is a dance that originated in Spain in the late 18th century and is a combination of the Contradanza and the Sevillana. Dancer Sebastiano Carezo is credited with inventing the dance in 1780. It is danced by either a soloist or a couple. In a moderately slow tempo, it is performed to Play Bolero Music which is sung and accompanied by castanets and guitars with lyrics of 5-7 syllables in each of 4 lines per verse; it is in triple time and usually has a triplet on the second beat of each bar usually written in 2/4 time, elsewhere often 4/4.

                

The tempo for the dance is about 120 beats per minute. The music has a gentle cuban rhythm related to a slow son, which is the reason it may be described as a Bolero-Son. Like some other Cuban dances, there are three steps to four beats, with the first step of a figure on the 2nd beat, not the 1st. The slow (over the 2 beats #s 4 and 1) is executed with a hip movement over the standing foot, with no foot-flick. The Cuban Bolero traveled to Mexico and the rest of Latin America after its conception where it became part of their repertoires.

A version of the Cuban Bolero is the dance popular throughout much of the world under the misnomer 'Rhumba'.  The misnomer came about because a simple coverall term was needed for Cuban music in the 1930's.