Indianapolis Salsa Dancing 

San Diego Salsa Festival. and Beyond! - Part 1: Salsa Festival
By Jennifer Luna
Posted Nov 20, 2007

Marques and I went to San Diego recently for the First Annual San Diego Salsa Festival. As a lot of you may already know from Marques' previous blog entry, he had visited San Diego two years ago with a co-worker, but only for four days. Since he loved San Diego and wanted to go back, this seemed like a perfect fit with his salsa addiction. For me, the timing worked out perfectly. I was excited about attending a salsa "congress", and excited to be traveling to a place I had never been. We had both been extremely busy and in need of a vacation, so we decided to stay in San Diego for 10 days! The following is a not so brief description of our trip!

Day 1
Thursday. After the long plane ride, and the time difference, we were pretty exhausted! We picked up our rental car (a new red mustang) and headed over to Pacific beach for lunch (yes lunch, we left Indy REALLY early) and a beachside stroll. We then were able to check in to our hotel, The Bristol, and get settled. The plan was to attend the opening night social dance, but we ended up just sleeping.

Day 2
Friday. The first official day of the Salsa Festival (held at the Four Points Sheraton)! There were not any workshops during the day, so we slept in and investigated a nearby mall (out of necessity of course!). It was really nice and colorful, and outdoors, not at all like the dull depressing malls of the Midwest!

Anyway, in the evening there were qualifying rounds for the ESPN world competition, followed by a set of performances. The night's competitors and performers were all of average capability. Many of the nights competitors and performers were local, but there was a surprisingly large turn out from Mexico.

General discussion by many of the dancers attending the festival yielded an appreciation for the placement of the average talent. what I mean by this is that the turn out for the first evening was rather low. Assuming Albert Torres (the producer) was able to predict this by a count of the full weekend pass pre-sale, and from his previous experiences, he was right to put save the "big" talent for the busier nights.

The main highlight of the night was an On2 couple Junior and Emily, who in my opinion were the best salsa performers of the entire event. They were competing, of course. Her spins were practically flawless! After some searching on YouTube, I found clips of them in many different places, even overseas. You can really see their commitment to each other and to salsa throughout every aspect of their performance.

Everyone had a great attitude though, so the rest of the performers were still interesting to watch! And I felt like the audience was very supportive of the dancers on stage.

After the performances, there was time for social dancing. Unfortunately, the chairs for the performance were just set up over top of the dance floor, and there were fliers everywhere. The audience was invited to help prepare the room for social dancing. I think this was fairly unprofessional, and could have been fixed with a few crew extra crew members but my guess was that it was simply a money saving technique, which is understandable since this is the first Salsa Festival in San Diego. Anyway, Marques and I moved a few chairs before following the majority of the crowd out to the hotel lobby. We found opportunity in the lapse of time, and rejuvenated with the help of the small coffee place in the lobby, and some comfy sofas. We also met some new people. ? The social dance was alright, and I had fun, but it wasn't all that I was expecting from the hype that congresses get and all the amazing talent that is usually associated with such events.

Day 3
Saturday. The first day of afternoon workshops! There were six sessions in total, with different options for each session, but in order to include a lunch break, Marques and I attended three together, and I attended one additional one. Two of the workshops were Intermediate/Advanced Salsa on 1, and the last was (of course) a Tricks and Dips class. As a female dancer, the first two workshops patterns did not offer me as much, as I was familiar with most of the patterns taught, but there were a few good ones. and Angel and Tulane's class (they were filling in for Jody and her partner, who were unavailable due to traffic) was definitely beneficial for some styling tips. The tricks and dips class was fun. We learned a neck drop into back flip (like a back walkover with partner support), and a dip where the lady jumps on the guys legs to pose (kind of like swing) and then dramatically drops in a dip.

I attended the sexy body movement workshop by myself (men were permitted to take the class, but there was only one man in the room, and he knew the teacher so he didn't really count!). That class was taught by local studio owner and co-producer Tulane Rivera. She introduced a mixture of arm styling, Cuban movement, and other techniques to fill in the gaps of our dancing. I felt that she did a great job, but it was a little difficult for all the ladies to practice arm styling within patterns without men to try it with!!

There were more performances this day, which were able to video tape some. There was one guy, NEED NAME, who was refreshingly talented, an innovative with his performance, but I was not impressed with his partner. There were a few good groups, namely Mistique in Motion. The greatest part of the night was the kids group. I think the name was Alma kids, from Mexico. They were amazing, especially one girl. They really put most of us adults to shame, as kids always find a way of doing.

I looked through YouTube and as of now have been unable to find a video clip of their performance that night. but here is a clip of their performance at an earlier date (they have improved since then, which may seem hard to imagine!)

The social dance afterward was very fun. same transition though, which just lead to meeting even more people/dancers (mostly from San Diego). There were a lot of good dancers Saturday night, and a few gems in the crowd. I don't know if any of them had "known" names, but there was defiantly talent. There was more female talent there, than male talent, for some reason. but I was lucky enough to dance with some of the good male dances, the others. hopefully next time!! I guess there just wasn't enough time!

Marques and I were lucky in that someone he knew was taking videos of people social dancing, so we were able to social dance for the camera in what little space on the dance floor we could manage.

The entire room was very full, and the parking lot of the Sheraton couldn't hold all the cars!! We were forced to park across the street. But the dancing was worth it, what an unexpected great turn out!

Day 4
Sunday. More workshops! This time I attended four and a half workshops, and Marques attended three. First we attended a Lifts and Tricks class together. This was a great class, taught by Susie and Juan (who performed the first night). We learned a hurricane into a ¬¬¬___, and a trick where the lady goes over the mans back, he catches her leg where she poses in the splits upside down, then he lets go and she lands in the splits on the floor. AND we also learned a trick from their performance! I was a little worried about rotating partners in a class for tricks, but actually in the end felt it very beneficial to try these with new and different people. Luckily all the guys I tried it with were great, and not only was I was still in one piece by the end, but I had successfully made it through all the tricks! (Mastery will come later, haha).

After that we went to a Bachata class, taught by Jorge Elizondo. He was a great teacher! All of the moves were pretty basic, and I already knew them, but it was great to watch his teaching style and learn the names of some of the more advanced steps! I have to admit though, there was a point where the class had to slow down for everyone to catch up. at that moment I heard Reggaton music blasting from the room next door, and decided to go attend that workshop for a little while (this is where the half of a workshop comes in). I always wondered how people teach Reggeton in a workshop, since it's freestyle. To me it's kind of like hip hop, with the allowance of some Latin influences. But the girl teaching it was great (she was in one of the salsa groups that performed), and she just taught a simple hip hop dance that repeats facing all corners of the room. When I had learned all of that material, and they were reviewing, I went back to the Bachata class just when they were moving on! Perfect timing!

The next workshop I attended was the Afro-Cuban Rumba! Marques opted out of this one, but I had a blast! I really loved how the instructor really went through the history and the different genres of Rumba (which I knew from a previous reading of Yvvonne Daniel's book - Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba - a great resource for any of you dancers looking for an academic analysis of the Rumba). He was very thorough in his teaching, from all angles, which was very refreshing.

The last workshop we took was an intermediate Salsa on 1 class, but was very good! There was one or two parts of the pattern that was particularly different or interesting.

After this, Albert Torres (the main producer) was going to give a lecture on the history of Salsa music, which I would have LOVED to attend (for the historical content, the representation of historical content in the salsa community, and because I'd been trying to talk to Albert Torres all weekend unsuccessfully and this would have been a great time). but we were exhausted, so we ended up just leaving. the hope was to nap enough after the workshops to attend the last social dance, but we were just too tired and didn't make it! Yes, more sleeping. but hey, it's part vacation too!

Note: In the first several days of our stay in San Diego, we did manage to go out to eat a few times (mostly breakfast. Mission was great. We also went to a Sushi place in the Gaslamp district, and to Café Sevilla - a tapas restaurant that also has salsa nights.). we were tired from the time difference, and all the salsa dancing, but we still had a great time and made the most out of the San Diego Salsa Festival. I met a lot of nice people, and some great dancers. I got some names and some business cards, and hope to have a chance to dance with some of the people I met again!

We finished out our time in San Diego doing all kinds of great vacation things...