Karnataka - Bangalore   

Salsa dancers hold centre stage

BANGALORE: A celebration of being alive, that’s what it was. The four-day Lido Salsa Festival, held at the Lido Fashion Mall near Trinity Circle was a visual feast of grace and style. It was the preliminary round of the National Amateur Salsa championship.

Salsa professionals from all over the world, who collectively like to be addressed as the International Salsa Congress, performed as well as judged the amateur competition that was held at the basement of the spanking new mall. Countries such as Columbia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and USA were amply represented and were also given a run for their money by some very talented dancers from India.

The competition itself was won by Bangalore’s Bala Kumaran, a final year fashion design student and his partner Natasha Ballal, a student of Mount Carmel College. The couple was dressed in customary scarlet outfits and Bala’s gleaming ebony coupled with Natasha’s luminescence made for a performance that sizzled with oomph. Ravi and Pritika (Kolkatta) and Chandru and Gayatri (Bangalore) were the other winners.

After the competition was done with, the men and women of the congress entered the ring and what ensued was a banquet for the eyes: Spanish tang garnished with blistering Indian masala. The Indian members of the Salsa Congress seared onstage even as Columbians Ricardo and Viviana, Italians Zico, Phillip, Silvia and Titty coiled and contorted their bodies at impossible angles.

Zico’s claim that Salsa is meant for everybody and that world over, Salsa dancers form a seamless community irrespective of race, ethnicity or even the extremely alienating concept of beauty, rang true. It seemed for a moment that Salsa might just be the meeting point of human diversity.

The Lido Salsa Festival concluded on Saturday.

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