Get ready to shake your rump

With salsa music blasting into the streets round the clock and people sipping fruity rum-based cocktails in the shade, Havana is certainly not Taipei. And isn't that a shame? Well, at least we can pretend we're in Cuba this weekend when Lady Salsa comes to town.

This extravaganza of Cuban dance and music has spent the past year and a half in London and Havana under the direction of Englishman Toby Gough, turning up the heat in both places with its raucous, sexy performances. It's sure to do the same on its mini-tour of Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung over the next week.

It's no secret that sex is one of the main ingredients in the Latin music phenomenon that's seduced the world in the past couple of years, and Lady Salsa lays on the sensuality thick and well-lubed. Ten marvelously sculpted dancers, wearing as little as possible, writhe about the stage eventually working up a sheen under intense red lights, moving to the entrancing rhythms of the Caribbean.

Subtlety is discarded and nothing is withheld, which is apparently an honest reflection of Cuban society in general, as Lady Salsa producer Jon Lee explains it. "The people in Cuba are fiery. One minute they'll be shouting at each other and the next it's like nothing was ever said. It's a very animated place."

For sure, the fascination with all things Latin, and especially Cuban, goes beyond the overt sexuality in the music and dance. There's also the sheer amount of musical creativity that emanates from the communist hold-out nation. The music, Lee says, is the main thrust of the show.

"Lady Salsa moves chronologically through the history of Cuban music, which is also basically a history of the country itself," Lee said by telephone from London.

Cuba has benefited tremendously in the field of music from the mix of peoples that ended up populating the island. African beats and Spanish guitar, for example, make up the basic Cuban sound called son, which has formed the backbone for so many Latin styles of music, from salsa to chachacha to mambo.

Most of these musical forms emerged in the past century, as the cultures became more integrated and other influences, such as jazz from the US, began to filter in as a result of increased contact with the outside world.

The question mark hanging over the Taiwan performances is whether the bombastic Lady Salsa, who gives her name to the show, will turn up. She's 77 and, according to Lee, is slightly loathe to leave her native Cuba because of a threatening illness.

If she does come, she will add considerable weight to the performance, not only because she's a buxom 179cm tall (without her tall, red turban), but because she provides much of the soul of the show and her personal story largely mirrors that of her country.

When she was born in Cuba as Hilda Oates, the island was firmly in the grip of capitalist running dogs under whom her African heritage condemned her to the status of third-class citizen. The first part of her life was spent picking up scraps in the streets to make ends meet and to help her mother put food on the table and keep a roof over the family's heads. All that changed, though, with the communist uprising.

With little to lose, she signed up and started handing out pro-communist propaganda fliers in Havana. Eventually she got to meet Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, becoming one of their favorite performers as the uprising heated up. The tables had turned and the miserably poor servant girl was gracing stages for the heroes of the revolution.