On Salsa Festival Karlsruhe (2/2)

Overall - Fun and friendly congress with a family feel to it. Sufficient dancers to dance till daylight. The recommended hotel had a delicious breakfast that opens at 6:30am, a perfect time to return home from the after party. Good level within the classes, though I can't say I found any of them particularly challenging. Still, there was always something to be learnt. Strongly recommend taking classes as there wasn't much to see about town and at the end of March, German weather is still pretty dreary! I had a great time, but that was primarily down to the people with me and our internal jokes. Was also thrilled to discover another amazing Parisian dancer - how could I have thought I'd met them all already!

Let's break it down:

Prices

1. Flights - Ryanair fly to Karlsruhe from London. Otherwise, you can fly to Stuttgart but it's an hour away by road. Ryanair flight prices are reasonable, but bear in mind that there's a 30 minute drive into Karlsruhe from the Baden Bade Karlsruhe (FKB) airport. We were fortunate to be accompanying an artist (friend) and thus benefitted from a shuttle pickup in honour of his starry status! Without this, you have to get up super early and find a bus. Not sure that's something I'd be willing to attempt.
2. Pass prices - Slightly cheaper than your average congress, at c.€150 (I think). We were fortunate again to have an artist friend who got us a great group deal thus significantly lowering the price.
3. Hotels - I would strongly recommend that anyone going to this congress stay in the 4 star recommended Renaissance hotel (or with friends if at all possible). The breakfast alone makes this worthwhile, but the congress organisers have negotiated a price with the hotel that makes it reasonable. Packing a third camp-bed into your room will also help to bring the cost down. It works out to c.€40 a night, which includes the magnificent breakfast (worth €19). To give you an idea, breakfast included absolutely everything from eggs and bacon, potatoes and sausages to muffins and croissants, fruit, tomatoes, smoked salmon and even cucumbers. And it was all presented in a plentiful buffet style. I should mention that the beds, for what little time we spent in them, were really comfortable too! The hotel is situated at about 7 minutes walk from the congress venue and across the road from the greatest ever Chinese restaurant. It also happened to be the only restaurant within sight, but having tried the food on two nights, I simply would not recommend for anyone to bother wasting their time looking for anything else. There's a supermarket across the road too, in case you wish to buy supplies - beware though, it's closed on Sunday.
4. Bottled water - €3 for a Fanta, water was about €2 (I think). To be honest, it wasn't the kind of congress where you dance so much that you get dehydrated and desperately need to drink. They also served pasta meals that looked pretty appetising for €5 in the venue cafeteria. However, in the after party, where things got a lot hotter, the bar people were happy to serve tap water on request. A bit of a random thing though was that they didn't let people into the congress until they'd checked their coats into the cloakroom. Many a male had to explain that they liked to keep their stylish jackets on to dance! Luckily the "friends of artists" status that we had, enabled us to waive this obligation and happily park our bags and coats on the stage next to where we were dancing!

Venue

1. Floor - New hardwood. By which I mean "impossible ice rink". Seriously, it was pretty dangerous unless you were wearing trainers! I did a couple of workshops with no shoes on, a couple in socks (pretty dangerous) and then eventually settled on my newest pair of jazz shoes, which had a life saving rubber sole. On the plus side, it was not tiring on the knees. But still, dancing with an amazing performer and almost catapulting to the floor is not exactly how you make your (salsa) dreams come true! Luckily, most leaders adapted pretty quickly so after the first night, the floor was no longer much of a problem.
2. Number of dance floors - Just the one. And they only played mambo. And there was plenty of space. Some bachata, some chacha, nothing else. The music was basically perfect! Weirdly, a number of Italians were dancing Cuban moves on2 - I haven't really seen this before - strange, but good!
3. Workshops vs. parties - Workshps, shows and parties were in same venue and the after party was a 20 minute walk away in the much smaller "Candela" club. Not that there were any space problems by 4am! Workshops started at 11am and went through till 6pm. There were three workshops per hour and these were well spread out so that all the styling workshops were at the same time so that men would not be caught without partners during the partnerwork sessions. The only issue with the workshop rooms was that two had a better sound system than the room in the middle where any sound was pretty much drowned out!
4. Show seats - No seats - We sat on the floor and visibility was fine. The session on Saturday was slightly long though and thus a little cramping.
5. Show visibility - Fine from where I was sitting! On Sunday, the shows and party were in Candela and it was tightly packed with low visibility. For those of us who were close enough, Thomas Guererro's tears during his performance with Santo Rico were plain to see. Totally raw and emotional performance from them, dedicated to a friend lost to cancer. Beautiful stuff.
6. Workshop visibility - Decent, artists were highly elevated for all workshops. Moreover, by Sunday afternoon, there weren't that many people still in attendance so there was loads of space. Furthermore, my somewhat inexperienced partner and I managed to get personal help by three of the Santo Rico team to help us figure out the move. Where else will you get that kind of personal attention and the opportunity to try out what it's supposed to feel like with one of the guys?
7. Workshop organisation - Not much need given size of rooms/venue

Crowd

1. Workshops - People spread out nicely during workshops. There was no one who was obviously struggling. The material wasn't really difficult per se, but they weren't easy enough to be boring either.
2. Parties - Great level of dancing amongst the Italians, Croatians and Brits. A couple of very decent Germans and an amazing Peruvian from Paris. Artists were fully accessible and since there were so many of them, they were almost unavoidable. I would say that the general level was below average but people were still competent dancers. You couldn't just close your eyes, spin round and point - the odds of landing on an amazing dancer doing that were pretty slim (you could totally pull this off in Athens 2008 and be blessed with an epic dance every time!).
3. Size - Small. There was never a point where I couldn't see my friends and I never had to queue for a dance either.
4. After parties - These were held in a different venue which effectively felt like a dingy club rather than a temporary sanitised marquis tent. Much more character, lots of dark little corners, two bars to lean against, pillars to hide behind and couches a-plenty. Unfortunately, air conditioning appeared to be amiss, so after the big conference hall dance floor, moving to the Candela club felt a bit like dancing in a dark sauna! We quickly got over that though and warmed to the place, as it had way more character. This was the place that only the hardcore made it to and where we happily kept dancing till way past daylight - without knowing it was daylight too (dancing in the dark clearly has some benefits!)…The music at the after parties was much the same as in the main party, though arguably a little slower. They were definitely worth going to as they provided a more fertile environment for actually getting to know other dancers as well as for simply fooling around!

Line-up

1. Quality of teaching - Good standard, though I would have said the workshops were slightly on the easy side. The fact that I can still remember the Santo Rico styling shine more than three weeks later is a testament to this (for those who don't know, I have the memory of a goldfish). The boys were doing Juan Matos' partnerwork all night and still nailing it a couple of weeks later as well…Surely it shouldn’t be that easy? (or maybe we're just that good?!)
2. Choice of workshops - Three per hour, they ran from 11am till 6pm. They managed to line these up such that all the partner vs. solo workshops were aligned. This way, no men were desperately seeking partners at any time.
3. Number of shows - Only 3 on Sunday (good), a handful on Friday (good), but what felt like millions on Saturday (not so good). Mostly good quality apart from one couple who seemed to be doing an appalling impersonation of Luis Vasquez and Mellissa Fernandez…But still, just a little too many...
4. Artists on dance floor - Once the shows were done, most of the Italians (i.e. the artists) were out in force and social dancing. Santo Rico generally spent a lot of time drinking and were (as a result) very good sports.
5. DJs - DJ Lobo did a great job as did whoever were the others. Great tracks, great songs, never once had a complaint about the music at this congress.
6. Bands - No bands played during this festival.

Location

1. Centralised - Didn't really see much of the town (oops), but the congress venue was 5mins walk from the hotel and the hotel was c.15mins walk from the after party venue. They had some shuttles in between all of these and people were taking cabs too, but it took about as long to walk as it did to wait and hop into the shuttle/taxi.
2. Distance from airport - 20 minutes hotel to airport but only with a pre-organised special-treatment for artists service. Otherwise, a lot longer using a bus...
3. Time from London - 1 hour by plane (from Stansted)
4. Number of days off work - Two required. Ryanair travel at weird and wacky times.

For more information check out the website: http://www.salsafestivalcandela.de/

So here is my constant criteria comparison for the 5th Candela Festival in Karlsruhe (2011 edition):