba is about romanticism and daydreaming, but it’s also about sensuality. For that reason, your rumba dress needs to be a bit revealing, but in a delicate way. Rumba movements are fluid – the hips move in a figure 8. Consequently, the dress’s material needs to either be skin-tight or to wrap around your body (like silk, for example).
Extra tip: If you really want to accentuate your body actions, use AB Swarovski stones. They catch the light in a spectacular way and add dimension to your rumba movements.
Paso Doble
Paso Doble is a dance of pure Spanish passion. It’s the dance of the matador, the cape and the flamenco. In order to bring the audience into that mindset, you’ll need to incorporate a few elements of Spanish culture.
How can you make your dress look Spanish? Add some of the following:
- Polka dots
- Flowers
- Longer skirt
- Red color
- Epaulets
- Heavy ornaments
Jive
This is a tricky one! Why? Because jive, as a dance, derives from the jitterbug, a swing dance that originated in the 1930s. But usually, when you hear jive music, you think about the 1940s or 1950s; the fashion of those later decades was very different from the fashion of the 1930s.
Therefore, I would say that the most accurate way to dress for jive is in the “cabaret/burlesque” style: beads, fringes, short skirts, and gloves.
Now, how you choose your competition dress it’s a whole different story. It depends on many things such as age, level, body-type and so on, but here are some pieces of advice from Jordy.
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Bianca Gavrila
I've started dancing when I was 9 years old and it has been a part of me ever since. I love to surround myself with everything dancesport related. Now I get to experience the world of dancing through a writer's lens.