The evening began with lessons as usual. Velina and Mark taught a beginner lesson and Evan and myself taught the intermediate turn pattern. The classes were packed and hopefully everyone could hear us over the noise. Regardless of the usual sound issues, everyone seemed to do really well with the combinations and hopefully the turn pattern stuck with everyone throughout the evening so that it became muscle memory.

At 11:15pm our TDS Helper Team were introduced for their performance. For those who don’t know, about once a year we hold a special class just for helpers that teaches them how to become performers. This includes learning a professional choreography by our awesome choreographer Caryl (go Caryl!), fitting for costumes, and makeup assistance from professional makeup artist Shirley Yung (thanks Shirley!). The team, after months of practicing, has now performed at least twice and has been invited to several other functions to show their stuff.

Here is a list of the performers:

Barry Ip
George Reichert
James Anes
Sandra Villella
Tracey Hsieh
Winnie Fung
Manuel Alvarez
Marta Slowik
Ozzy Gul
Phoebe Yu-Kowalski

Needless to say the group looked amazing. They were polished, energetic and I was super proud of their hard work and dedication. Congratulations to them as well as David and Mildred who are part of the group but could not be in attendance on Friday.

Hopefully everyone had a great time at Plaza. Our next two outings are as follows:

1) Friday Feb 6th at Lula Lounge
2) Saturday Feb 21st at Peridot Lounge

See you all there!

The post Last Friday at Plaza Flamingo! appeared first on Toronto Dance Salsa.

The first one was of the 2005 San Francisco Salsa Champions. I hadn’t seen this video before but I thought it was very interesting. The salsa music was very fast and if you dance salsa, you know how hard it is to keep up with all those spins to the music. I thought they were very talented and the woman’s spinning skills were outstanding. I didn’t love the repetition of the spins though – it was too much of the same spinning move and at many points the choreography and turnpatterns completely stopped which is not visually as pleasing to watch as the second video that I saw by Danny Zepeda and his group from San Francisco, I believe. You can’t see the routine well as it is filmed so far away but the routine is really great. They have the same fast salsa and almost as many spins but done in a way that blends with the rest of the turnpatterns which makes it more interesting to watch (for me at least).

I also noticed that the first clip of the SF 1995 Champions showed a bit of an error half way through. They did a great job of getting back on track but it made me think of a choreographer’s job of balancing moves that are safe and will not cause room for errors vs moves that are much more difficult and will really wow the crowd if they can be pulled off. What is better? Do you play it safe with your choreography and although it my not be as much of a wow it will be smooth and error free or do you go for it and hope for the best, taking a gamble.

I guess it depends on the confidence you feel at rehearsals trying out a risky choreography and your ability to continue the choreography if an error occurs. It also depends on experience. When you first start performing keep it simple and clean. After some experience start to stretch yourself and the choreography to keep the challenge and energy in your routine.

Would love to see the videos that you guys are watching…send them my way!!

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