If you were watching BBC 1’s So You Think You Can Dance last night, you were surely enchanted by Yanet Fuentes’ performance. She and her partner may theoretically have been dancing Ballroom, but every move she made was a lesson in Cuban dance and how to do it right in Salsa.

For me Yanet is a delight in all sorts of other ways. That accent - the rough, husky voice; the wide-eyed and just slightly fierce smile; the ear-piercing squeals when she greets a friend; the frantic little hops and skips when she’s happy – all these are quintessential Cuban female. Looking at her, I see my wonderful Havana dance teacher Geldys Morales looking over her shoulder and shrieking in unison from that top window on the corner of Aguila and Trocadero!

But watching the fluidity, relaxation and control of Yanet’s movements is the real lesson. Her spinning is precise but very relaxed: she’s worked on doing it without tension. Notice also the ’spotting’: she fixes her eyes on a point and returns to it after each spin. But she also avoids that clockwork ‘click’ you often see, when ladies snap the head back into position too pecisely, so it looks mechanical. The spotting isn’t allowed to dominate. The fluidity of her hips is of course typically Cuban but you don’t need to be born with it. Yanet has spent a huge amount of time working on her reggaeton moves and also teaching body isolation. This is something everyone can practise in front of a mirror, and it involves just doing it and doing it and doing it, pushing the joints and muscles a little further every time over the weeks and months, so it aches a little. The next video will show you that salsa isn’t about steps and arm movements, it’s about body isolation : that is, how you move your bits!!!

Yanet’s work also tells us a lot about Cuba. I haven’t studied her biography but she was probably spotted as a potentially great dancer when she was a small child and given free, specialist training and education. This would have included not only modern dance but Russian-tradition classical ballet (you can see this in the fluid, balanced movement of her arms when performing) and also Afro-Cuban sacred Orisha dancing – the dance-moves that express each of the West African-descended Santeria gods and goddesses.

Yanet thus has a whole encyclopedia of dance under her belt. Add the typically bubbly Cuban personality and no wonder she’s doing so well.

She also embodies the paradox of Cuba: the wonderful education system and culture that value the arts so much that even in a poor country they will go all-out to train the artistically talented; and the fact that life in Cuba is so hard, such a daily struggle, that almost everyone wants to leave – and yet having left, will remain fiercely patriotic and convinced that Cuba is the best country in the world.

I don’t normally watch these dance shows on TV. But I’m watching this one for Yanet and I hope you will watch it next week, if you haven’t already. And, of course, VOTE FOR YANET!