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by Rose Knows, Toronto
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| November
14, 2003 November 12, 2003 Cuba strikes again! Once again, the many heated discussions regarding Cuban music and dance in Toronto may just heat up again, as our infamous Chincub has got some Cubans writing in once again. And when I say writing, it amazes me how long some of the replies are that get posted. If you were to print out one page out of one of these discussions, you might end up with over 20 pages to read! That's what one dancer found out by accident. They decided to print out the discussion so they could read it on the subway... And my longest running discussion about "what style of dancing is better" from two years ago has over 5 pages, which equals about 100 pages in print! Also, on the Salsa Team Canada forefront, Carlo Bernard from Halifax has joined on as coordinator-choreographer in the East and will be hosting auditions on November the 29th, the same day Sonia will be holding auditions in Montreal. Ottawa is still not confirmed yet, so stay tuned... Sonia is actively looking for coordinators and/or choreographers for various cities, so if you're interested, feel free to email her directly. And on the dancing front, sigh... I still don't have the time to go out like I used to nor the energy... but I did hit Left Bank last Sunday, and had a blast... it was almost like going home, seeing and dancing with friends I haven't seen in weeks or months; as I sporadically hit the clubs whenever I have some extra energy. Another night that I find some extra energy is usually Thursdays at Babaluu and occasionally on Fridays (which used to be a Courthouse night, but has now moved to Acrobat or El Rancho's, depending on your taste). Who knows, maybe over the holidays, I'll get out more... but one thing I've noticed is that the scene has had a major turnover this past year and many of the regulars who I used to hang out with just don't have time to go out and dance like we used to, including me; or miss the old salsa scene from a few years ago, where there were enough regulars to go around and you would have a major salsa fix almost every night of the week. Now since it's hit and miss -- you go out, have a few dances and hang out chatting or just enjoy the music. November 6, 2003 "Baby it's Cold Outside!" After a beautiful warm night for Halloween, brrr... you now can't go out WITHOUT a jacket without freezing. And how else can you tell? When dancers starting writing in like crazy! I even got 36 salsa lyrics, 6 merengue lyrics and 34 bachata lyrics sent to me from Gia in Italy! Ahhh... when will I find time to post all of those... maybe by Xmas? And for everyone's reading pleasure, more Dear TOsalsa, more discussion forum responses and another Top Ten Salsa Song List from Florida! And for those who love TOsalsa Top 10 trivia... Most Clicked-On Lyrics 1/ Aventura - No Es Amor 2/ DLG - Todo Mi Corazon 3/ Aventura - Amor de Madre 4/ Monchy y Alexandra - Hoja en Blanco 5/ Monchy y Alexandra - Te Quiero Igual Que Ayer 6/ Celia Cruz - Vida es un Carnaval 7/ Ruban Blades - Pedro Navaja 8/ Elvis Crespo - Suavamente 9/ Eddie Santiago - Lluvia 10/ DLG - La Quiero A Morir Most Clicked-On Videos 1/ Frankie & Aisha - Palomillo 2/ Frankie Martinez in Puerto Rico 3/ Matrix in Chicago Congress 4/ DC Salseros in Toronto 5/ Caribbean Soul in Toronto 6/ Nelson Flores in Puerto Rico 7/ Dance Away from Norm Social 8/ Oro Solido dancing Merengue 9/ Pawel & Dora at Bar One 10/ Shines at Toronto Convention Most Active Countries 1/ United States 2/ Italy 3/ Canada 4/ Netherlands 5/ Mexico 6/ France 7/ Peru 8/ UK 9/ Germany 10/ Singapore 11/ Argentina And for all you salsaholics who miss my shenanigans on the dance floor; sorry, I rarely have time to hit the clubs, and there seems to be a huge turnover this past year... I still have a bunch of "stories" up my sleeve that I just haven't had time to download from my memories of various Congresses and I have some salsa deadlines that hopefully will get completed over the holidays. November 2, 2003 What's New! How about a bunch of salsa dancers all dressed up for a wedding and sharing Rene and Michelle's special day... OR a "scary" evening at Acrobat... No, I wasn't there, but Ziv and Estel (who were guilty of providing the pics) were! And for your surfing pleasure, I found an article about 10 great places to dance salsa in the US. Don't know most of the clubs but it's worth taking a look in case you are going to one of these U.S. cities... and while I only list Top 10 Salsa Lists, this site has alot of Top 10's from Culture to Holidays... click here! And if there isn't enough pics for you to view on our site, I also stumbled upon a whole page of links to pics of the various congresses: 1. New York Salsa Congress by Pablo Munoz. I don't want to think of how many hours he took to put it all together. 2. More Canada Salsa Congress pics by Liz Hernandez from NYC. And finally, check out all the updates on Dear TOsalsa, Discussion Forum, a listing of all the 2004 Congresses for your vacation planning at the bottom of this page; and a new page listing all the worldwide congresses where you can pick all or which region you're interested in... US, Canada, Europe and/or other or all of the above. October 28, 2003 Copyright Update... SalsaUtah.com graciously apologized and removed all the articles that were copied from our site -- apparently some of the articles were submitted by Readers who didn't advise that these articles were from other salsa websites. October 28, 2003 The Ups and Downs of Salsa... OR Does anyone really understand copyrights? October has been a very interesting month where I haven't really had any time to do any dancing or stay in touch with the scene, outside of some major events, such as the Canada Salsa Congress which was a great success (except for the loss of my videocamera), then Rene and Michelle's semi-salsa wedding; and then while surfing, to find a site that basically "stole" some of the articles from my site and possibly a few others, without written permission. Why do I use the word "stole", for the following reasons of salsa and copyright ethics: 1. They never asked for permission to republish, and some of it is my very own articles written from my own experiences, and/or guest writers who I contacted specifically for articles. 2. They don't even give us or our guest writers any credit and even had the nerve to edit out any references to the Toronto salsa scene and acknowledgements by myself, which leads me to believe they knew what they were doing. 3. Other websites do have our material, but they link to the article on our site and asked for permission first. And on top of that, they even put a copyright on their own site, to articles that don't even belong to them... How did I find them, well I was doing some stress relief and taking a break by surfing by looking for articles to read about the subject "salsa fix", and came across the site, Utahsalsa.com which had an article on "Salsa Fix". As I surfed through their other articles, I found they had about 9 articles from our site. Then to add further to my curiosity, I found another site that also copied at least 3 of our articles. It may be considered a "sincere" form of flattery to be copied as I've had some dancers surprise me with the response that they consider our site one of the best in the World (and ranked in the Top 5 most popular salsa websites on Alexa.com and no. 1 for Toronto Salsa in the google search engine); but at the same time, alot of salsa, sweat and nights have gone into this site, and people should respect other people's property. It will be interesting to see how quickly they remove the articles once I email them. Compare Feeling Saturated with my own Rose Knows article, "How to Get Your Salsa Groove Back". They even have their own intro paragraph before my article starts. Compare How to Fit In with More Experienced Dancers with my own Rose Knows article, "Dancing with Others" Or how about Salsa Safari with Tricia Meikle's Salsa Safari article. And once again, Nicole DaSilva's excellent interpretation of the various styles of salsa written in 2001 is "stolen" once again... compare our version with the bottom half of their version... look familiar? with some minor city modifications for the year 2003... which now makes it 10 articles in total... How ironic that one of the objectives of their site is "We wanted to offer something that no other website was offering." And for your continued reading pleasure, 2 weeks worth of emails on Dear TOsalsa, comments on the Canada Salsa Congress and a new Top 10 Salsa Song List... As the Salsa World Turns... October 15, 2003 October Mania! October is a busy month as we just finished the Canada Salsa Congress with over 500 pictures uploaded from Saturday and Sunday night shows. Later in the week, when I have a little more time, I'll write a little more of the highlights. Thanks to Jennifer and David, I was also able to videotape some of the shows from Saturday and Sunday, but unfortunately that will take a little longer to put together as I will need to get my hands on a video camcorder as mine was stolen. And since I won't have time to go out as much as I'd like to, Salsa still goes on... But for a little stress release and to tease a few of my salsa friends... I've started working on a page of highlights from two of my favourite salsa couples in the Canadian salsa scene.  In
Toronto, a special congrats goes out to Rene and Michelle who are getting
married this Friday, October 17th after being together for 10 years...
It's about time! They even found time to practice and perform in Grupo
Sabroso at the Canada Salsa Congress. And
no, this wasn't a photo of Rene's proposal to Michelle, but I did ask
them very nicely to take this photo when we were at the Ottawa Salsa Congress
last November since it was the perfect setting for them to practice posing
for the camera as they were already engaged at that time. It's been more
difficult digging up photos of this couple as we are always taking group
shots with all our salsa friends, so as I find more time to dig through
my archives, I'll be putting up a collage of our non-salsa moments...In Montreal, Sonia and Moris of San Tropez are celebrating the 10 year anniversary of their dance school on Friday, October 31st and Saturday, November 1st. Click here for more info on their parties. It was easy finding lots of shots of Sonia and Moris and their dance troupe because in the past few years, we've been either in the same city or the same events in North America either performing at Congresses, Salsa Dance Contests or during our Salsa Team Canada parties... so I picked out some of my favourite photos from the past 2 years... click here! October 12, 2003 How Low Can You Go? especially at Thanksgiving... As a salsa congress veteran, it's funny how you should listen to your instincts sometimes when you think of possible options about where to keep your video-camera. Since it was in my hometown and I've stashed my videocamera in many places while travelling, such as back in my hotel room or at one of the vendor booths so I have easy access -- usually one of the more secure places would be at the DJ booth. But last night, someone stole my videocamera, but thankfully NOT the bag which had other equipment in it-- which leads me to believe that possibly they were after my video footage; or maybe it was just easier to take away a small camera than the whole bag. The sad thing is, it was obviously a salsa dancer in the room who obviously doesn't follow the "code of dancer ethics" that usually prevails at most congresses around people's cameras and belongings. But IF that person happens to read my column, OR if you know who it might be, hopefully they have the decency to return the camera to lost and found at the hotel; but maybe I'm hoping for too much. How has the congress been? Well Friday night, I wasn't feeling well, so I opted out, and last night was off-the-hook with 2 hours of jam-packed shows and dancing until 4 am... Jennifer and David have done an amazing job of organizing this congress -- even starting the shows on time, and put a lot of thought into some of the details, including great stage lighting and giving great seats to Media so we can do what we do best... Stay tuned... October 9, 2003 Congress Fever in Toronto? Well, surprise surprise, I got a touch of the groove back as I did find some time to load these pictures and write a little before I hit the sack. But my feet are definitely not used to standing and dancing all night... they now enjoy their leisure in front of a computer all day and all night since the Puerto Rico Salsa Congress... So what gave me the extra boost. Probably seeing and feeling the energy from the performance groups tonight as they were just a foot or two away in front of me, having dances with people I didn't know from the US and dances with friends I haven't seen in weeks; or just hanging about and catching up as I haven't had time to hit the clubs. We had people from Japan, Puerto Rico, Bermuda and throughout the United States. And the shows, what did I think of them? Well, as always, it's a pain to watch a show behind a camera as you don't get to experience the full effect of your peripheral vision but what you see through the lens, which can be very selective when you're trying to get the right shot; and to get the right angle and moment for the perfect dance-pose moment. They definitely put the shows in the right order... Bong and Irina representing Toronto, Juan Matos from New York doing a solo and closing with New Dimension from Puerto Rico -- an all guy routine with a little partner dancing thrown in with lots of tricks by two guys. It was a great night to kick off the Toronto Salsa Congress; and you can be sure tomorrow will be hopping as many dancers from out-of-town will be showing up to dance the night away. So stay tuned... to tosalsa.com or is it T O salsa.com -- that is the question... around the World they have no clue that T O stands for Toronto, so it was pretty hilarious to hear the whole room chanting T O and Dave Melendez not understanding why... when he mispronounced our name. October 6, 2003 Busier than ever... My non-salsa life is busier than ever, and time sure flies quickly with less than 3 days until the salsa party begins... you can take a step back into time by checking out my clips of the Toronto Salsa Congress back in the year 2000! click here... Also more responses in our Discussion Forum and Dear TOsalsa! September 25, 2003 As Toronto Gets Ready... Over the past month, I've only had time to go to a club once every 2 weeks, and each night I've gone, many of the regulars have not been out... and the usual reason is because they're exhausted from dance practices as many of the teams are working on new shows for Toronto's upcoming Salsa Congress. In exactly 3 weeks, we will be hosting the Canada Salsa Congress, hosted by Toronto Instructor, Jennifer Aucoin, and New York Salsa Instructor, David Melendez. The last time Toronto had a congress was about 3-1/2 years ago around the same time we also launched TOsalsa.com -- how time flies...  If you attended the Salsaweb Convention in Toronto in April 2000, you may remember David as the MC for the evening shows -- that's the first time I met him and you'll find him at almost all the major North American Salsa Congresses -- either schmoozin' or taking his children's dance groups (Heartbreak Boys and Girls) to various congresses to perform. He owns one of the largest dance schools in New York City, produces the New York Salsa Congress, is one of the nicest guys you'd love to meet and he does a wonderful job with the new generation of salsa dancers -- the kids. In other words, he's everywhere... So if you look at the schedule, you have over 30 workshops to choose from om two days and 4 action-packed nights of dancing and a chance to see over 40 dance teams -- what more could you ask for. What's amazing to see in this line-up is how Toronto has grown up since the year 2000. At that Congress, we were blown away by the caliber of the New York dancers back then and it was our first experience of performance groups, "shines" and major "on 2" social dancing; and we haven't looked back since. About 80% of the directors of the Toronto dance groups who will be performing at this year's Congress, were inspired to take our dancing to new heights for the past 3-1/2 years. This is the perfect opportunity for any Toronto dancer who usually can't afford to travel to other cities to dance or take lessons, to take advantage of this golden opportunity to see and dance with some of the best dancers and performers from around the World. If you can't afford the full pass, then pick and choose what you would enjoy the most -- the chance to learn different styles of salsa during the day, OR be entertained by all the dance performances and enjoy the social dancing at night. You won't regret it... Thinking back to April 2000, I hardly danced at all and borrowed my friend's videocamera to walk around and tape all the great social dancing for the memories and to review what techniques and styling they did that made their dancing so special... And on the webfront, we had more responses in our Discussion Forum on Absurd Cover Charges in Toronto and TO Men shunning Black Women... Dear TOsalsa, and a dance troupe from Brazil forwarded a link to one of their dance routines... click here! Remember, you can email or let us know in person, any updates, feedback or suggestions on what you would like to read. |
Highlights
of Toronto's Fall Fiesta 2003
