Events Chicago Salsa Congress 2006

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The Heatwave returned in full force to this year's Chicago Salsa Congress. It was an event full of outstanding performances, awesome social dancing, and live shows by world-reknown salsa bands.

Before the event even got started, the good folks at Cultural Expressions had an idea to create a number composed of various dancers in Chicago, celebrating the roots of Latin dance as well as the ability of this music to reach out and touch people beyound the Latin culture.

Dancers in the piece included Gloria Farr, Saladeen Alamin, Ashanti, Montu Dance Co., Madd Rhythms Dance Co., and Descarga Caribe members Sekou McMiller, Leah Patterson, and Micah. The piece, as well as all of the congress shows, was directed by Maria Torres from New York...she really whipped us into shape!

Saladeen narrated a wonderful story throughout the dance that told of the unifying qualities of dance and our appreciation therein. It also included a fiesty "battle" between Tap dancers and Mamberos towards the end, where Micah busted out some of his "sickwiggly" leg styling that got the crowd going a little bit! Check out our media gallery to get a look at this beautiful collaboration, performed as the opening act on Saturday night.

The congress opened Thursday night with a relatively short night of performances. We performed our "Snap" routine as the last main act, which was followed by a closing dance theater production.

The social dancing that night started off a bit slow (the usual), but would pick up as the congress went on. We danced to the exciting sounds of Primi Cruz, who had us jammin' all night long.

On Friday, we were right back up in the morning for tech rehearsal to do a repeat performance of our routine that day. Both the Thursday and Friday performances came out well, but we felt the Friday performance was one of our best runs yet! Thanks to the crowd for keeping us hype. :)

That night, the dance floor was packed while Larry Harlow and the Latin Legends Band played their amazing set. Special guests Jimmy Bosch (trombone) and Alfredo de la Fe (violin) also popped up on stage and battled it out! We wish we hadn't forgotten our video camera that night...

All the Chicago salseras are out and people from all over the world are here dancing their hearts out, but this is just the start of the event. Find out about the activities on Saturday and Sunday by clicking below!

Read on to find out more about the event.

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