Salon dances are the Cuban dances that grew out of European ballroom dances: from the contradanza in groups and lines to the danzón, the cha-cha-chá and the mambo for couples. They form one continuous line, and the casino danced to timba still borrows figures from them.
The line starts with the contradanza, the Spanish version of the French contredanse, which itself descends from the English country dance. In Cuba all classes adopted it, and by the mid-19th century the music had absorbed the African tresillo rhythm. Then came the danza: musically almost the same, but danced differently.
With the danzón (1879) couples really came close together. Critics found that scandalous, also because classes and races mixed on the dance floor. Even so, it became Cuba's most popular dance, and it is still the official national dance. Typical of the danzón is the paseo: during this recurring introduction couples stop, chat, and then start again.
These dances have their own orchestra. When dancing moved indoors, flute and violins replaced the brass and clarinets of the orquesta típica, and timbales were added. That is how the charanga came about, and it still exists today: Los Van Van and La Charanga Habanera are also counted among the charangas.
New dances grew out of the danzón. The danzonete added vocals in 1929. In 1938 Orestes López wrote the danzón Mambo, with a free, syncopated final section: the seed of the mambo, which in the 1950s became a worldwide dance craze with Pérez Prado and the Palladium in New York. The slower cha-cha-chá, also derived from the danzón, took over that place in the mid-1950s.
Casino, the couple dance timba is danced to, arose in the 1950s in the same dance halls. Dancers combined the son with figures from mambo, cha-cha-chá and rumba, and danzón is also named as an influence. For the music history, see the Salon era.