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!