Tromsø Salsa - i Trondheim!

LatinFestivalen in Trondheim January 25-29 2006

Text: Erik, photos: Nikolai. 30.01.06

Bad news: you just missed a spectacular weekend of salsa in Trondheim!
The 9th annual Latin Festival took place at Royal Garden Hotel over the weekend. We had no idea that there would be concerts with 5 amazing salsa bands. We have never been there before, but we believe the organizers when they say that this was the best program ever.

Erik, Consuela and Nikolai from Tromsø Salsa Klubb took the trip to Trondheim over the weekend. Erik and Consuela had been invited to dance on stage for the salsa band Kimbara along with four other dancers from Oslo and Trondheim. The gigg was arranged by Walter Aleman from Oslo. Before the weekend was over, we had performed on stage for three of the five bands, including world famous salsa orchestra 'Cubanisimo' from Cuba.

Performing is always fun, but personally Consuela and I had most fun after we took off our costumes and just enjoyed social dancing to the slamming rhythms. The bands were spectacular. Friday night started off with three salsa bands in a row:
- Mayagueson, a band from Trondheim
- Kimbara Salsaband, from Oslo
- and Mambo Compañeros with the amazing Alexander Fernandez, also from Trondheim.
Saturday there were two bands:
- Sofrito, a band with musicians from Bergen, Denmark and Cuba,
- and Cubanisimo, world famous orchestra from Cuba.

All bands delivered great - the music from all bands were dynamite! However, the clear personal favourite of the entire festival was a band that we have never heard about before: Mayagueson from Trondheim. They had all the perfect ingredients for creating the best of salsa, a fantastic percussion section (drums etc), a beautiful vocal, energy, and contact with the audience. Not only that, these 10 musicians had an amazing selection of songs inspired from Puerto Rican/New York salsa and latin jazz. The crowd was on fire after the first song. They also played some great chachachas.

The level of the dancers in Trondheim was quite good (not a surprise - after all, this was in Trondheim). A lot of people were dancing, they loved it, and we got ourselves some good dances. However, in general, the dancers on that festival was lacking respect for eachother. Tromsø is known to have a great dance scene. Not because everybody are such great dancers, but because people are actually dancing, and respect other dancers. Something that never happens when you go salsa dancing in Tromsø is that you constantly get stepped on, get elbows in your face, or somebody tries to push you out of the dancefloor.
If you never took or will take a class from serious instructors, here is some free advice: Dancing is not about two people trying to ripp eachothers arms off their sockets. Dancing is not about trying to fight other people for space. This goes for all kinds of dances! Instead of fighting your partner and everybody else on the dancefloor, try to get that flow with the music, your partner, and everybody else on the dancefloor. Man or woman, you don't have to be a trained dancer to dance like a gentleman or a lady. Now, that being said - we cannot wait to go back next year. We highly reccomend this festival - it is a high quality event!

Picture of the dancers taken before the show on Friday. From Left: Erik from Tromsø, Walter Aleman and Rene from Oslo. Consueo from Tromsø, Anne-Kristin and Gabriela from Trondheim.