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Latest Updates: addicted2salsa RSS

  • Anthony Persaud

    7:39 pm on May 17, 2009 | 4 | # | Reply
    Tags: addicted2salsa, , , ,

    Videos by Dance Skill Level

    Videos by Dance Skill Level

    This has probably been one of the most requested features for Addicted2Salsa: The ability to group our dance video lessons by dance skill level. We understand that everyone has a different learning curve, so we did our best to categorize each video into the skill level that was appropriate. You can select between ‘Beginner‘, ‘Intermediate‘ and ‘Advanced‘ by using the main site buttons. Hope everyone else finds it useful!

    For those also interested in non-salsa discussions, I reorganized the OLD forums and placed them here.

     

    • marcus 4:43 pm on May 19, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I definitely want to dance salsa and i am a great fan of you guys doing salsa lessons on you tube but i want to know tips for picking up a salsa dance partner because I live in Georgia and there is hardly anybody who wants to dance salsa over here I AM ADDICTED TO SALSA AND I NEED A PARTNER

    • SalseroWannaBe

      SalseroWannaBe 11:22 am on May 20, 2009Permalink | Reply

      @Anthony – always great ideas. You’ll be rich before 40 yo!
      @Marcus – depends on which Georgia you live at: Caucasian Georgia, or Georgia in US? Maybe try to find some social sites, or just start teaching small group of friends, then set up parties, use social sites, and maybe you’ll start salsa at your place?

    • susieqsalsa

      susieqsalsa 11:53 am on May 30, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Funny you just wrote this note recently as I was going to ask you about it. But I was just on your youtube channel and was trying to save your videos to my playlists and making separate playlists by categories of Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced and I am wondering if your youtube channel can do that, too? I share your videos with a lot of people and this would make it so much easier to share. Thank you!

  • Anthony Persaud

    6:55 pm on May 12, 2009 | 13 | # | Reply
    Tags: 50th episode, addicted2salsa,

    This weekend will mark the shooting of our 50th Addicted2Salsa Dance Videos episode. After more than 13 million video views on YouTube alone, I don’t know how best to celebrate. Anyone has any suggestions on what you might want to learn? Should we redo the basics? More on2?

    This was our most popular video with over 3 million views.

     

    • rg 11:35 pm on May 12, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Naked salsa. Will be unforgotten.

    • DEVILOFDARKNESS 3:13 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I want to learn the styling (again) and the paterns that have the “lock” word (ex: hammerlock, double lock, loop over lock, etcetera).
      How to celebrate? In the past 49 videos, you have been dancing with Stephanie, Melanie and Julie. Therefore, I also want a great performance between you and that three women. And as RG’s idea, you should wear some more colourful clothes, sexier clothes and even wackier clothes (but don’t be naked!).

    • Marisa 4:34 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      A pattern where by the end Julie has done 50 spins. :)

      • Abraham 2:16 am on May 18, 2009Permalink | Reply

        with diamond tipped stiletto heels so she scrathes “addicted2salsa”in the dancefloor. this may seems hard but as Anthony always says: very simple
        :P ;)

        • Julie

          Julie 4:28 pm on May 18, 2009Permalink | Reply

          lol – now even I laugh when Anthony says the phrase while we are filming ;-) it ought to be trademarked! I’ll work on the stilettos, however, i don’t think our studio would appreciate us “leaving our mark”…haha

    • Bharath 4:39 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I’m an ardent fan of addicted to Salsa and would love to have a very special video as the 50th episode! Surely not the basics (even if its on 2) as most of us would like to remember the 50th episode in a very special way and an Salsa sequence with lots of fun involved would be the best :)

      I would love to learn how to lead 2 women for a sequence of Salsa with lots of styling and cheeky steps (like hand juggles, body rolls, etc…); this is mainly because in many clubs I find lesser Men than Women and it makes it difficult to let the ladies wait for long… It should be fun to lead more than a single partner!

      All the very best and eagerly awaiting 100th episode celebration! :)

    • DEVILOFDARKNESS 5:17 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      My another idea is that Anthony and his partner(s) should sing the salsa (or mambo) song while dancing. (Ex: El négro bembon, mambo Italiano, manias, etcetera) Anthony, your vocé while talking is so sweet, and I wonder how it would be while singing.

    • dahvee 8:05 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      First off…Congratulations! This is a great milestone. I know I am not alone in saying, how much all the hard work you guys put in is greatly appreciated.

      To make episode 50 extra special you should…

      …wait for it…

      Make it a TWO PARTER.

      The first part, the instructional part, could be on body movements. Show how adding body movements can enhance the basic or simple shines. Maybe even do a simple pattern, then add body flourishes to make it look good.

      The second part should be Julie and you dancing to a whole song.

      Thanks again for all the hardwork.

      BTW – for episode 100 I am insisting you do a team routine with you and all your past A2S partners.

    • Marcus 9:01 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      hey i’m a addicted to salsa addict and i would like for you to do casts to improve solo salsa for people (like me) who don’t have a partner as of yet

    • jovi 10:18 am on May 13, 2009Permalink | Reply

      congratulations :)
      it is time for a huge party. movie everything, friends, fun, salsa dance. i think this would be great for 50th episode.

    • Dave 9:59 am on May 15, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I like the idea of leading two partners and also the “two parter” of showing you two dance to a full song afterwards.
      Also, in future episodes, I would like to see some exploration of other latin dances. Addicted2salsa.com has helped my salsa immensely, but my bachata is deplorable. Help!

    • Abraham 1:56 am on May 16, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Hmm a podcast like ep.25 and .26 expaining how to dance on 2? I would like very much yes :)

  • Anthony Persaud

    11:00 pm on February 26, 2009 | 17 | # | Reply
    Tags: addicted2salsa, feedback,

    Ok, a new salsa dance video episode coming next week, but, it is time for me to ask again for your feedback and learn what would be cool for Addicted2Salsa to do next. Here are a few ideas we have been thinking about:

    1. A Facebook applicaiton to grow the @ddicted community.
    2. A better video application on the front page so people can submit cool salsa videos to share.
    3. Subtitles for our dance podcasts episodes. So other dancers that do not speak English can follow along our videos in their native language.
    4. A world wide salsa night club / events page.

    What ideas can you come up with?

     

    • jovi 1:38 am on February 27, 2009Permalink | Reply

      where is salsa?

      I got this idea from topological maps. High areas of a region are colored white(e.g. top of the mountains) and low regions are dark green. You can see an example in the link below.
      http://www.weltkarte.com/europa/spanien/topographie-mallorca.png

      So i was thinking it would be nice if there would be a map but instead the hight of the area the color would be based on number of salser@s.
      Would be fun to see, how salsa is spread all around the world and where the most salser@s are :)

      more concrete:
      1. people can enter their location
      2. a simple visualization of the data is presented(don’t need to be as complex as in the example, bars or icons wold be satisfyeable)(google maps api?)
      3. integration with Anthony’s point 4 ?

    • Marco

      Marco 6:32 am on February 27, 2009Permalink | Reply

      This may already be done and I’m just unaware-If so hit me with the bad idea ray gun.

      The vids are quite progressive now and the phrase “refer to our earlier videos” is mentioned often.

      How about a more robust organization of the previous vids. (The youtube stuff especially). Could be just a simple Vid 1-25?

      To take it one step further, separate the dance vids from the non dance tutorials.

      There is already something like this on the A2S dance vids site but it is a little inconsistent.

      Sorry if this one is rough/harsh..I have serious man love for this site, and I was late getting out the door *before* I decided to post.

      Maybe more ideas later.

      • jovi 3:12 am on February 28, 2009Permalink | Reply

        how are you guys thinking about a roadmap from beginner to pro? I mean to define milestones and say if someone reaches this milestone, (s)he should understand/able to do following things:… . To have a “lead” video(for each milestone) which describes best way how to reach the goal(milestone), this video may change over time. And to have further videos for people who didn’t got the idea after watching the lead-video.

    • tommrod 2:14 pm on February 27, 2009Permalink | Reply

      how about adding the actual beat number so you don’t have to be counting while you dance?
      or pointing out graphically to the beat in some way…

      • Anthony Persaud

        Anthony Persaud 2:43 pm on February 27, 2009Permalink | Reply

        haha. I just had a picture of a Sesame Street like Count Dracula saying “1….2….3… AH..AH..AH..”

        • Marco 7:26 am on February 28, 2009Permalink | Reply

          Does final cut have a mod for lightning flashes? (Sorry off topic)

        • tommrod 11:48 pm on February 28, 2009Permalink | Reply

          lqtm (laughing quietly to myself)

    • martinho 7:51 am on March 3, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Hi
      I’ve discovered your website a few months ago and found it amazing!
      I’ve read your idea concerning the subtitles for online lessons.
      If you like, I’m able to translate it into french, that’s quite difficult to find a good french website teaching salsa with good video quality…
      Cheers
      Martin

    • Hi-meh 2:14 pm on March 4, 2009Permalink | Reply

      1, 2, and 4 sound good, but I especially like 4.

    • Seena 3:10 pm on March 5, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Hi Anthony,

      I emailed you about a similar issue, then found this page, so a bit of a repeat:

      (A) I agree 100% with Marco’s comment and jovi’s followup above. Related to this:

      (B) I want to download every single video that you have, preferably in HD quality. However, there are discrepancies between the videos on youtube, iTunes, and addicted2salsa. Some sites have different videos or more/less videos.

      For example:
      youtube playlist: Has 76 videos
      youtube videos: Has 42 videos
      addicted2salsa: Has 42 videos (I think these 42 videos are different than the youtube ones though)
      iTunes: Has 20 videos

      As you can see, for example, iTunes only has 20 videos. Can we have it so that at least one location has every video, preferably downloadable and in HD?

      Thanks a lot for the videos regardless, thanks,
      Seena

      • Anthony Persaud

        Anthony Persaud 4:50 pm on March 5, 2009Permalink | Reply

        (A) Ok.

        (B) The main source for all videos is at http://videos.addicted2salsa.com . Currently we don’t allow HD video downloads directly until we find a better mechanism to remove “scrapers” from killing our bandwidth (scrapers are like web robots that show the video on their site while streaming it from our site).

        Currently there is ordering on our videos since we only plan what we will shoot ahead of time. It’s not like we have this great organization of what we will shoot for the next two years :-) , who knows, we might be bankrupt by then.

        What we will do is organize the videos on videos.addicted2salsa.com to let you know what “we feel” is a beginner, intermediate or advance move – but that is really subjective given the different learning curves for individuals.

        Anyways, just wanted to say “I hear you requests, I just haven’t figured out the best option yet given our time and my (very small) budget”.

        :-)

    • valvare6 8:27 pm on March 6, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I vote for the following:
      ==> A world wide salsa night club / events page.

      Although, I would also suggest sending out a survey for upcoming videos. Perhaps you can tally who wants to learn what and go from there..

    • susieqsalsa

      susieqsalsa 12:21 pm on March 8, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Oh, I got an idea and if you did this, it’s something I would pay money for this service…..

      I take dance classes in a group setting where there isn’t much opportunity for personal growth through constructive criticism, the harsh truth we need to be able to fully embrace improvements needed to grow in our salsa journey.

      I would like to be able to film myself dancing with my partner the moves I am learning from your collection of videos and upload them to you so you can critique me and point out areas of strengths and weaknesses. Then you can suggest tips to improve my moves. This is something that I think people may want to pay for, as everyone who joins your group most likely respects your opinion and would want to hear it….

      The other idea I got would be to create a gallery where people who are learning and doing the moves learned in your videos can upload videos of themselves where members of the group can vote on the favorites. And maybe the members can even share comments, tips and pointers based upon what they see in the video (like youtube). It would be a virtual community based on videos and not just a worded dialogue. And if you want to make money on this idea, you can charge the user a small fee to upload their video to the community for review, perhaps.

      I think that would be a fun way to foster unity within our salsa community! What do you think?

      • jovi 2:19 am on March 9, 2009Permalink | Reply

        Good question, bad question.
        It is ok to ask “what can I improve?” but it is not ok to say “Tell my partner what he did wrong!”. Don’t forget to ask your partner to movie him AND to be alowed to upload the video. (I would not like somebody movie my mistakes and show them to the rest of the world without my permission!)

        “people who are learning and doing the moves learned in your videos … members of the group can vote on the favorites.” prety funny, I would also like to see the best Anthony&Julie dancing clone. :D other question is if Julie&Anthony want to face this competition?

        • Julie

          Julie 4:25 pm on March 9, 2009Permalink | Reply

          Agreed- respect for your partner is always important. It sounds like susieqsalsa is looking for advice for herself though, which is great.

          As for people dancing our combos, I would love it! “Facing the competition” is absolutely not what this is about, the whole point of the website is to share salsa with the community, and I by no means claim to be among the best dancers. Please do share videos! We all have something to learn.

    • Julie

      Julie 10:22 pm on March 8, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Great idea! What some people have done in the past is to upload your video to Youtube, and then paste the link on this website to receive advice from the Addicted2Salsa community. It seems to work out well, since you get a variety of constructive feedback. It is wonderful that you recognize (and seek out) criticism as a method of improvement – so many of us hate that criticism, even though we know we need it! Feel free to post a link, we’d all be happy to give you feedback (you can also ask for any specific feedback you may be looking for) :-)

    • Susieqsalsa 1:08 am on March 16, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Thank you, Julie! I finally got to record while I am dancing but didn’t get permission from the partner to upload to the internet. So, in honor of that person’s privacy, I won’t upload it. But I will wait til next time to record when I am dancing with my regular partner where we do many of the addicted2salsa video moves that we learn.

      This recording is the first time I’ve seen myself dance since I started taking lessons about 7 months ago. It was fun and exciting to see this and I also spotted things I didn’t like about the way I dance and started making changes to that right away. I also like that I can track my progress as time goes by. I know I will be grateful for that someday!

      And I also am making an effort to record the end of my classes so I can review the moves and practice at home.

  • Nayan

    1:58 am on January 21, 2009 | 11 | # | Reply
    Tags: addicted2salsa, , Tutorial,

    I am not a Mac fan. And I do not use iTunes either.
    Downloading your videos (which was easier when you used to give direct link) has become difficult.
    Is there any alternative to save your HD videos locally? Or… has it become paid?

     
    • Anthony Persaud

      Anthony Persaud 12:29 pm on January 21, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I believe that everyone should be given a chance to experience salsa for themselves once in their lives. One of the main goals of Addicted2Salsa is making salsa dancing, its lifestyle, and its social experience accessible to anyone, in any part of the world, regardless of personal background and financial state. Similar to the tech industry, we believe in ‘Open Source‘ salsa. While we currently do not charge for any videos, try to survive on donations to help pay for our costs (just as if we were open source developers).

      Currently the HD videos are so big, that we currently cannot afford the bandwidth costs (not enough donations). We will try to have a different distribution mechanism for the high quality videos that is sustainable and affordable to everyone in the future.

      I just wanted to take time to clarify a few points before I said:

      To download the medium-quality format videos, you can download the videos directly through our RSS feed: http://feedproxy.google.com/addicted2salsa/ .

      Thanks :-)

    • Nayan

      Nayan 9:05 pm on January 21, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Thanks so much Anthony. These videos will do.
      BTW, I am Open Source supporter too :)

    • lonbluster 5:24 am on January 22, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I use firefox with the pluging DownThemAll…Everytime I play any video, an icon appears, allowing me to download it in a folder.

    • gnss 8:24 am on January 22, 2009Permalink | Reply

      weird – I have Firfox and “DownThemAll” too, but I have no icon to download all those videos – what to do? I’m sure more people would love to know this to download all the videos even without iTunes.

      I’m not too much into “knowing how to keep working videos” for example – so I’ve got another question:
      I’ve seen that in case I use the HD-Videos – they won’t start, just showing me the picture that is always “up” with the PLAY symbol on it – nothing starts.
      The youtube link for example works correctly and even other videos I see everywhere seem to work properly – what’s my mistake?

    • Nayan

      Nayan 9:17 am on January 22, 2009Permalink | Reply

      gnss,
      Use the feedproxy link that Anthony gave us above. You can get the direct links there.

      I also have DownloadThemAll and it will not work as the links are not on the webpage. They are in the feed.

    • gnss 9:48 am on January 22, 2009Permalink | Reply

      I saw those links there – and I’m really thankful for it – just thought about that fact about those HD ones :)

    • Anthony Persaud

      Anthony Persaud 10:06 am on January 22, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Yeah. I just want to make sure no one thinks we are ‘hiding’ anything or have ‘hidden fees’ for the videos. :-)

      @gnss: Can you provide more information on the problem? (send me an email). I can take a look at it.

    • lonbluster 4:37 pm on January 22, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Sorry, the plugin is Flashgot!! And it can be binded to any download manager like DownThemAll, Free Download Manager, ect.

    • SalseroWannaBe 9:08 am on January 23, 2009Permalink | Reply

      @Anthony Persaud: And what about rapidshare, Anthony?

    • SalseroWannaBe 9:09 am on January 23, 2009Permalink | Reply

      Or p2p like torrent

    • Anthony Persaud

      Anthony Persaud 1:08 pm on January 23, 2009Permalink | Reply

      @SalseroWannaBe: We tried the rapidshare approach, but it adds more complication to my create,edit,publish,distribute workflow. Not as easy as podcasting and letting the software I wrote update RSS feeds.

      I’ve thought about the torrent approach as well, but the problem is (1) most salseros don’t know what bittorrent is and the associated software, (2) someone still has to be online and seed the files (bandwidth) (3) most ISPs are now throttling torrent traffic.

      Good suggestions. Any other ideas?

  • 7:35 pm on December 29, 2008 | 2 | # | Reply
    Tags: addicted2salsa, clothing, t-shirts

    Eh, was just thinking. Where are the t-shirts? I’d get one or two through CafePress or something.

     
    • Anthony Persaud

      Anthony Persaud 2:43 am on December 30, 2008Permalink | Reply

      Still working on them. Trying to work on new videos first. :-)

    • gnss 2:50 pm on December 30, 2008Permalink | Reply

      Sorry.. I’m not very good informated – what t-shirts please? I would love to know more about it :)