Overall – Really
fun congress, with everything in one location. The organisation was good, a LOT
of seasoned dancers were there and for the most part the music was good too. The
pre-parties made this congress – there’s something about fooling around with
friends that dancing all night cannot always hold a fiddle too. I’m writing
this review after 4 months and can’t say that I have any epic dance memories of
this one, nor am I incredibly keen to return. I can’t quite put my finger on
why though. Too many UK dancers? Impossible to recreate the same vibe? Maybe it’s
the fact that I lost my Blackberry on the trip out there and could never quite
get over it? The dancing was better than Berlin, I got my dancing fix on the
Sunday night but am not yet convinced that I need to return.
Prices
1. Flights – Cheap
flights to Warsaw Modlin aka the Ryanair airport. Unfortunately, this is 50
minutes by car from the venue, whereas Chopin airport is only about 5 minutes
away. Still worth it if you can book a car and share with people, though not as
convenient as it could be! To get the cheap flights, you need to take Friday
off work.
2. Pass prices – Decent prices for full passes made it interesting to buy them.
Being in the same hotel as the workshops (reasonably far away from town) and
the middle of winter also helps them sell more of these. I think we paid about
€80 for the full pass.
3. Hotels – We
stayed in the official congress hotel, the Gromada, which was priced at €20 a
night for two people sharing. We added a third person to our room with a camp
bed and got a sitting room with a TV area, two loos and a massive bath
tub/bathroom with it. There was another hotel 5 minutes’ walk down the road,
but I recommend staying in the main one for convenience and price. Breakfast
was included and the heating was on full whack – we were most definitely never
cold inside the hotel!
4. Water – Drinks
were available all day and night – they even sold tea/coffee/sandwiches round
the clock. Wait, actually, don’t think they sold tea at night or would have
been drinking it! The prices were reasonable and there was no silly ticket
system. The sandwiches were plain but good.
Venue
1. Floor – Tile
floor – reasonably slippery but in a good way.
2. Number of dance floors - A
big dance floor for LA/Mambo which mostly which was medium to fast speed, one
for kizomba/bachata downstairs. I never made it to the kizomba room. On the
Sunday, the LA/Mambo floor was split into two rooms and everyone was squeezed
in the upstairs bit…
3. Workshops vs. parties - Same
venue for everything. Bit of crowding in the workshops (understatement!). There
were moves you couldn’t do because there wasn’t enough space or the couple to
your left/right/front/back was taking too much space. There were stages in some
of the rooms but they weren’t really high enough for everyone to be able to see
the artists’ feet.
4. Show seats. Didn’t see any shows but pretty sure people were standing/sitting
on the floor.
5. Show visibility. n/a
6. Workshop visibility. Would have been better with high stages.
7. Workshop organisation. Seemed fine but not much rotation going on in
the workshops I did.
Crowd
1. Workshops. Decent level, busy classes.
2. Parties – Varied
crowd with massive contingent from the UK and France and many of the regular
congress goers. I think Polish vodka had a massive impact on the Saturday night
party as there were so few people who could see/dance straight that I had to
bias my dance requests towards people who don’t drink for religious reasons. As
I mentioned before though, this was in large part due to the epic hotel-room
pre-parties, but also to the €1/1 shot bars in Warsaw city centre!
3. Size – Medium
to large – You could find people when you wanted to, dance with the same person
twice in a night, but only if you chose to. I think I danced with most of the
people I knew and wanted to dance with once per night of the congress.
4. After parties – The
parties ended at 5am. Breakfast opened at 6am. Many people waited up for
breakfast. We showered, massaged our feet and came back down in dry and comfy
clothes. The breakfast wasn’t special but it was ok. Beware the sausage though,
a couple of people got sick for a week from eating one at Monday’s breakfast!
Line-up
1. Quality of teaching – Difficult
to say. Yamulee wanted to tone their workshop down because people didn’t have
the space to be able to pick their routine up. Eddie went back to basics and
taught some crowd-pleasing but easy footwork. Unfortunately, I cannot comment on
any others! The artists were there, you just needed to attend their classes to
find out!
2. Choice of workshops – I
think they had 4 workshops per hour. The passes were separated into
styling/kizomba/salsa passes but you could buy a pass to attend all types if
you wanted to.
3. Number of shows – No
idea. Skipped them all. The line-up seemed reasonably long, but not overly
cumbersome.
4. Artists on the dance floor. I was quite disappointed by the artists at this
congress. Many of them danced on stage or stood there watching down and trying
to remain inaccessible. A couple defied that norm and social danced with smiles
with the plebs (Supermario, Burju, Amauri from Yamulee) but they were the
exception to the rule. They came together for the after party on Sunday though –
massive hour-long follow-the-leader style group dance where various artists got
to show off. Hats off to Farid Ferchach who led the crowd in true Rovinj pool
party style (without the sunshine), doing simple moves that everyone could
follow. Farid also did a three-minute long rendition of Frankie Martinez’
Welcome to the Party choreography which had everyone rolling on the floor with
laughter.
5. DJs. Dj
Oz (newcomer from London) killed it on Sunday – I had to force myself to take a
hydration break! Mauri, Malo and Sezar were there too. Wasn’t too impressed
with the sets by Malo or Sezar but then these things are highly personal…
6. Bands. No
live music.
Location
1. Central location? The venue was c.30minutes by bus from the centre
of town. It was easy enough to get in but Sunday was a national holiday in
Poland so most buses weren’t running. There was some weird bus re-routing on
the Saturday too.
2. Distance from the airport – 5
minutes from Chopin, 50 minutes from Modlin (by car).
3. Time to London - Approximately 2 hours on a direct flight.
4. Number of days off work. Two days required. There weren’t any reasonably
priced or well-timed flights on Friday night.
For more information, check out the website
here: http://www.salsafestival.pl/2012/en/
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