Tuesday 3 February 2009

Sydney Salsa Congress!

I have to say that the Sydney Salsa Congress was definitely the biggest one that I've ever been to. In some was it was the best as well...

The shows were excellent, the quality of the teachers was amazing, and there were lots of other people there to meet and share the salsa with. On the other hand it was almost too big. The classes were very large, so you didn't get the close attention that some people needed. The shows were amazing, but unless you had bought a VIP pass you weren't going to be very close to them, and you weren't allowed to take videos of the evening shows... which I thought was a bit tight...

I don't want to sound negative though. Overall the event was amazing. The venue was superb, with the largest dance floor I've ever seen for a salsa venue. There were over 80 shows on over the 4 nights, 75 workshops over the 3 days, 2 salsa bands and thousands of people from all over the world... I even met a few from the UK!

After all of this, by Sunday night I was happy that it had come to an end, salsa fatigue had set in and all I wanted to do was to sleep for 48 hours straight! Unfortunately this wasn't an option as I had to check out of my hotel the next day, but resting I have been, and I might even be able to go out for some more salsa towards the end of this week!

There were also other styles of dance represented at the congress... In addition to the usual salsa and bachata, there was cha cha, and zouk, both of which I tried for the first time. Zouk is particularly interesting, as I had never heard of this before I left England. Zouk is a Brazilian dance and seems to be very big in Australia, so I think I'm going to pursue this new style of dancing, and maybe take it back to England with me...

This video gives a good idea of what zouk is all about. As you can see it is a very passionate dance, and flows beautifully...

3 comments:

TwinsnMommy said...

Wow! That is beautiful.I hope you took plenty of pictures. :)

the blogger said...

seem to be advanced level. nice but hard! anyway, please bring me to the dance floor if i can make it to OZ...

Anonymous said...

Glad you had fun.