Peruvians improvised with their feet as well, in stomping duels called zapateo.

European dances and folk musics included zapateo, fandango, paso doble and retambico.

Malambos incorporating the zapateo, the art of percussive footwork rooted in Spanish Flamenco, was traditionally performed by men.

"El Zapateo" is said to be derived from the fandango, brought to the area by a conquistador called Ortíz de Séquito.

Male dancers circle about their female partners, seducing them with foot stomping (zapateo) and handkerchief waving during the A sections and "coronating," or embracing, them in the final B section.

It has exhibitions of drawings and painting along with other cultural events and classes, especially on weekends such as karate, guitar, piano, ballet, English, mathematics, modern dance and Mexican folk dance, especially the regional zapateo tabasqueño.

The dance is very similar to earlier European folk dance and is thought to be a sub form of zapateo with less airborne moves (unlike jumpstyle, for example, which features the "drunken sailor" style of jazz dance and high kicks).

And matching the Liebermann work for inventiveness and wide-ranging eclecticism was the Cuban Baroque Suite by the novelist and composer Jose Bernardo, in which Baroque dance forms mingled with a Zapateo and a Rhumba.

The first Spanish conquistadors arrived on the isthmus of Panama in the early part of the sixteenth century, in which sailors brought a style of tap dance known to them as "zapateo", now known as "mejorana" dance, which includes this instrument.

Ginastera's "Gato" is to a certain degree faithful to this traditional six-part form, offering a piano introduction followed by two sections of text, then an interlude (a repetition of the introduction) followed by two sections of text, with vigorous zapateo interludes between each section.

This is most evident in the zapateo interludes, in which the raw rhythmic intensity echos "Les Augures Printaniers / Danses des Adolescentes" in Stravinsky's Le Sacre du Printemps, which Ginastera cited as one of his earliest and most powerful musical influences.