It was Ladies Night in Los Angeles last weekend, and the feeling was definitely right! There were lots of talented dancers who entered the contest for Top Female Dancer at Steven’s Steakhouse, here I give you a video with highlights of each of the finalists.
There are full videos posted on YouTube of each contestant, which I highly recommend. It is a real treat to get to see an individual competition, and especially a female dancer competition. Not only can we ladies learn from their footwork and styling, but it is a great inspiration to see them as individual dancers.
I finally started recovering from our trip to the 10th Annual Los Angeles Salsa Congress. While the event gets various mixed reviews this year, one workshop session I personally enjoyed was by the famous pair, the on2 World Salsa Champions: Oliver and Luda. For those who may not have known about their amazing dance skills, I posted a video below of, what I consider one of their best choreographies. They have won first place every year since 2005 at the World Salsa Championships. This performance shows how sharp yet smooth technical skill, amazing musicality in choreography and their ability to inspire future performers. The Australia salsa scene is lucky to have this amazing pair.
Club Mayan results are in! Though they are not posted on the Mayan website yet, the Jamaican Salsero Blog has posted the information along with a review of the competition from the competitor’s perspective. The 13th Annual Mayan World Salsa Competition took place over the last two weeks, with professional finals this past Saturday.
The winners were David Nieto and Charlene Rose, followed by Raul Santiago and Sergia Anderson in 2nd place, and Christian Oviedo and Diana Sanchez in 3rd. Other well known dancers that didn’t make it to the top include Liz Lira with Luis Aguilar, who came in 4th place, and Isidro Corona and Sheila Zepeda (Bay area favorites), who have done quite well in Albert Torres’ World Salsa Championships.
Some have criticized the Mayan Competition, claiming that this once revered contest that determined the true greats has since been corrupted and is even being replaced by the World Salsa Championships (Albert Torres Productions). The main complaint is that the Mayan is “an LA competition“, meaning that in order to win, one must be from Los Angeles. This is evidenced by the fact that the International category is defined as “outside of California” (though even in the International warm-up dance, some of the internationals hailed from as far as San Francisco- see more info on the video below).
Despite criticisms, many of the best On1 dancers still compete in this competition every year. This year, there were some surprises. Couples like Isidro and Sheila, who won the semifinal round in the world championships, only placed 9th in the Mayan competition. The winners of the Mayan competition, David and Charlene, placed 4th in the semi-finals and 3rd in the finals of the world competition. Some of the discrepancies are no doubt due to differences between individual performances, but it is interesting to compare the two competitions. The results of the 2007 World Salsa Championships are below; you can judge for yourself once the Mayan videos are posted.
Details of placing aside, the quality of dancing is exceptional in this competition. Check out the Mayan website to watch the semifinal rounds videos in both pro and am categories.
Final Results On 1
1. Abel Peña y Zulmara Torres (Mexico y Los Angeles)
2. Roberto Areans y Marie Josee Strazero (Canadá)
3. David Nieto y Charlene Rose (Ecuador/USA)
For those who closely follow the Los Angeles salsa scene, the 13th Annual Mayan World Salsa Competition will be held on May 17th, 2008 with first prize being $5,000 dollars. That is still a good amount of dough even if the US dollar is falling…. (I wish we got paid in Euros or Pounds).
For those new in the salsa ‘world’, this is not a regular salsa congress competition - it is more about themes, costumes, lifts, tricks and basic dance choreography. Before the ESPN World Salsa Championships, this used to be the standard of salsa competitions when I first started dancing. They tend to be very liberal with the adding of random ‘rewind’ and ‘explosion’ effects in the soundtrack-features typical of LA style. Check out LA salsa greats like Liz Lira, David Nieto, and Christian Oviedo- who you would recognize from the “A Weekend in Salsa” video (the first couple dancing) that I shot at the last Los Angeles Salsa Congress.
Be sure to check it out if you are in the area. You can view Preliminary and Semi-Final round videos on the Mayan website. Before the advent of YouTube, these videos were a gift to all salseros looking for free online videos to be able to watch what is going on in the salsa scene. Enjoy…and wait to see who ends up winning the finals!
After taking the rest of the video and editing it, I’m happy to start off a new series (that hopefully will continue). I had watched a DVD called On2005 A Year in Mamboland, and I decided to use it as inspiration on how to show all the nice video clips of social dancing at the 2007 West Coast Salsa Congress in Los Angeles California. I title this series: A Weekend in Salsa. I like the name because that usually when most of us go out for salsa during the week. Additionally, that is when most of the salsa congress events occur. Now, I have no real background in directing/production/editing so I did my best for my first shot. This is mainly for you guys to enjoy the dancing that goes on a salsa congresses during the night events. Again, please enjoy!
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