This is a litle description of the trip that Erik and Consuelo had to USA this summer.

During this trip we visited the Los Angeles Salsa Congress, Oregon, Washington, Toronto, and New York - where we stayed for a salsa bootcamp with intense training and practicing.

We started out going to the 6th annual world salsa congress in Los Angeles. The 5-day event is the biggest in the world. It is the place for experiencing the best salsa bands in the world live, seeing the best dancers perform or dance at the biggest dance floors. It is also the place where you can take classes from the best instructors - oh , and I almost forgot - it's a perfect opportunity to go shopping at incredible prices.

The congress was as always an amazing event. We had so much fun dancing and it was a blast to meet old friends. It was intereseting to notice how many people that had started to dance New York style salsa.

 

After the LA congress we took the 16-17 hour drive up to Oregon.

We stayed in Corvallis at our friend Lupes house. Lupe is an incredible friend. Not only did he let us stay there for free, he also (as usual) let us borrow one of his cars, this time his new beemer.

 

It was great to be back in Oregon, the home state of Consuelo. Besides going social dancing, we were asked to do performances to promote salsa at different clubs. During our stay we went dancing a lot - especially to Portland, the biggest city in the state (1.8 million people). We also took the drive up to Seattle, Washington, the biggest city in the north-west. We had a blast dancing and watching many of the great dancers that are there.

After a couple of weeks in Oregon, we took a flight to the west coast. We rented a car in New Jersey and took the 8 hour drive up to Toronto, Canada. We only stayed for a few days, but we had a great time dancing, and we were amazed by the level of the dancers there. They had some of the best dancers we saw on our entire stay in the States up there! And they all danced New York style! On our way from Toronto to New York, we stopped at Niagara Falls - amazing!

We were most excited about going to New York. There are Salsa dance clubs in most major cities. New York, however, remains the home and creative hub of Salsa, hosting the liveliest salsa clubs and street concert scene. A friend of a friend of a friend had arranged it so we could stay in an appartment smack in the middle of Manhattan! That is the place were everything happens in New York! In this salsa heaven you can go dancing everyday, not to mention - you can take classes from the best instructors in the world. Those two things kept us occupied our entire stay. We only went sightseeing one time, we went to see the WTC. Saturdays was the hardest days for us. Starting from 1 pm, we took 8 hour classes with Piel Canlea dance company (PCD). PCD is known as New Yorks best kept secret. Joe Burgos certainly live up to his reputation as an extrordinary instructor.

After 8 hours of classes we would go dancing at nightclubs for another 4 hours. Sundays were definetely not for resting. We rarely had time for breakfast before we went to take 4 hour classes with famous salsa legend Mr Eddie Torres. After Eddies class we would take the 5-10 minutes walk to a dance social for another amazing/exhausting night of dancing. On weekdays we would only take 2-4 hour of classes, and some days we just stayed home to practice new material, but we would always go out at night to clubs such as Flamengo (mondays), Copa Cabana or some social event (Tuesdays), Latin Quarters (wednesdays), Club Cache (Thursdays) etc. It was also great to meet Mambo Jack again. We had hired him to stay with us in Norway and train us for 3 weeks before we went over there. We would hang out with Jack almost every day until he left to teach in China in July.

It is really hard to describe the experience. We went to clubs and it would almost always be a live band playing, and very often some of the amazing dance companies would present themselves with amazing performances. For example, we went to the famous Copa Cabana - the biggest club for salsa with two dance floors/levels and famous bands such as Jimmy Bosh and his Orquesta. We took so many classes - from Frankie Martinez, Nelson Flores, Addie-Tude dancers, Santo Rico, PCD and Eddie Torres. It will still take us months of practice before we have accumulated all the knowledge and skills we were taught. The New York salsa scene is unique. The level of dancers is amazing and people are so nice! We can't wait to go back.