The 2008 Beijing Olympics may be over, but the salseros/as at the 2008 DC Salsa Congress had a lot of fun in an after party testing who would be the better spinner. I think the video is very funny as it shows what salsa dancers do as a contest (similar to drinking contests). The Bronze medal seems to go to Joey from Puerto Rico. However, due to security Silver and Gold could not be determined between Luis and Emily. Thanks to iMambo.tv for covering the event!
Bloch is carried here as well,...
Do any salsa dancers do something akin to what i’ve seen trampoline folk do – which is a ‘mimic off’ – It’s like the drinking game where you change numbers to an action or a word – In this case the 1st trampoliner would do one move, then finish. The 2nd would do the 1st persons move, then add their own. Slowly you basically build up a pattern of moves, getting longer and longer.
Has that been tried in salsa – competitively or just informally mucking around, for fun but also to build up the memory needed to learn turn patterns. You each throw in one move after the other. In the trampolining – you could see that whilst some were better at an individual move, the competition levelled the field – you could gostraight into another move (with a mambo in there say for every time you’ve gone round). Kind of a way of overwhelming the learning process, to see if you can speed up the rate at which you can get a process down.
Do people use mnemonics, or songs or whisper under their breath whats coming up whilst visuallising the next move, if they’re learning a turn patter? or try and chunk it into 2 or more bar sized move pieces?
My money is on Emily for the gold.
Luis was going of balance a lot more than she was.
That said… they are spinning on carpet ! ! !
Guess I still have a couple of years of practice ahead of me.
Tom,
I’m relatively new to salsa but I do it the same way as I learned martial arts. 1 move, so 1 eight count, at a time. And then… repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat.
I must be getting old though. I remember learning a lot quicker when I was doing martial arts.