Glossary of Merengue Terms

Merengue is a couple dance and music tradition rooted in the Dominican Republic, where it is held to be a marker of the national identity of the Dominican community.^[1] The form is generally traced to the Caribbean of the nineteenth century, 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 distinguishes it from gliding ballroom forms.^[3] Introduced to the United States in 1953, the dance 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

A first cluster concerns how the dancer moves. The merengue is repeatedly characterized as a marching dance, in which the dancer steps left and right in steady alternation with the music—left-right-left-right in even time, the simplest mental cue a beginner is given.^[5] Instructional sources resolve this motion into two components, walking steps and side steps, the latter termed the chasse, and again invoke the marching image to convey the dance's even pulse and its usefulness for building rhythm.^[6] The dictionary register reinforces the technique, defining the step itself as stiff-legged and limping rather than smooth or rising-and-falling.^[3]

Figures

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

Ensemble and social setting

A 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 moving in circles and exchanging flirtatious gestures to the rhythm.^[1] The northern region of the country is regarded as the cradle of the practice, whose sphere of influence extends outward to Puerto Rico, the United States, and the wider Caribbean region.^[1]

Observance and nomenclature

A final cluster covers commemoration and naming. The tradition was recognized by presidential decree in 2005, which declared November 26 National Merengue Day, and it was inscribed in 2016 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]