Ecuador Salsa Congress

As luck would have it this weekend there is a Salsa congress taking place in Quito. Of course this is an opportunity not to be missed by me so last evening which happened to be Friday, I found myself at the cultural centre of Quito enjoying a spectacular dance show. 

The show was supposed to start at 6 pm and end at 11 pm as indicated in their program but it actually ended up going on until 12:30 am. We got there at around 6:30 and that's when the amateur dancers were performing, the professionals were going to be performing much later as the show progressed.

The outfits were spectacular especially on the ladies, each outfit was designed to accentuate their moves and you could tell a lot of work must have been put to create some of the outfits. There were dancers from: Venezuela, Ecuador and Colombia, most of the Colombian dancers were from Cali and they were many. Every time dancers from Cali were introduced there were loud cheers and people got really excited, Cali has a distinct style of salsa that focuses on rapid footwork so it is quite a site to behold!

I took a bunch of photos so here are a few from the event.

There was a category where the dancers were of the same sex. You would have two men dancing together as partners or two women dancing together as partners. For the men it looked a bit weird seeing them dancing together as partners with one guy taking on the dominating role while the other one, a more submissive role in the dance. I had never seen that before but they were all great.

We were given booklets that had all the information pertaining to salsa competitions throughout this year in different parts of the world.

That's it folks, I got all salsad out! imagine watching dancers performing from 6 pm to 12:30 am. It got to a point all the music started sounding the same and the dances looked the same. I was even done being impressed by all the dance moves because I was exhausted! I now have new respect for the judges because I can't imagine having to pay attention to all those performances. All in all, it was a great night and I am glad I got to check out the event.

Random Thoughts of The Day:

It was funny how the stage looked like a battle ground after some performances because you would see scattered feathers or pieces of material from the dancers' outfits that came off during their performance. The stage had to be cleaned several times actually.

I never used to like Bachata, a genre of music that originated from Dominican Republic because I thought the men's voices in the songs sounded too soft and whiny. Then I started hanging out with Dominicans during my travels here and that's all they ever listen to so I started getting used to the music and came to appreciate the sensual dance as well. As my Spanish improved I could understand a lot of the lyrics which made me like the music even more, now I love listening and dancing to Bachata.

The announcer at the salsa congress last evening was funny, every time an attractive female dancer came on stage he would vocalize his admiration blatantly and would even check them out as he walked off the stage. It was just too funny.

Quito has been experiencing tremors after they had an earthquake not too long ago and it's a bit scary. This is my first time experiencing this so you can imagine how scary it is for me! just a few minutes ago there was a tremor and the house started shaking, I jumped out of bed where I am typing this post and just ran to the living room to join the family because I didn't know what else to do. Thank God it lasted for a few seconds but geez! I can not even begin to imagine how an earthquake with a high magnitude would feel like.

Watching the dancers last night I kept thinking of how much discipline, patience and team work goes into these performances. I think it's a good character builder.