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 was also the first time that we performed on a stage in front of an audience since 2019.
For the past year-and-a-half we’ve put most of our energy into creating salsa videos and gained a following online, but choreographing a piece for video vs a piece to be performed live is quite a different experience.
With video we can film each shot from the best angle to make even simple moves look dramatic. We also film in exotic locations which makes our videos more entertaining. And of course with video we get as many takes as we want to nail the perfect shot.
With a video we only get one shot to get it right.
Because so many people know us from our videos now, we wanted to bring something unique to the stage for our first live performance. We decided to adapt one of our most popular videos from this year, Tu Con El, our trio performance we did with Imaan.
There were a number of things we had to change about the routine, since we could no longer use “movie magic” to do certain transitions, and we ended up adding a new footwork section as well as our signature trio tornados from our boat video.
We are quite happy with the end product and it was an incredible pleasure performing it live on stage and feeling the energy of the audience.
Big thanks to our videographer, Shakun Jain, who came out on stage with us to film parts of the performance. In many of our videos Shakun does as much work as we do as dancers, if not more, so it was great having him up on stage with us.
We’d also like to thank StarMamboVideo and The Studio CV who captured the video from SFSBK, which we edited together to make this video.
Thanks finally to Engels Vargas, Mao Mambo, Phuong Thanh, and the other organizers who helped bring SFSBK to life and giving us the opportunity to perform at one of the top salsa congresses in the US!
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