The time has come to battle it out on the dance floor for the champion title at our Fourth Annual Toronto Dance Salsa Amateur Competition. Last year we had some amazing couples compete for some serious loot and the results were fantastic!

Both rounds are confirmed to take place at Six Degrees Nightclub at Yonge & Eglinton on the following dates:

Preliminary Round – Sunday April 25th at 7pm
Final Round – Sunday June 20th at 7pm

If you are a level 3 and up student, helper or assistant registered or assisting in the spring 2010 semester at TDS who has not been paid to teach your own salsa class or perform, then you qualify! Don’t get discouraged that you are still in the learning phase – everyone else will be in that phase also and remember that a competition will increase your confidence, showmanship and skills tenfold.

The preliminaries are freestyle which means you do not have to choreograph the performance as you won’t know the song you are performing to although you can practice together, decide on how you will enter and exit, and what dips and tricks you will add to the dance, etc.

To assist you Evan Carmichael has offered a free private lesson to each couple who enters the competition to assist them in preparation! Five couples will move on to the finals where the finalists will choreograph a 2.5 minute routine to their song choice.

More details can be found on our website. Please email us if you are interested in participating at info@torontodancesalsa.ca. We will accept up to 15 couples.

We are also looking for companies who would like to sponsor the event. Gift certificates, dance shoes, music, travel vouchers, congress passes, lessons, cash prizes, restaurant certificates and much more are needed – please let us know if you can sponsor a prize or collect prizes.

We will be sending an official Anyvite with evening details closer to April 25th so just save the dates.

Email us with any questions and good luck to all the competitors!!

The post The 4th Annual TDS Amateur Competition! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

It was an awesome evening – our most organized by far! We opened the doors at 6:30pm and by 7pm when the lessons began we were already starting to fill up the huge venue. Sara and Farnoosh taught the intermediate lesson on stage and Tracie and Mark taught the beginner lesson upstairs.

At 8pm DJ Efren started spinning his very high energy salsa tunes and the lights went down. By this time we had about 400 people in attendance dancing up a storm. Upstairs in the dancer’s lounge the 18 competitors were getting their makeup done professionally by Alice from Mary Kay Cosmetics who volunteered her time to spice up the competitors. A huge thank you to her and her colleague – they were amazing and did a great job!

At 9pm sharp George(eous) our host began the competition. Funny as always (and making fun of me as usual 😉 George thanked our sponsors, the judges and introduced our 18 competitors who warmed up on stage for 2 minutes. Then each competitor was introduced with their bio and performed a freestyle performance for 2 minutes. Here are the names of the competitors in no particular order:

1. Winnie Fung and Manuel Alvarez
2. Mridu Das and Elton Martins
3. Michelle Sui and Bobby Cabral
4. Karen Di Monte and John Radtke
5. Julia Brodyansky and Vincent Cheng
6. Marta Slowik and Alex Florescu
7. Stephanie Cansino and Nick Sagias
8. Eva Wen and Derek Wisniewski
9. Maysa Tani and Dan Tahirkheli

The energy of the crowd was excellent and the judges had the very difficult job of rating each couple. Once all competitors performed Sara and I ran upstairs to tally up the scores and get the names of the 5 couples with the highest scores. At the same time, the adorable kids from Latin Groove Productions performed on stage. Thanks to Oscar for bringing his group to perform – the crowd loved the group!

Finally it was time for the results. Once again, in no particular order, here are the 5 finalist couples who will be competing for the TDS Champion Title:

1. Winnie Fung and Manuel Alvarez
2. Mridu Das and Elton Martins
3. Karen Di Monte and John Radtke
4. Marta Slowik and Alex Florescu
5. Maysa Tani and Dan Tahirkheli

Everyone received an awesome gift bag with prizes like a year’s VIP pass to Six Degrees, TDS t-shirt, El Rancho VIP 4 month pass, passes to Lula Lounge, Plaza Flamingo, Baila Society classes and more. Thank you to the sponsors for the great prizes!

Overall an amazing evening. I can’t wait to experience the final round on Sunday May 31st at 7pm at Six Degrees. Hope to see you all there!

The post The Preliminary Round of the Competition! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.