Review: The 7th Chicago Intl. Salsa Congress - Highlights

There is too much to report here so I will stick to the top three highlights.
I have been to about a dozen salsa congresses over the years and I can honestly say this one was the best ever. I don't say that lightly. I had attended my first Afro-Cuban Music & Dance Festival in Boulder, Colorado in August of last year and figured that a salsa congress would not be able to match up anymore. Not.

The top highlight of this event was the closing song of the closing act by one of the most famous salsa bands from Puerto Rico: Roberto Roena y Apollo Sound. In this final song (before the encore as the audience wouldn't let them off the stage), bandleader Roberto Roena who is a dancer, bongosero and campanero, called dancers to join on stage and dance with him. Tito Ortos, Gordon Neil, Vanessa Millan, Mark-Anthony Sheppard, Andy Cruz, Griselle Ponce, Saladeen Alamin and others, about 20 professional dancers in all, danced in line in front of the stage. Then one by one they did solos while the lead singer improvised a soneo, the coro phrased the tune and the percussion section kept the rhythm or improvised. Meanwhile everyone else in the audience stopped dancing and rushed up to the stage to watch the show and join in on the coro. It was a moment to remember and I hope the many people recording with their video cameras will post them on youtube some day.

Another top highlight was the dance performance by Latin Rhythms Dance Company (of Chicago) directed by Maricza Valentin. Maricza's dance company has been with the congress from the beginning in 2002 and their performances have always pushed the limit of creativity. This year, they closed the final evening show with a latin jazz - mambo fusion performance that had it all. Excellent music, an amazing use of the stage space and a creative choreography with many individual subroutine elements. This year Maricza joined the production team of the salsa congress as Artistic Co-Director. It was about time, one would hate to see so much talent not fully utilized in this outstanding event.

The final highlight was the social scene. I ran into people I know everywhere I went. As it turned out many people are such steady regulars at this congress that it has become a veritable salseros & salseras reunion. I hooked up with people from Iowa, Detroit, Cincinatti, St. Louis, Wisconsin, Indianapolis and of course Chicago. This was in addition to the 50+ salseros and salseras who headed down from here in the Twin Cities metro.