Origins of Salsa Dance Salsa dancing today is the most popular partner dance in the world. However, not many people are familiar with the complex history of how the dance originated. In this brief history of salsa, we’ll explore the origins of the world’s most popular Latin dance, from the Caribbean islands of Cuba and …
Song: “El Sabroso Son” by Orquesta La Palabra & Tito Puente Is this the world’s first ever salsa dancing robot (and dancing Colombian salsa, no less)? Actually, it’s the creation of a new VFX tool called Wonder Studio (currently in beta), created by Wonder Dynamics. The program is super easy to use– you just upload …
Salsa dancers across the country performed during NBA halftime shows in the past month as a part of Latin heritage celebrations organized by various NBA teams. In California, SJSU’s salsa dance team, Spartan Mambo, performed during the halftime show of the Golden State Warriors at the newly built Chase Center in San Francisco. The team …
The U.S. Mint has announced that Celia Cruz, the “Queen of Salsa”, will be featured on US quarters next year, as part of their American Women Quarters Program. The American Women Quarters Program is a four-year long program celebrating the accomplishments and achievements of women in the United States. Celia Cruz (who passed away in …
Latin dance has exploded in popularity in recent years. Originating mainly from South America and the Caribbean, Latin American dancing has spread around the world, surpassing American and European partnered dances such as Swing and Waltz in popularity. There are more than a dozen Latin dance styles out there and if you’re new to dance …
Happy New Year! Our Salsa Calendar of the SF Bay Area has been updated for 2023! You can find all the salsa lessons, socials and festivals happening this year on our calendar. If you know of any events that are happening that aren’t listed, please submit it! Here’s to a happy new year of salsa …
The World Salsa Summit (WSS), one of the world’s premiere international salsa competitions, has been cancelled according to the organizers. The competition, first held in 2013, was supposed to mark its 10-year anniversary this year from August 24th – 29th, 2022 in Miami. However, a post on their website as well as their social media …
One of the questions I frequently receive from my students is what is the difference between mambo vs salsa? The question is tricky to answer, because “mambo” can mean different things in different contexts. 1) Palladium Mambo Mambo was a music genre and dance that was originally created in Cuba, and popularized in New York …
Salsa dancing is a popular form of Latin dance that is danced around the world, and you’ve probably seen people dancing it in the movies or at your local club. But there’s more to salsa dancing than meets the eye! Here are seven things you probably didn’t know about salsa dancing: 1) Salsa is the …
The World Latin Dance Cup (WLDC) announced today via a livestream that the 2023 World Latin Dance Cup competition will be held February 6-12, 2023 in Cartagena, Colombia. This will be the first return of the World Latin Dance Cup since December of 2019. The 2021 competition was held online due to the pandemic, and …
Song: “Duel of the Fates” by John Williams May the 4th be with you! Our most popular video last year by far was our Star Wars salsa video that we made in celebration of Star Wars Day, so in keeping with Hollywood tradition we had to make a sequel! For this year’s video, we flipped …
Song: “El Sabroso Son” by Orquesta La Palabra & Tito Puente Another year, another dance video in Colombia! I kicked off last year with a Colombian salsa video in Bogota with my friend, Andres Leiton, and I decided to keep the tradition alive in 2022 with another trip to one of my favorite cities in …
Song: “Tu Con El” by Frankie Ruiz The 2021 San Francisco Salsa Bachata Kizomba Congress (SFSBK) was an amazing experience. It was the first major salsa congress that we attended since the pandemic hit in 2020, and it was incredible to be at a congress again amongst thousands of dancers from around the world. It …
We’ve created our first NFT! NFTs or non-fungible tokens, if you’re not aware, are a way of creating unique digital assets that are stored on a blockchain. Rather than bits and bytes, which are infinitely replicable, NFTs allow for the creation of unique digital items which can be owned. For our first project we created …
Song: “San Francisco” by Alma Del Barrio San Francisco– the City by the Bay. It’s one of the most unique cities in the world, but something we often take for granted living just an hour south of it. We haven’t been able to travel as much we wanted this past year, so for this video …
So you think you can dance? In addition to social dancing and performances, competition is a big part of salsa dancing, especially for some of the top salsa dancers in the world. If you’ve ever wanted to compete internationally, or just want to learn more about the competitive salsa scene, the following is a list …
Salsa and bachata are two of the most popular partner dances that are danced today. Many clubs and socials play both salsa and bachata music at their events, which can be confusing to newcomers just getting started with Latin dancing. However, the two dances are actually quite different. See below for the ways in which …
Starting midnight on Monday, August 2nd, mask mandates will return to many counties in the Bay Area, requiring everyone (even vaccinated people) to wear masks when indoors. The new mandate affects Santa Clara county, Alameda county, Contra Costa county, Marin county, San Francisco county, San Mateo county, Sonoma county and the city of Berkeley. This …
Who is the best salsa dancer in the world? That’s a difficult question to answer these days since the world has exploded in salsa talent in recent years. But we polled our readers and put together this list of the top international salsa dancers. Since salsa is a partner dance, we decided to highlight the …
The 2021 World Salsa Summit wrapped up this past weekend. Held in Miami, Florida, the World Salsa Summit was one of the first in-person salsa competitions to be held in-person (in contrast to the World Latin Dance Cup, which was held online). The competition was understandably smaller than in previous years, but still attracted top …
