VANCOUVER -- In Grupo America’s Burnaby studio, two-time salsa world champions Diego Sanchez and Daniela Ugarte have just executed a move so complex, so impenetrable that Sanchez dubbed it the Alcatraz. It’s part of a mambo routine they have been practising for the festival and it involves 20 so-called locks.
Sanchez says he loves the mambo which, unlike the Cuban style he is known for, is danced on the off beat. It keeps things interesting, he says, adding salsa is really an umbrella term for a range of Latin dance styles.
There’s the sexy, intricate Cuban style and the fancy footwork Colombian-style. There’s the elegant New York/Puerto Rican style and there the linear L.A. style that is all about lifts and tricks.
They all come from various earlier dance forms like the mambo, the cha cha, or the guajira and while each has its signature, they all borrow from each other making new blends.
“It’s like the other kind of salsa,” he says, sounding a little like Ricky Martin. “You take a little bit of onion, a little bit of peppers, a little bit of cilantro and a little bit of lime, and you get a great-tasting thing.”
Salsa, a dance of the people, is always evolving, he says. That is why he loves it so much and why he is excited about the first Salsa Festival in Vancouver. It starts Friday at the Westin Bayshore and Sanchez and his group will perform Saturday and Sunday.
More than 2,500 salsa lovers are expected from all over the world. That may not compare to Olympic numbers, but for an inaugural dance festival, it’s huge. Folks are coming from Greenland, Hong Kong, Singapore, Italy, France and Norway as well as South America, Guam, Japan and all over North America, says organizer Betty Chuck. She said that two weeks before the festival, artists were still e-mailing hoping to be put on the faculty. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to host it between the Olympics and the Paralympics.
Over the course of this weekend, festival-goers will have access to some of the best salsa dancers in the world, including Sanchez’s current favourite, Adolfo Indacohea Velazco, a Peruvian who goes by his first name and who learned his chops from the creator of the New York style, Eddie Torres.
“He is in my opinion the best New York-style dancer on the face of the planet,” says Sanchez of Adolfo. “You don’t need to know the dance, you see this kid dance and you go ‘Wow.’”
Puerto Rican-born Philadelphia-based Eli and Yen, the first same-sex couple to win the Mayan World Salsa Championship in Los Angeles, will also perform and teach a workshop.
Then there is Arassay Reyes, the sexy Cuban dancer who stole people’s hearts on the first season of So You Think You Can Dance Canada. Reyes now lives in White Rock and, between movie and television gigs, teaches and dances with Grupo America. She will also perform and teach at the festival.
Sanchez’s dance partner, Ugarte plans to take workshops with Karol Flores, says Sanchez.
Why?
“She is sex on the dance floor,” he says of Flores. “When she walks into a room, she doesn’t stand out at all. She is tiny. But then she dances and all eyes go to her. I don’t care how good a man you are, when she dances, you are just the background. All eyes are on her.”
Advanced dancers will love that class. But the festival is geared to all levels of dancers. Beginners can take the one-day boot camp that includes workshops all day and then a James Bond gala in the evening, where the “gentlemen” dress as Bond and the “ladies” dress as Bond girls. The gala includes showcases of some of the best dancers in the world and an open dance floor where instructors will dance with beginners.
“It’s just about fun,” says Chuck.
It’s about time Vancouver hosted a salsa festival, say Chuck and her business partner Cheyenne Kamran, who together formed the promotional company Mad About Mambo after discovering the dance form themselves a few years ago. Vancouver is one of the few cities in North America where you can salsa almost every night of the week. Even Miami doesn’t have that, says Chuck.
Sanchez, who grew up in Vancouver dancing salsa, says it almost died in the late ’70s. But then the L.A. style developed incorporating lifts and flips and tricks.
“It gave it mass appeal,” says Sanchez. “The L.A. style is very sexy. It’s all about extremes. Everything is big and flashy. L.A. is what gave salsa its flash.”
The festival will offer tastes of all the different styles. Tickets are still available both at the Westin Bayshore Friday or Saturday as well as on the website: salsafestival.ca. A weekend pass costs $250 and boot camp on Saturday costs $140.
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