Salsa Festival in Hamburg: A Great Salsa Experience

I’m totally excited today. Just got back from another crazy dancing weekend. This was a whole new and very precious experience for me. I expected the Hamburg festival to be big (and it was), but you never really know whether that brings quality or mess. I would like to start this review with a very special and inspiring experience:

Meeting Eddie Torres
I’ve only heard of this special guy, a salsa legend may I say, but meeting him and taking his classes was just soooo inspiring. Of course this man knows just about everything there is to know about salsa, but the best thing is, he likes to share all his knowledge. We had 3 classes in a row on Friday afternoon, some sort of special additional classes, plus a few more through the weekend and it seemed we only got a few tips from his broad knowledge. Yet, we worked heard, learned fast and got a few additions just to tape it. I mean it’s unbelievable what a warm, friendly and caring atmosphere those classes had. We did a lot of salsa on2, chacha and one of the coolest experiences - Pachanga!  (never done it before and it’s so much fun)

At the end of each class, show program and any chance Eddie Torres got, he gave us some inspiring words, he shared his own experience and good wishes. I especially liked some of his statements, one of them being:

“There’s always been a lot of salsa dancing and never so much chacha. But to me cha-cha is like the bride and salsa the groom. So let’s join bride and groom together and enjoy them both.”
I couldn’t agree more, cause I always felt chacha has an even greater soul than salsa (no offense guys! )

Each time Eddie’s class ended I felt good, got a totally new inspiration and motivation. Because when a guy with his 58 years moves like that I feel blessed to see it. He was constantly mentioning his lovely wife Maria and his beautiful assistant Melissa. The latter really does have an incredible bodymovement.

Other pro and cons of the festival:
- nice party venue (especially loved the fact workshop and party place is situated in the hotel)
- wierd friday night music, better sunday night
- live performance of Mercado negro, this time with Andy Montanez - as usual, we like live music, just make the songs shorter!! It’s impossible to dance for 20 or 30 minutes!
- hilarious salsa flamenco class with Farid (I got tears running down my face, cause I laughed so hard)
- I didn’t like Edie’s (the salsa freak) promotional classes - I totally respect her teaching, but please cut the amount of advertisements!
- Miss Starlinn from Singapore had a good bodymovement class and boy can she roll her body!
- The show program was reach (sometimes the legs thought even too reach - the choice of sitting arrangement might be good here)
- Saturday and Sunday had some hot shows (Yamulee, Fadi, Swinguys, Adolfo&Sheila, Luis&Melissa, Jazzy&Amy, …)
- great international participation (people form Holland, Sweden, Egypt, … Slovenia!
- The level of social dancing was HIGH.

The last thing, besides the Eddie Torres factor, was something that will stay in my memory the longest. I admit I danced like crazy all three nights till the very end of the parties. Yes my legs did not approve it, but my hungry dancing soul did.
I this review still has room for improvement, so let me sleep on it and add some more stuff to it.

A Blog by Dulce Locura