I know, I already posted an article I wrote about the LDC, but I wanted to share my personal excitement about it!
So....there are a bunch of really talented couples coming from all over the US to teach really cool stuff, but the two most interesting things happening, in my opinion, are:
Jorge Elizondo's Bachata Choreography Class
Ivan & Isa....period.
I've taken classes from Jorge Elizondo before. He's pretty strict to be honest, but he gets down to the nuts and bolts, which is good. Too many salseros are actually...well...shitty dancers. There, I said it. They might know interesting tricks and they might be able to find people that can lead/follow them, but most of them have no real fundamental basis of dance in general. My personal opinion is that it's because many of them don't take actual lessons and kind of learn on the street/in the club where they're only dancing with other people who learned on the street/in the club. It can be hard for the blind to lead or follow the blind....unfortunately, this is the status of salsa.
Jorge Elizondo does get to those very basic things that even some "advanced" salsa dancers are lacking. He talks really specifically about leading, following, connection, rhythm, isolations, and what seem like minute details about movement, but are really quite important. To have this guy teaching an actual number is pretty great! I'm admittedly a bit intimidated, but I think it will be awesome....or if it's not I can go take something else.
The other thing this Ivan and Isa. They're coming all the way from Spain to tiny little Gwinnett County, GA. That is pretty dang cool by itself. The other thing that will be awesome is that they will be teaching a lot of kizomba. Just my personal opinion, but I think kizomba is going to be the next big standard addition to social Latin dance. It used to just be salsa and merengue. Then, bachata kind of came out of nowhere and now it's salsa, bachata, merengue. Well, kizomba keeps creeping in, but it's not that popular in the US...YET!
According to the guy who runs this event, whose name is Sean Christopher, kizomba is BIG in Europe, which is why he brought a couple from Europe in to teach it. Currently, it seems like a footnote in Latin dance gatherings and congresses...there might be two classes for a whole weekend-long event...but it's going to be pretty heavily featured at the LDC. There will be *FIVE* FRIGGIN HOURS of kizomba classes at the LDC and it's going to be a part of the daily dance socials as well.
...which could be very embarrassing for me, but I'm going to try anyway!
Honestly, anything that expands salseros' minds is a good thing. Not to get anybody's panties in a wad, but salseros are pretty narrow minded when it comes to dancing. They only like their own little dance world. They're not really interested in learning other dances. The only way to get them to open their minds is to sneak other dances in to events that are majority salsa.The same might be true of other dance types, but every other dance type I've tried to learn, it seemed the people were much more diversified (and better leaders).
So, I'm super-stoked to see kizomba being thrown in to the mix and I wonder what the next thing will be. I'll be posting a totally informal, opinionated review here and will, of course, do a professional article for Examiner.com.
BTW, here's the link to the LDC site where you can get tix, schedule, instructor bios, blablabla: http://latindanceclassic.com/
Lead me on the dance floor, but follow me on twitter @danceinfotainme.
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