Salsa Spins Beyond Its Roots – Salsa, which once ruled nightclubs across New York City, has trouble finding havens there today.

“SOON after Héctor Lavoe, the great salsa singer, arrives in New York in the new biopic, “El Cantante,” he finds himself immersed in a vibrant scene in the Bronx: a nightclub crammed with bodies drenched in sweat moving to the pounding beat of congas. As the film, which is to open nationwide Aug. 3 and stars Marc Anthony as Mr. Lavoe, shows, it could have been any night in New York in the late 1960s, when dancing was a genuine physical manifestation of the energy of the streets.

But salsa dancing has changed dramatically since the heyday of Mr. Lavoe, whose career thrived throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, when hundreds of clubs throughout New York were packed nightly with Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans and other Latinos dancing to the music of people like Mr. Lavoe, Willie Colón and Ray Barretto.”

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