Song: “Recuerdame” by Gabriel C
“Coco” is one of the most original films from Disney/Pixar in recent years, and the main theme song “Remember Me” (“Recuerdame” in Spanish) is as memorable as it is poignant.
I was first introduced the salsa version of the song (by the talented Gabriel C) by one of my students. We were looking for songs for our team to perform to at the SFSBK Congress, and the congress was scheduled for October 31st, so we wanted to do something Halloween themed.
“Recuerdame”, with its ties to the Mexican holiday of Día de los Muertos (which also falls on October 31st) was the perfect choice. I envisioned our dancers on stage at the congress, in Day of the Dead makeup, and Mexican inspired costumes.
Alas, the Covid-19 pandemic lead to the congress being canceled. The congress was re-scheduled for the following year, but the date was moved up to mid-November, so the Day of the Dead theme would no longer be as seasonal. So I decided to work on a routine/video with my dance partner, Alyssa, instead.
For the video we wanted Día de los Muertos themed decorations, and luckily Alyssa had a florist friend who helped put together the elaborate set pieces for the shoot. She purchased over 200 bunches of marigolds (“cempasuchil”) for both the decorations and the flower petals on the ground. For some of the scenes, we had a friend with a leaf blower stir up the marigold petals to try to re-create some of the magic from the film.
This was our most eleaborate video yet, in terms of setup and decorations, and it took us well over 5 hours to prepare for the shoot. That only left us with an hour to shoot the actual video, but fortunately we had practiced the shoot the night before, and were able to record all the footage in record time.
One Easter egg in the video is that the photograph at the beginning of the video and the picture frame on the altar were photos taken from our previous video project, “Oh Qué Será”, implying that these could be the same characters from that video. Could this be the start of the Salsa Cinematic Universe?
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