This month David Mintz shares his impressions of the recent Salsaweb Convention held in Washington DC. The article was originally an email letter sent to my New York co-Web Author and brother in arms, Mr. Steve Shaw of www.SalsaNewYork.com. Thanks Steve for forwarding this piece and thanks David for the feedback.
-Manny

The First Annual Salsaweb Convention
-by David Mintz

Greetings.

I believe you encouraged us to tell you about the convention in your last
bulletin, so here you go. Feel free to quote me.

It was simply superb. My wife and I showed up Friday evening in time for
the party and stuck around through all of Saturday -- six hours of
workshops and an evening party -- and the first couple rounds of salsa
competition on Sunday.

We saw stunning dance performances that had everyone screaming their
throats out with approval. The energy level and good-vibe atmosphere was
overpowering. During the social dancing, most of the performers were out
on the floor dancing their derrières off, so in a sense the show continued
all night. The performers, euphoric and eager to show their stuff to
their peers, were dancing "big," which meant you either had to dance more
defensively than usual, or resign yourself to taking a shot once in a
while and shrugging it off. Even though we knew better, as intermediate
students we felt just a bit absurd dancing in our humble mediocre way
after such dazzling displays --at least the first night. The second night
we got past that and enjoyed ourselves without reservation.

The music was splendid, fully equal to our expectations. We heard Conjunto
Clásico on Friday and Domingo Quiñones on Saturday.

The workshops were also great fun and instructive as well. I half-expected
to hear some debates on the relative merits of One versus Two, but there
was none of that:  all the instructors who I saw give a workshop
prefaced their presentations with remarks to effect that either way is
great, and you can take this material home and transpose it from One to
Two or vice-versa. Indeed, we are dosistas but we picked up some hot moves
on One and had no problem doing them on Two.

It was an unforgettable experience an we will not hesitate to do it again
-- in Puerto Rico in July. See you there, ¡y que viva la salsa!

         David Mintz
         dmintz@panix.com