The doors open at 6:30pm and we have two lessons lined up from 7pm – 8pm downstairs (intermediate) and upstairs (beginner) with Emely and Tracie.

From 8 – 9pm there is social dancing with DJ Efren who always keeps the mood fun and exciting with upbeat, sexy salsa, merengue and bachata songs.

At 9m the competition will begin. We have 4 couples competing in the finals:

Mridu and Elton
Winnie and Manuel
Maysa and Dan
Karen & John

Each will perform a 2 minute to 2.5 minute routine that they have choreographed. The judges (Oscar, Vanesa, Teddy, Rene and Angus) will have the opportunity to rate each couple and, once the 4 couples finish their routines, I will have the opportunity to add up the scores with Sara while the audience enjoys 3 performances by our fellow dance schools: Latin Energy, iFreestyle and Mambo Mosaic. The announcement of the winner will be announced after the schools perform and then DJ Efren will continue on with the social dancing for the rest of the evening.

Hope to see you all out supporting our competitors. I will post the results next week!

The post The finals are this Sunday! 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.