History of the Casino Square Method (MCC)

Autobiographical Narrative
By: Yoel Marrero

Chapter 1: Genesis in Japan (1998–2000)

The Casino Square Method did not begin as a clear idea or a defined project. It was born out of an absence.

When I arrived in Japan, I realized that Casino dance, as I had experienced it in Cuba, simply did not exist. What people called “Cuban salsa” was not what I remembered. There was something off, something that did not match my embodied memory.

That’s where everything began.

I had no teachers, no references, no method. The only thing I had was the memory of having danced Casino since childhood. So I decided to do the only thing I could do: reconstruct it.

I started recording myself. Alone. Without a partner. To solve that problem, I used a chair as if it were a fixed partner. I danced around it, executed the steps, and then switched roles: I danced as the man and as the woman. I marked every step on the floor with tape, and then transferred those markings onto paper.

That became my first laboratory.

What I obtained was not beautiful. The trajectories were straight, broken, irregular. There was no clarity. No apparent logic. But precisely because of that, I understood something fundamental:

if what I remembered had meaning, that meaning was not on the surface—it was hidden.

I began listing all the figures I remembered from Cuba. Not as they were taught, but as I had lived them. And little by little, I started to see that behind the irregularity, something repeated itself.

In Japan, all of this was happening in an environment where Casino didn’t even have a name. It was called Cuban salsa, and what was taught was a linear version, structurally different.

That placed me in a very clear position, even if I didn’t formulate it that way at the time:

I was not creating something new; I was trying to recover something that had been lost or deformed.

Without realizing it, that was the birth of the MCC.

Chapter 2: Confrontation in Cuba (2003–2004)

After two years of working alone in Japan, I felt I needed to verify whether what I was doing made sense. So I returned to Cuba.

I came back not as a dancer, but as an observer.

For months, I went to social dance events in Havana: Casa de Cultura de Centro Habana, the Palenque after Sábados de la Rumba, Delirio Habanero, Café Cantante. I watched, I danced, but above all, I analyzed.

And that’s where one of the most important discoveries of my life happened.

I realized that the Casino danced in Cuba did have a common structure… but no one had formalized it.

Everyone used it, but no one was consciously aware of it.

To see it, I had to do something radical:

I stopped looking at the arms and started looking only at the feet.

That’s when everything appeared.

Figures started and ended in recurring positions. There was logic, there was pattern, there was structure. But the technique was chaotic. Everyone danced in their own way.

And I understood something decisive:

the structure of Casino is collective, but its execution is empirical.

Later, back in Jagüey Grande, my hometown, I entered another level of analysis. I began studying percussion: clave, congas, bongó, cowbell. I wanted to understand the mathematics of rhythm.

And that’s when I discovered another major issue:

most dancers were not dancing in relation to the clave.

Eight-count figures did not align with the rhythmic cycle. They started anywhere. They ended anywhere. The timing was, to a large extent, arbitrary.

That led me to an unavoidable conclusion:

Casino needed a theory of rhythm applied to the body.

At the same time, I began teaching my ideas to a dance group led by Mujica, and later I presented my work at the Instituto Superior de Arte.

I remember the evaluation clearly: my work was novel, even revolutionary… but it could not be academically validated because I was not formally trained in dance.

That was a hard blow.

But over time, I understood it was also a liberation.

Because from that moment on, I fully assumed that:

I had to build this work myself, with my own means, outside institutional structures.

From that stage came something fundamental: the idea of notation.

Coming from chemistry, I began to think of figures as processes: initial state, final state, transformation—like reactions.

That allowed me to begin describing Casino in a structured way.

And I reached a certainty that has never left me:

in Cuba, there was no formal choreographic characterization of Casino.

And if it didn’t exist, someone had to create it.

And that someone was me.

Chapter 3: Return to Japan and Technical Awareness (2004–2008)

I returned to Japan at the end of 2004 with a very mixed feeling.

On one hand, I was certain that what I had seen in Cuba confirmed my intuition: Casino had a real structure, even if no one was formulating it. On the other hand, my experience at the Instituto Superior de Arte made it clear that this path would not be validated through traditional channels.

I came back with one clear idea: I had to build my own path.

That’s when something happened that I did not fully grasp at the time, but which became decisive for the development of the MCC: I began working at the Japanese public television network, NHK.

I came from chemistry, teaching, dance… not audiovisual production. But within months, I found myself inside one of the most demanding production systems in the world.

I learned to:

film,
edit,
write scripts,
manage production logistics,
think in images.

And without realizing it, I was acquiring the tools I needed for something I had not yet achieved:

explaining Casino in a systematic way.

With the money I earned, I began investing in equipment—cameras, lights, cranes, computers. I set up a small studio. I had everything I needed to record a course.

And I did.

But when I sat down to edit that material, I realized something both frustrating and revealing:

that material didn’t work.

Not because it was poorly recorded, but because the content itself was not ready.

The Casino I was dancing—even though cleaner than what I had seen in Cuba—still had problems. Inconsistencies. Things that didn’t fully align.

So I made a decision:

if it doesn’t work, I will analyze it until I understand why.

That’s when the optimization of MCC truly began.

I placed a small camera above our heads using a crane. I began analyzing trajectories from above, marking each step in the video editor.

And then I saw it.

When the lead was more natural, the woman’s trajectory was not straight or broken—it was curved. Fluid. Continuous.

That’s when I understood there was a direct relationship between:

the quality of the lead,
and the shape of the movement.

I began to see circles, ovals, figure-eights, smooth curves. I understood that Casino was not a collection of steps—it was a system of trajectories.

And more than that: I began to see proportions.

From hand to shoulder: one radius.
From hand to elbow: another.
From the wrist: another.

Leading stopped being intuitive—it became measurable.

At the same time, I was working with my friend Asami on a manual. I drew the steps by hand, and he digitized them.

And then something important happened.

The chair I had used for years stopped being useful. It was too rigid, too large—it did not represent real partner dancing.

So we replaced it with something simple: a square.

A square in the center of the page, with steps around it.

Asami said:

“Why don’t you call it the Square Method of Casino?”

And in that moment, I knew I had found the name:

Casino Square Method. MCC.

But there was more.

While working on the manual, Asami noticed that many explanations were repeating. Parts of different figures were identical.

We realized we were rewriting the same things over and over.

That’s when another law appeared:

figures share structural halves.

That discovery changed everything.

Because it meant that Casino was not just a set of figures—it was a combinatorial system.

That’s where what would later become Choreographic Synthesis was born.

Looking back, I understand that those years in Japan were the true laboratory of the MCC.

Not just where I learned to record.

But where I learned to see.

Chapter 4: Miami, Villa Danza and the Beginning of the Movement (2008–2018)

I arrived in Miami in May 2008 with a very clear feeling:

everything I had done up to that point had to be tested in the real world.

But before I could teach, I had to do something I had never done in that way before: completely organize my thinking.

I lived in a small studio in Miami Beach. For months, I worked in near isolation, writing ideas on sheets of paper and covering the walls with them. I moved them, rearranged them, removed them, restructured them.

It was as if I were editing the future.

At the same time, I continued working for Japan, which allowed me to sustain myself.

But I needed to observe.

What I found in Miami was decisive.

What was being taught as “Cuban salsa” was not the Casino I knew. It was a structural deformation:

backward stepping,
reduced mobility,
irregular geometry.

I understood it like this:

original Casino is round; this was like a gear wheel.

And I made a decision:

I had to intervene.

In 2009, Villa Danza was born.

Not just as a dance school, but as:

a laboratory,
a studio,
a training center,
a launch platform for the MCC.

I started with a small group of students. But what I was building was not local.

It was global.

Key figures appeared:

Akiko Meguro, a living proof of the system.
Mónica Cabrera, model for the course.

With them came the possibility to record.

And I made another strategic decision:

teach directly to the world.

I launched the online course. And shortly after, the movement:

Casino Para Todos (Casino for All).

This movement had a clear mission:

reclaim the name Casino,
link it to Son,
dismantle the confusion with salsa,
establish a method.

Growth was rapid.

People from many countries began to learn.

And a new problem emerged:

control of knowledge.

That’s when the certification system was created.

But at the same time, something inevitable happened:

the content began to circulate uncontrollably.

And I understood something that is now obvious:

when you create structure, you create value.
and when you create value, a market appears.

And without regulation, that market overflows.

At the same time, something else happened in Cuba:

deformed Casino returned as “Cuban salsa” and “timba.”

At that point, I understood that what was at stake was not just my work.

It was the identity of Casino itself.

Looking back, I see this stage clearly:

the birth of Villa Danza,
the expansion of the MCC,
the creation of the movement,
and the beginning of conflicts.

Because the moment something acquires real value…

appropriation begins.

And I was already inside that process.

To be continued…

Yoel Marrero
Author of the Casino Square Method (MCC)

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