Salsa Highlights 2006

Feel free to post your Salsa High points for the year!

For me it was:

-Attending the LA Salsa Congress. I saw a lot of amazing dancers and me t some wonderful people.

-My first Rueda performance. Performing can be such a great release if everyone is having a great time.

-Watching the Frankie Martinez Documentary - It really expanded my view on salsa/mambo....that it can be more than a dance, it can be a form of cultural or spiritual expression.

If I had to pick a few high points, they'd mostly be road trips:

D.C. Congress-My very first (and hopefully not last!) salsa congress. It was such a rush dancing with so many different people from so many different places.

Zurich, Switzerland-I felt a lot more confident after visting Zurich that my dancing had improved. I was able to follow a variety of different partners and combinations that I'd never seen before. I also fell in love with on2 over again, because the best dancers were on2! (I should say that the vast majority of on2 dancers I encountered tended to be teachers and performers since someone told me that everyone else was afraid to dance it.)

SOS 2006 Cruise-I've never had so much fun social dancing in my life! It was a wonderful experience overall, particularly jamming to the Spanish Harlem Orchestra Live! I made a bunch of new salsa friends and now have places to stay on road trips.

Non-road trip highlights:

Definitely embracing Afro-Cuban dance. I don't know much about it, but my style is definitely influenced by it. I started doing a bit of rumba this year, and hope to take it to the next level in 2007.

Visiting NYC in September: club cache full of santo rico dancers just hanging out, and Maria Torres' class on a sunday followed by Jimmy Anton's

BritSalsaFest in the incredible ballroom in Blackpool

My girlfriend being inspired by NYC and getting into shines - freedom from patternmonkey hell!

Getting up and playing timbales in front of the general public for the first time after having chickened out once already.

Irene Miguel coming to Britain and teaching Brits that you are allowed to EXPRESS YOURSELF in dance

sweavo said:

Irene Miguel coming to Britain...

Click to expand...

You mean returning to Britain

She is amazing. I remember seeing her and Edgar del Rosario performing once and I was blown away! But, 'tis to be expected. Edgar, I recall, used to dance with Eddie Torres and I guess Irene has done heaps of classes with ET too. Still, it is great to have her back in the UK, London especially! :banana: :lol:

Can I claim learning how to dance salsa as a salsa highlight?
Other than learning to salsa from ground zero, I'd say that there have definitely been dances along the way where I walked off the floor buzzing from "oh my, I can't believe I just did that or danced like that!" plus moments where leads that had initially been way out of my league suddenly asked me to dance.
Nothing out of the ordinary compared to everyone else, but in reflecting back, it's so far been a steadily increasing passion in my life...so it qualifies as one big highlight