BACHATA BOOM

Can you believe it? SF International Bachata Festival is 5!  Who could have guessed that this basic Dominican social dance with a simple beat would convert so many SF salsa devotees into bachata fans?!  But knowing Rodney Aquino for 15 years I got worried when he started building bachata fan circles a few years back.  I had reasons.

He may have gotten his humorous biography at the festival showcase, but, in reality, back then Rodney started as a shy quiet dancer who joined/built a small group of beginners to go social dancing together and called it Salsagang.  Time passed.

Rodney became an experienced leader and created a wildly popular website and forum, you guessed it - Salsagang.  Time passed.  He got bored and sold the site.

Rodney started dancing on2, got comfortable in that style.  Time passed.  He got bored and became a timba fan.  Time passed. 

Rodney was looking for a fresh cure to his newly renewed boredom and found bachata.  At first, I was skeptical about the bachata threat to salsa, but knowing Rodney’s bullheaded determination, I was following his moves closely.  Lo and behold, he succeeded once again.  SF now has many bachata social dancing venues and the SF International Bachata Festival is a major success.  And then… Now you know how kizomba appeared on the Bay Area horizon…

New this year are musicality workshops from Don Baarns who has 27 online sections dedicated to music structure.  Musicality in social dancing is my personal pet peeve and I’ve written about it extensively (MUSIC CONNECTION 101 (for salseros), mentioned  it in almost every article related to dancing and interviewed many instructors and dancers.  A handful of instructors trying to come up with various ways to teach musicality to salseros are largely unsuccessful due to many factors: they cannot follow the music themselves; they may not know the music’s ins and outs; they’re unable to come up with effective teaching strategies; advanced salseros are too vain to admit they don’t know something and take musicality classes; salseros are too insecure to try etc.etc.  When I asked Troy Anthony, the bachata and salsa star and guest at the festival, which dance he likes most, bachata or salsa, he said – are you ready?  – West Coast swing!  He added that all his dancers are required to take swing lessons.  Maybe it’s swing’s  musicality training?

Maybe Rodney, instead of looking for other dance forms around the world, will eventually choose to tackle this problem head on and create a new trend, pleeeeeeeease!?  How about a musicality competition?  Viewers always appreciate well placed music accents in dancing,-  that will challenge dancers to try it for themselves.

Bachata became a major drain from salsa.  One solace for hard-core salseros is a salsa room available for social dancing at the festival concurrently with bachata.  Theoretically, it’s open even during shows, but always overtaken by performers so it never serves its stated purpose during performances.  And yet kizomba room remains open and empty, what’s up with that, Rodik?! (Rodney’s nickname from his 1 person Russian fan club :-)

Social dancing is what everyone is waiting for: after all, partner dances are first and foremost a social pastime thinly disguising the true purpose of its young devotees (conscious or not) – facilitating social interaction between the sexes.  Everything else is icing (welcome or not).  Huge bachata ballroom was packed all nights.  Kizomba room, empty during the shows, came to life with growing numbers of kizomba fans and remained busy till 4 am.

For hard-core salseros, Fri night was perfect: great music set by DJ Carlos and many skillful dancers. When another DJ came on at 2 am the crowd thinned out.  Sat. night floor was thinner – a rare occurrence – perhaps due to all the commercial salsa and long and fast songs.  Advanced dancers dropped in to check it out, but didn’t stay long.  Sunday night was thinner still in spite of the best performances reserved for the last show of the festival.

Trying to serve all dance communities is a noble endeavor, but experience shows it never works here in the Bay Area.  Unlike Europe, where you can hear a few styles of Latin dance and even swing at the same night, salsa and timba dancers are not tolerant of each others’ music here and do not share events.  Timba DJ Antonio scheduled at 2 am every night played mostly for himself.

And yet, overall, SF bachata festival became a major event for local and visiting Latin dance lovers who pack the hotel ballrooms every year and assure the survival of partner dancing.  What else can we expect?   

Stay tuned…

DIP (dance in peace)